9 ms·
The unlicense is considered problematic in various jurisdictions, among them Germany - under German law, you cannot relinquish certain rights that are associate
by Xylakant 2y ago
The unlicense is considered problematic in various jurisdictions, among them Germany - under German law, you cannot relinquish certain rights that are associated with the author at all. Dedicating something to the public domain is not a valid concept here. This means the whole license could be declared invalid in court. Other jurisdictions may be similarly problematic- thus the fallback to MIT
There’s a stackoverflow post that discusses some of the issues https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-is-wrong-with-the-unlicense#147120 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1471...
- chrismorgan 2y agoMy own summary and collection of information about the problems with the Unlicense: https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ (I collected that mostly because I didn’t find all the relevant information in one place, or explanation of the reasonable alternatives.)
- Xylakant 2y agoThat looks like a pretty comprehensive overview. I'll bookmark this for further reference :)
- treeshateorcs 2y agoi love your site!!
- rsynnott 2y agoNever understood why anyone uses this one; it's just too potentially messy, and a permissive license like 0BSD provides the intended effect without the risk.
- burntsushi 2y agoI wrote down why I do it years ago: https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_licensing-and-copyleft.md https://github.com/BurntSushi/notes/blob/master/2020-10-29_l... You may not agree with me, which is fine, but you should now understand.
- Xylakant 2y agoPart of the indended effect is making a policical/societal point about the copyright system, something the 0BSD license does not do. I personally believe that legal documents are a bad place to make these points, but obviously people differ.