
Why your next project should be public domain - gw
https://nightweb.net/blog/public-domain.html
======
Flimm
It's not legally possible to dedicate your project to the public domain in
many jurisdictions. That's why CC0 exists:
[http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0](http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0)

~~~
steveklabnik
Note that there's some argument about the CC0's appropriateness for code;
apparently the OSI's lawyers said it wasn't good, but now say it's okay, and
the FSF's lawyers say it's not cool.

I'd give you some links but I'm on my phone, and IANAL.

~~~
justincormack
This FSF link says it is fine [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#CC0](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0)

The OSI links are here [http://opensource.org/faq#cc-
zero](http://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero) the issue is about the patent clause
in the fallback.

~~~
cygx
See also
[https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27081](https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27081)

------
zeckalpha
> I do not regard the LICENSE.txt in your Github project as a serious
> abrogation of ethics. It inspires more of a shallow sigh ...

Note: Not having a LICENSE.txt does not make Github projects public domain.
They are simply unlicensed. There are many projects which are unlicensed on
Github. File an issue for each one you find!

~~~
rmc
Isn't the default "all rights reserved"?

 _(Note: GitHub ToS says if you put copyright code on it, then you are by
default allowing others to fork & download it, so the default licence is
looser than the legal default)_

~~~
tjaerv
Nice catch about GitHub's Terms of Service.

From [https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-
service](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service):

    
    
      > ...by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow
      > others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be
      > viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your
      > repositories.

------
steveklabnik
Public domain as a concept does not exist in all jurisdictions, so placing
something into the public domain doesn't actually do what you intend it to do.

~~~
gw
What is it that you think I intend to do? I am fully aware that public domain
doesn't exist in all jurisdictions; by the looks of it, it may not exist for
long in my _own_ legal jurisdiction! Whether it is legally recognized or not
is irrelevant to me.

~~~
steveklabnik
I meant 'you' in a slightly broader sense; people who want to put things in
the public domain intend their use to be free for anyone to use for any
purpose.

You hint at this with suggesting that you're doing MIT but without the last
bit of covering your ass. But depending on where in the world you are, you're
being significantly _more_ restricted than the MIT, all because of (your
words) some 'internet bravado.'

Yes, licenses suck. I'm -1 on most forms of property, and "intellectual
property" most of all. But ignoring reality harms more than it helps. Just
MIT/BSD and be done with it, or, if you want to be silly, WTFPL.

~~~
gw
Let's not equivocate on the term "restricted". My software is more restricted
_by your government_ if it doesn't recognize the public domain, but that is
entirely different from (for example) saying that the GPL is more restricted
than the MIT license.

I understand this distinction won't matter to someone in such a country who
wants to use my code while remaining legally compliant. My own feeling is that
in such a country, I would carry on writing software and stop worrying about
legal compliance.

~~~
steveklabnik
Yeah egoism/illegalism is fun and all, but until you can get a significant
mass to participate, you're actively harming those who may be sympathetic, yet
don't want to violate their own country's laws. This harms the organizing
you'd need to do in order to bring about meaningful change.

I am all about direct action, but you have to pick your battles. This one
seems to me to be all downside with very, very little upside. Especially, as
my sibling states, when you just say 'public domain' without mentioning your
politics.

~~~
arto
I must wonder just how large and self-evident must the mass or movement be
before you'd deem it worth joining?

Have a little peek at how much public domain software is already being
produced daily on GitHub:

[https://github.com/search?q=%22public+domain%22&type=Code&s=...](https://github.com/search?q=%22public+domain%22&type=Code&s=indexed)

Consider also that the majority of repositories on GitHub contain no license
declaration at all, which should be a clear enough indicator of where these
trends are going:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/18/github_licensing_stu...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/18/github_licensing_study/)

