3 ms·

Haha, this is why I am using Unlicense license for almost everything. Licenses create unnecessary fuzz. As a technician I have no interest in them

tadfisher 4y ago
It's my cursory understanding that the Unlicense is equivalent to "© iamcorpix, All rights reserved" in jurisdictions that don't have a legal mechanism to completely disclaim copyright (e.g. the United States). Essentially, you can dedicate your copyright interest to the public domain, but you will always retain the ability to revoke that dedication as the original author of the work. It's much easier to just use MIT, which is functionally the same, but in legal terms you are granting a perpetual license that can't be revoked.
- naniwaduni 4y ago
  While there is legitimate variation in how jurisdictions will treat a public domain dedication (e.g. wrt rights which can be relinquished vs can't be relinquished vs must be explicitly forgone, which a public domain dedication doesn't necessarily achieve), realistically (a) you're pretty unlikely to get sued by someone who tried to dedicate their thing to the public domain (b) the intersection of "jurisdictions that will read a foreign litigant's public domain dedication as All rights reserved" and "jurisdictions whose opinions anyone particularly cares about" is approximately empty.
- MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
  While the OSI doesn't particularly like the Unlicense, they say > There was some discussion about the legal effectiveness of the document, in particular how it would operate in a jurisdiction where one cannot dedicate a work to the public domain. The lawyers who opined on the issue, both US and non-US, agreed that the document would most likely be interpreted as a license and that the license met the OSD. And for that reason, the Unlicense is an approved open source license. https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2020-June/004890.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists....
- iamcorpix 4y ago
  No, it is equivalent to "you can do anything with this, I don't care". So, it is public domain.

tadfisher 4y ago

It's my cursory understanding that the Unlicense is equivalent to "© iamcorpix, All rights reserved" in jurisdictions that don't have a legal mechanism to completely disclaim copyright (e.g. the United States). Essentially, you can dedicate your copyright interest to the public domain, but you will always retain the ability to revoke that dedication as the original author of the work. It's much easier to just use MIT, which is functionally the same, but in legal terms you are granting a perpetual license that can't be revoked.

naniwaduni 4y ago
While there is legitimate variation in how jurisdictions will treat a public domain dedication (e.g. wrt rights which can be relinquished vs can't be relinquished vs must be explicitly forgone, which a public domain dedication doesn't necessarily achieve), realistically (a) you're pretty unlikely to get sued by someone who tried to dedicate their thing to the public domain (b) the intersection of "jurisdictions that will read a foreign litigant's public domain dedication as All rights reserved" and "jurisdictions whose opinions anyone particularly cares about" is approximately empty.
MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
While the OSI doesn't particularly like the Unlicense, they say > There was some discussion about the legal effectiveness of the document, in particular how it would operate in a jurisdiction where one cannot dedicate a work to the public domain. The lawyers who opined on the issue, both US and non-US, agreed that the document would most likely be interpreted as a license and that the license met the OSD. And for that reason, the Unlicense is an approved open source license. https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2020-June/004890.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists....
iamcorpix 4y ago
No, it is equivalent to "you can do anything with this, I don't care". So, it is public domain.