4 ms·

Public domain licensing is popular among the kind of people who see copyright law as an annoying distraction from the fun of writing software. CC0 is an absurdl

Public domain licensing is popular among the kind of people who see copyright law as an annoying distraction from the fun of writing software. CC0 is an absurdly long legal document compared to, say, the MIT or BSD licenses which grant users the same rights, never mind a one-line "licence" like "dedicated to the public domain, no rights reserved".

cyphar 11y ago
Public domain is part of copyright law. In addition, it is very western-centric to assume that all jurisdictions have as liberal public domain law as Western countries. CC0 means that works will be put in the public domain (or as close as possible) in all jurisdictions. The only negative of CC0 is that it permits patenting of CC0 works, which is quite a weird thing to explicitly allow.
Vespasian 11y ago
CC0 might be very long but in my opinion it's the better choice for creative work that is not Software. MIT and BSD specifically mention "software" and/or "documentation" and might not apply to other works in some legislation. Lines like "dedicated to the public domain, no rights reserved" would be problematic as well since it is not always possible to give up all rights or the concept of public domain might not even exist (now or in the future) in your local law system. I take a similar approach to licensing as I do with cryptography: Don't write your own crypto/legal. Stick to what has been tested, accepted and is in wide use in your targeted domain. Slightly OT: I think it's sad that some part of the tech community thinks about the law as artificial and unneeded and flat out refuses to deal with it. Reality is that those rules are as real and as relevant to your software as are algorithms and implementation details. Sticking your head in the sand won't make this problem go away. PS: If one demands from lawmakers to learn about technology development than one should also be willing to learn about legal development as well.
- cyphar 11y ago
  > CC0 might be very long but in my opinion it's the better choice for creative work that is not Software. MIT and BSD specifically mention "software" and/or "documentation" and might not apply to other works in some legislation. My main contention with CC0 for software is that it explicitly states that patents are not affected by the license. Other than that, CC0 is probably the only good way of releasing code into the public domain (or something like it). The FSF and CC people agree about that too.

cyphar 11y ago

Public domain is part of copyright law. In addition, it is very western-centric to assume that all jurisdictions have as liberal public domain law as Western countries. CC0 means that works will be put in the public domain (or as close as possible) in all jurisdictions. The only negative of CC0 is that it permits patenting of CC0 works, which is quite a weird thing to explicitly allow.

Vespasian 11y ago

CC0 might be very long but in my opinion it's the better choice for creative work that is not Software. MIT and BSD specifically mention "software" and/or "documentation" and might not apply to other works in some legislation. Lines like "dedicated to the public domain, no rights reserved" would be problematic as well since it is not always possible to give up all rights or the concept of public domain might not even exist (now or in the future) in your local law system. I take a similar approach to licensing as I do with cryptography: Don't write your own crypto/legal. Stick to what has been tested, accepted and is in wide use in your targeted domain. Slightly OT: I think it's sad that some part of the tech community thinks about the law as artificial and unneeded and flat out refuses to deal with it. Reality is that those rules are as real and as relevant to your software as are algorithms and implementation details. Sticking your head in the sand won't make this problem go away. PS: If one demands from lawmakers to learn about technology development than one should also be willing to learn about legal development as well.

cyphar 11y ago
> CC0 might be very long but in my opinion it's the better choice for creative work that is not Software. MIT and BSD specifically mention "software" and/or "documentation" and might not apply to other works in some legislation. My main contention with CC0 for software is that it explicitly states that patents are not affected by the license. Other than that, CC0 is probably the only good way of releasing code into the public domain (or something like it). The FSF and CC people agree about that too.