Further, as explained in another comment, when even the most prominent and
harshest former critics of public domain software (cf. Larry Rosen) have
recently changed their mind and, if not exactly pushing the public domain as
yet, at least see no problem with it, how much more could you want?

~~~
steveklabnik
First of all, obviously, this is personal choice.

Secondly, a mass of people _creating_ public domain software isn't the issue:
the mass would be of people _breaking the laws of the jurisdiction in which
they live by using public domain software as public domain even though it's
not recognized_.

Personally, I currently BSD/MIT all of my code, but am considering AGPLing it
all from now on. I don't think that the negligible difference between BSD/MIT
and public domain is worth _any_ headache at all; they're effectively the same
from my viewpoint.

------
ds9
The author compares PD with MIT/BSD type licences, but does not explain why
he/she wants to give everyone the relatively full set of rights that these
alternatives represent.

My code, outside the day job, is GPL. Why should I let others commercialize it
without giving anything back? But I want to allow noncommercial use for
everyone, and commercial use for those who will contribute their changes.

I'm not saying everyone should have these preferences - in fact I admire the
generosity of anyone who donates valuable IP to the public domain. It's just
that the title is "Why your next project should be public domain", yet the
author does not explain the motive for this type of licence over others.

~~~
rmc
_My code, outside the day job, is GPL. Why should I let others commercialize
it without giving anything back? But I want to allow noncommercial use for
everyone, and commercial use for those who will contribute their changes._

The restrictions for GPL code is nothing to do with whether it's used
commerical or noncommerically, the same restrictions apply.

Someone can use your GPLed code commerically without paying you or asking your
permission, and someone can use your GPL code noncommerically as well. In both
cases they have to abide by the GPL conditions.

~~~
ds9
Correct, I was just using "commercial" as a shorthand for "closed source". It
is only commercial users that would use it with concealed changes if it were
PD or BSD-type licence. This would enable privatizing public value.

The point is that my motive is giving value to the public, in a way that
prevents it "leaking" into private profits without compensation. The effect of
the article-author's licensing is giving some of the value to the public and
some to private profit-oriented exploiters, while the motive for preferring
the latter over the former is not stated.

~~~
tjaerv
Slapping a copyleft license on your project doesn't mean that people magically
won't use it where that use would be "infringing". It only means that you can
sue, if you should learn of it.

See this recent talk by Rob Landley, of BusyBox fame, on how casual and
widespread GPL infringement is in large corporations, and why he no longer
advocates the use of the GPL:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0)

Landley's the guy who started the infamous BusyBox GPL lawsuits that then
spiraled totally out of his control, so he has more skin in the game than
most.

~~~
steveklabnik
This is true in theory, but in my experience, every big company asks for all
the licenses of the software they use, and if it's GPL, that's a non-starter.
Maybe I've only worked for the good ones.

Obviously there will be some that violate the license, as there is with any
license. But the point is that you do have _some_ sort of legal recourse if
they do, and also, you make your intent clear as an author: this is supposed
to be Free forever.

If your anti-argument is "people will just ignore the license," then using a
permissive license isn't an argument either. After all, people will just
ignore it.

~~~
tjaerv
It may be a cultural difference. As I recall, Landley's examples are from the
East (Sony, for example). Intellectual property as a sacred institution is
somewhat less established there than in the West.

The point is that users who would give credit will do so anyway (without
needing a gun held to their heads), and those who won't, won't. A license only
changes things by giving the recourse to sue in the latter case. If you aren't
going to sue anyway (as Landley isn't, anymore), then there's not much point
to using a relatively restrictive license.

I recommend watching the Landley talk. He used to be among the most rabid
copyleft advocates, before the BusyBox fiasco and GPLv3.

------
4ad
D. J. Bernstein (qmail, djbdns, the man responsible for making encryption
legal in the United States) places everything into the public domain and has
written more about it:
[http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html](http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html)

~~~
bbanyc
For many years Bernstein explicitly refused to place any sort of license
conditions on most of his software on the grounds that he didn't want modified
versions floating around and copyright law allowed most of the things he
wanted to allow people to do with his programs. (It's unclear whether or not
he was right on the latter point. You can dig up Bernstein's flamewars with
Theo de Raadt and Rick Moen on the topic and decide for yourself.)

I don't think he gave a reason why he switched to public domain a few years
back, but it was clear by that point that he wasn't doing any more work on
qmail or djbdns and the non-licensing was holding back further development and
adoption by others.

