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Well, the very simplest thing is just what he did. "Here guys, look at my code."

By doing so, he doesn't give up any (exclusive) rights he has as an author. It's not the best from a user's perspective, but it's the simplest and most conservative from an author's perspective (short of not releasing the code at all).

I think they meant "the simplest thing that would let others use the code how they like" ;)

> [CC0] is broken by design as it's a public domain dedication.

Could you please expand on this a little bit ? CC0 is not only public domain dedication, it has terms for "when public domain dedication isn't possible, here's a list of things that are possible"

CC0 falls back to a license in the absence of the public domain, so it's much stronger than a simple dedication IMO.

See OSI's comments on why it hasn't been approved here -

http://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero