Blue Oak Council rates Unlicense as a permissive license, but in its bronze tier: https://blueoakcouncil.org/list#Unlicense
It's an interesting phenomenon, socially. But legal-technically, it's far off the state of the art.
The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
121–130 of 185 posts
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#122Personally, I think the fact that we even have to talk about the suitability of Unlicense vs CC0 is evidence of how terribly stupid copyright law is. I wrote code, it isn't fancy or interesting and I make no money from it nor do I intend to, and I just want to let everyone know that I truly do not care at all what they do with it. Why is it so hard to let people know that they can use information in the natural way t…
I don't think this is a problem outside of corporate scenarios. If you just explain your position in plain human language, like you just did, then reasonable humans without a legal department will be able to comprehend it and act accordingly.
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#123I've been frustrated that there exists no lawyer-verified, internationally-viable way to permanently waive all claims and rights to things (software or otherwise) I publish, and to assert that those rights will not be later reclaimed (whether by me, parties representing me, or heirs or successors who might claim to have inherited my rights).
CC0's biggest issues for me are that, one, it explicitly does not waive rights to patentable ideas contained in the work:
> No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.
...and two, that it only specifically says that I will not revoke the license or undertake "any other legal or equitable action to disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the Work by the public". I don't just want to enable "quiet enjoyment", I want to permit every legally permissible use of my work (anything I could grant a license for). "Vocal profiteering" is arguably not "quiet enjoyment", but I want to ensure that neither me, my representatives, nor my heirs or successors, could make that argument to revoke the license I grant.
The Blue Oak license nicely disburses patent rights:
> Each contributor licenses you to do everything with this software that would otherwise infringe any patent claims they can license or become able to license.
...but expressly retains copyright (preventing someone else from redistributing the work under different terms), and requires that the work always be distributed with a notice that the work is licensed https://blueoakcouncil.org/license/1.0.0
I wish to completely unburden anyone who finds my work desirable from the burden of attribution. This is why Public Domain is the end goal, and why licenses that do not expressly attempt to un-copyright my work are insufficient. MIT0 merely grants permission "to deal in the Software [to say nothing about non-software work, or aspects of a work] without restriction", and 0BSD is even weaker, granting only "permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee" [nevermind any activities that aren't expressly listed in the license, but which might be restricted by a country's system of copy-, artists', or moral rights, or any other restrictions I may impose besides fees].
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public domain. Concise. Effective. Choose any two. The issue is that donating to the “public domain” isn’t a thing in many jurisdictions, so if you want a license that is effective everywhere then it needs to be wordy. If you are happy to retain copyright and other rights and simply want to grant other people a license to use you work then just use MIT.
I hear this a lot, but what jurisdictions and why? On the face of it, it seems batshit insane to me that there would be a place where I can’t waive my property rights on something.
Germany, for one: (PDF warning) https://rd-alliance.org/sites/default/files/cc0-analysis-kre...
> With regard to the transferability and the waiving of the copyright the German copyright law can be considered as one of the strictest systems in the world. Main reason is the strict monistic approach the German copyright law bases on. Key feature of this approach is the concept that, in principle, the copyright/author’s right itself can neither be transferred to another person nor waived by the author herself. The German author’s right consists of two parts, the moral rights and the exploitation rights. The moral rights are – as a rule – personal rights that are bound to the person of the creator (or, after her death, her legal heirs), i.e. they can neither be transferred nor waived. Since moral and exploitation rights are considered as inseparable parts of the author’s right as a whole (monistic approach) the exploitation rights cannot – in principle – transferred or waived by contract as well. However it is naturally possible to license the use of the work i.e. to transfer rights to use a protected work even on a large scale. Such licenses can practically lead (nearly) to the same result as an assignment or waiver of rights.
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public domain. Concise. Effective. Choose any two. The issue is that donating to the “public domain” isn’t a thing in many jurisdictions, so if you want a license that is effective everywhere then it needs to be wordy. If you are happy to retain copyright and other rights and simply want to grant other people a license to use you work then just use MIT.
I hear this a lot, but what jurisdictions and why? On the face of it, it seems batshit insane to me that there would be a place where I can’t waive my property rights on something.
Germany would be one example. Public Domain exists, but only as the state something enters after copyright expired naturally 70 years after the death of the author. You can't release things into public domain.
As for why: nobody considered that case when writing our copyright laws, and nobody bothered to change it. Copyright as designed can't be transferred (except through inheritance), to avoid exploitation of the original creator. As a consequence you can't really get rid of it, you can only grant licenses.