~~~
tjaerv
On that note, Bernstein on Moen:
[http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html](http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html)

------
H3g3m0n
Use the right license for the job.

If I was making a stand alone program, then it would probably be GPL or AGPL
(for anything that could provide a service over the web).

However I would probably avoid it if I could see the potential for it to be
made into a library and many stand alone programs can benefit from that (Look
at Clang vs GCC). Ideally you make the core meat of your program as a library
from the beginning but and just provide a thin frontend but thats not always
how projects go. For example if you make a GUI app but now have a save file
format that you could allow others to interoperate with.

For a library I look at either MIT style, or CC0. MIT does seem like a silly
requirement. Yeh some outsourcing company somewhere can legally dump your code
into their project and charge for it, (and with CC0 not tell anyone it was
your code but) that doesn't really hurt you. If it's a closed project no one
will be looking at the code anyway. And you can always point to the code and
prove it's yours (well someone could claim you stole their code and re-
licensed it but that can happen with any license).

I tend to avoid the LGPL, the restrictions seem like a massive pita to me. You
now have to deal with dynamic libraries rather than static due to stupid legal
issues with what should be a technical decision.

I also don't like that GPL'd stuff can take from MIT/CC0 and the reverse isn't
true (without converting their codebase). Seems kind of unfair in the
opensource environment.

------
jeena
I almost don't mind releasing my code public domain (and in fact I often do
that) but lately I was thinking about if there is a license I could use which
forbids the usage of my code for weapons, and now with all the NSA stuff
perhaps even spying or more general "harming humanity" or something?

~~~
Flimm
If you do choose to license your code under such a license, it would not be
considered open source (according to the OSI) or free software (according to
the FSF). Here's the relevant part of the Open Source Definition:

> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a
> specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program
> from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

~~~
mordae
Or from being used by your usual evil scientist.

------
nrhtr
I don't see how this is at all supposed to be convincing. Furthermore: "In my
lifetime, I expect the copyright cancer to complete its metastasis. I expect
that old-fashioned physical property rights will decline by the same
magnitude. When I reach my deathbed and find myself ready to will that old-
fashioned property to my unlikely-to-exist children, I'll be sure that
document has a nice big public domain dedication at the bottom."

If he thinks so little of software copyright because it's "old-fashioned" and
cancer-ridden, shouldn't he think the same of physical property law? Is this
the kind of person that would steal your wallet too?

~~~
gw
This piece isn't meant to be an indictment of intellectual property in general
(I'll save that for another time). I'm arguing that even those who believe in
copyright should agree that it should be optional. The fact that it is now
encompassing all creative work, regardless of the creator's desires, is what I
regard as cancerous.

~~~
warp
I agree copyright SHOULD be optional, it should NOT be automatic. However, it
currently is. Which then means if I use your public domain code in a project,
I am probably infringing your copyright because there is no such thing as
public domain in my country.

So, I cannot use your code. Many open source projects are developed by
volunteers around the world, they will also not be able to legally use your
code. If this is your intent, that is fine, it is your choice. Usually that is
not what people intend when they try to put their code in the public domain.

~~~
gw
Understood, but not being able to "legally" use my code is not the same thing
as not being able to use my code. Public domain is an important enough
principle that I don't think we should be ceding so readily, just so we can
appease the dysfunctional copyright regimes around the world.

~~~
warp
If a project contains code which infringes someone's copyright, then no
professional is going to touch that code. Companies with any kind of legal
department will not use it, linux distributions will not ship it, etc..

------
gioele
Here is quick way to release your project in the public domain.

Add this to your README and to your source files:

    
    
        This is free software released into the public domain (CC0 license).
    
        See the COPYING file or <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>
        for more details.
    

Then

    
    
        wget http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.txt > COPYING

~~~
Filligree
wget won't do what you think it does; simplest fix is to use curl.

------
arto
Zach, awesome stuff, hadn't noticed that Nightweb was in the public domain.
We've added a link to your project just now in the Unlicense.org featured
project list:

[http://unlicense.org/#unlicensed-free-
software](http://unlicense.org/#unlicensed-free-software)

