Hacker News Reader

Comment by vortico | Hacker News Reader

May I recommend replacing The Unlicense with CC0? (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode). It has all the same bullet points except is a bit tighter in countries where a public domain release is not legally valid.

Unfortunately it is more difficult to release works into the public domain than The Unlicense addresses. The Unlicense is likely sufficient for all foreseen cases in countries except Germany and France (to my knowledge), but CC0 is written beautifully with a double-fallback to completely waiver all rights in all jurisdictions.

Here are some analyses:

- https://creativecommons.org/2011/04/15/using-cc0-for-public-... Why this is okay to use for software.

- https://rd-alliance.org/sites/default/files/cc0-analysis-kre... concludes that it is sufficient in German law.

- https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PublicDomain It is recommended by the FSF as a prefered method for releasing source code into the public domain.

View on HN

I find the Zero Clause BSD [0] the simplest for the purpose.

Here it is in its entirety:

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

[0] https://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html

Also known as the "Free Public License 1.0.0".

It's also officially recognized by the OSI.

https://opensource.org/licenses/FPL-1.0.0

Yes, they selected the relevant license for pretty much all reasonable desired uses except for this one. I really appreciate that they list just MIT, Apache 2.0, and GPLv3 on the front page.

The Unlicense sometimes causes issues with software being accepted into larger collections. CC0 is much more thoroughly drafted, and more widely accepted.

I find it so strange that this is a problem... like the top legal minds of Germany can't figure out how to interpret the concept of public domain from another jurisdiction in a way that's consistent with German law? They can't just make a ruling that says, "OK, everyone consider public domain from other jurisdictions to be the most permissive possible license under German law" and be done with it?

Germany and France are not necessarily the cause of something like CC0, because even if all countries honored public domain as an alternative to copyright law, it's a concept that lives in a different legal dimension. Declaring that a work is in the public domain doesn't remove copyright---it assigns a different legal code to your work. Using CC0 does remove copyright, through its fantastic double-fallback causes (2) and (3), so only one legal system needs to be assumed for CC0 to work: copyright (which conveniently most countries follow since the Berne Convention.)

Under Australian law public domain exists but only after the full copyright term expires. There's no legal mechanism for an author to relinquish their copyright over their works and dedicate it directly to the public domain.

If I understand correctly, the issue is moral rights (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights). In some jurisdictions, including Germany, these rights cannot be waived.

For example, in such a jurisdiction, if I release a piece of code under a public domain equivalent license, you would have to give me credit as the author even if the license explicitly says you don't have to: the right to be identified as the author is a moral right that I cannot waive, legally.

I wrote the first bulleted link, should have included a gigantic caveat: CC0-1.0 expressly excludes any patent grant. That makes it dangerous for non-trivial software, is why CC eventually withdrew it from consideration for OSI approval, and why it isn't highlighted on choosealicense.com which is primarily about software -- though it is mentioned on https://choosealicense.com/non-software/

I think the reason choosealicense.com originally featured Unlicense relative to other unconditional license options is that one of the creators of the Unlicense (bhuga) was also one of the creators of choosealicense.com. But previous paragraph is why it's still there.

Doesn't CC0 have patent issues (IAALN)?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com