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The CC0 license and the Unlicense attempt to do this with language to the effect of: > This work is placed in the public domain. > In regions where this is no
by avhon1 6y ago
The CC0 license and the Unlicense attempt to do this with language to the effect of:
> This work is placed in the public domain.
> In regions where this is not possible, the author grants unlimited license to this work.
Unfortunately, the CC0 explicitly does not waive patent rights, the Unlicense doesn't mention patents at all, the Blue Oak Model License and Apache 2.0 don't attempt to place the work into the public domain, and 0BSD and MIT-0 neither address patents nor attempt to place the work into the public domain. None of these licenses aggressively waive all of the author's rights to their work; I wonder why there isn't a strong public-domain no-patents-or-anything-else license ?
- ghaff 6y agoIANAL but I suspect the answer is that it's not clear if you can or how you can "aggressively waive all of the author's rights to their work" at least in some jurisdictions.
- rectang 6y agoWhat we need is effectively CC0 minus the patent exclusion, plus the patent grant of the Apache License 2.0. But it really ought to be drafted by professionals, and vetted by the wider community. None of this amateurish "crayon license" foolishness. Creative Commons probably isn't interested. Their patent language was surely deliberate.
- CameronNemo 6y agoWhat is the advantage of mentioning patents? I would rather not speak on that so 0BSD and Unlicense are nice.
- ghaff 6y agoThe theory is presumably that better to explicitly state that you won't assert patent rights against users of the software rather on rely on implicit patent grants. Plenty of IP lawyers are fine with the implicit patent grant in something like the MIT license but there's also a school of thought that, if you intend to grant a right, why not say you are so there's no question for lawyers to debate over.