It's hardly the only right you can't get rid of, and CC0 tries to deal with some of them, like the right to one's one image which in the shortest possible form says that you can't create or publish a picture of a person without their consent (but as you can imagine is way more complicated than that). You could say that the German legal framework isn't about maximizing freedom, it's about maximizing happiness, and sometimes being able to give away a right or freedom will on balance cause more harm than good.
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a way we do, called Gemeinfrei. But the only way to transfer something to it, is dying and waiting 70 years.
What is the status of work that no one knows where it came from? A recipe for a cake is written on a paper and left on a bulletin board in town. It has no name and no one witnessed it being posted. Everyone sees it and now knows how to make this cake. The author may or may not be dead for 70 years. Is it illegal to even document this cake recipe? You couldn't legally recount it in a news article or history text book…
That's called an orphan work. You can apply §61 UrhG, which in this case would mean donating it to an archive, museum, library or university, who can then search for the author and after turning up empty are allowed to publish it. From there you can probably quote it, citing them as your source.
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the License section I write this text - "Public domain, see the LICENCE file.", and in the text of the license itself the word "unlicense" is also nowhere used.
Then I would not be able to use your code no matter my intentions no matter how well meaning you are. In my country you cannot dedicate something to the public domain (it happens automatically 70 years after your death). The Unlicense would most likely allow you or your heirs to come after me and sue me for copyright infringement for many decades. If you (pretty much) only want US citizens (or naive people) to use yo…
"You can't dedicate something to the public domain in my country" - that's the whole point of Unlicense. Yes, I can do it, in my country, in your country, in any other country, and even on Mars. And I don't need an approval of any authority to be able to do it. The problem is not that I can't do it, the problem is that countries refuse to acknowledge that fact.
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#128I've been frustrated that there exists no lawyer-verified, internationally-viable way to permanently waive all claims and rights to things (software or otherwise) I publish, and to assert that those rights will not be later reclaimed (whether by me, parties representing me, or heirs or successors who might claim to have inherited my rights). CC0's biggest issues for me are that, one, it explicitly does not waive righ…
> way to permanently waive all claims and rights to things (software or otherwise) I publish, and to assert that those rights will not be later reclaimed
Probably because to do the second, you can't do the first - you have to retain enough rights to keep someone else from copying and relicensing it. And if you do the first, you can't do the second.
The best way probably involves a third party, like a foundation or trustee, taking on the ownership under a contract that they will never switch ownership until it's naturally released by time. Of course, that costs money to maintain, otherwise it becomes an asset that gets sold off.
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#129Why do people want public domain software licenses? Just use a proper licence and die at some point. End result is the same without the uncertainty.
Because software licenses are a mess Linux and Samba implement the same protocol UT can't share code as one is under GPLv3 and one is under GPLv2. In the past GPLv2 was the universal receptor license for open source licenses (is that license GPLv2 compatible and my code is then I can release the result as GPLv2). GPLv3 changed that. Now there is only the universal donor. There is turns The public domain. However that…
It's not "boomer FUD". Germany and Japan currently won't listen to you if you say your work is public domain. They only respect copyright expiration and licensing agreements. So if you say your code is PD, and someone in those countries use it, you can still sue them for copyright infringement and possibly win. If you retain copyright and use literally any license then the people using your code have a much stronger defense against you.
You might not care about Germany or Japan, but there's plenty of FOSS developers there that need to have working licenses. Is it possible that those jurisdictions might change their mind? Yes, but it's also unlikely. Copyright harmonization has been entirely focused on the needs of the proprietary world[0]. Thus, if your goal is to effectively disclaim copyright, you need to choose legal actions that fit within the mold that the proprietary world has forced upon us. If the proprietary world does not care about artists being allowed to dedicate works to the public domain, then you won't be able to do so internationally.
[0] e.g.
- Very long copyright terms - Unwaivable moral rights for (copyright-wielding) artists - Strong domestic enforcement for international copyright holders - Upper bounds on exceptions to copyright - Forcing everyone to adopt DMCA 1201 - Making copyright exempt from normal democratic process
Re: The Unlicense is an inferior license wrapped in an atrocious name
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with CC0 is it's very wordy and very legaleeze, which means I don't want to bother trying to understand it, and potential users won't either. A one-line sentence should be more than enough to clarify my intent.
Public domain. Concise. Effective. Choose any two. The issue is that donating to the “public domain” isn’t a thing in many jurisdictions, so if you want a license that is effective everywhere then it needs to be wordy. If you are happy to retain copyright and other rights and simply want to grant other people a license to use you work then just use MIT.
> Public domain. Concise. Effective. Choose any two.
A workaround to the "concise" problem would be a commonly understood convention for indicating that a file is CC0 with a single line comment. The officially recommended boilerplate for CC0 is painfully cumbersome:
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...
Something like this:
// Available under http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0