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> Even giving your code to the public domain is better than an MIT or BSD license Maybe in the US, but much of the world doesn't recognise waving away all auth
by debugnik 3y ago
> Even giving your code to the public domain is better than an MIT or BSD license
Maybe in the US, but much of the world doesn't recognise waving away all author rights voluntarily. The closest thing to worldwide public domain is probably the Creative Commons Zero licence.
- mcpackieh 3y agoPretty much only corporations get themselves in a twist over that technicality, so what's the problem? Community FOSS projects don't worry about buying a license to SQLite, but the corporations with their lawyers do. This makes public domain even better. I'm serious, how many German individuals do you think would refuse to install sqlite on their personal computer because they lack a technically valid license for it? A few such weirdos doubtlessly exist but you can safely ignore them.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoEither you care about licenses, in which case you care about that technicality, or you don't care about licenses, in which case Microsoft using the correct license for their own code and adhering to that license is not something you care about either.
- debugnik 3y agoThe risk is not "I don't have a license because public domain doesn't exist", the risk is "the rights I have are revokable on a whim because they haven't properly waived their right to do so". SQLite has a good track record but I can imagine another strongly religious developer taking advantage of authorship rights to damage some small EU-based social organization they strongly disagreed with; just an example. As for the weirdos, as I said SQLite has a good track record, but I'd think twice over a much smaller dependency. However, I've seen enough disregard for FOSS licenses in business to know the weirdos are few. I guess you either care about license minutae or you don't.