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Worldwide Public Domain Dedication (WPDD) Home
Tue, 25 Jul 2022 Linux-libre
Back in May 2022 a conversation in the FSF's IRC channel on Libera.Chat got me
thinking that that there may be a benefit to having a version of CC0 that does address GitWeb
patents.
How To
To be sure, my general position is that using a strong copyleft license like AGPL-3.0-
or-later is best, but the existence of things like The Unlicense show that there's still an Articles
interest in such things nonetheless.
A challenge with this is that, when you make something, you don't get one single RSS Feed
copyright from your home country but many different copyrights from various countries
around the world. Even if your area of the world lets you specifically waive or abandon About Me
your copyright somehow, that only takes care of one of your many copyrights. If you
then ask whether you can also do that with the remainder of your copyrights from all of Contact Me
those other countries around the world, the situation quickly becomes more
complicated. GPL enforced
What I've found is that the answer seems to be "no"; that it's not really possible to
make something be free of copyright restrictions on a worldwide basis. This leaves an If you appreciate any of the things I
open question about whether things such as The Unlicense can actually operate as am doing you can make a donation.
intended.
Creative Commons tried to address this with CC0, which was designed to work as
both a waiver of rights and also included a broad permissive license as a fallback for
the cases where that wouldn't work.
When reading about The Unlicense, a comment on gnu.org is that "If you want to
release your work to the public domain, we recommend you use CC0. CC0 also
provides a public domain dedication with a fallback license, and is more thorough and
mature than The Unlicense."
When drafting CC0 Creative Commons didn't imagine it being used for software and
had primarily targeted the scientific data community, which resulted in language being
added that patent rights were not granted.
Software patents are an ever-growing concern and so it is important to use licenses
with explicit patent grants in them (this is another reason why the AGPL-3.0-or-later I
mentioned earlier wins out.) When Creative Commons tried to get CC0 approved by
both the FSF and OSI, the concerns over explicitly not granting patent rights
eventually resulted in them withdrawing CC0 from consideration by the OSI.
It's still listed at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 but for being a
"Licenses for Works of Practical Use besides Software and Documentation" and a
comment that it's not recommmended for works of software because of the patent
concerns.
What are people to use if they want to waive their rights (at least, as far as they can)?
A choice between The Unlicense, which is less mature and may not operate as
intended on a worldwide basis, or CC0 which raises patent concerns by explicitly not
granting patent rights?
In my view they should use a strong copyleft license like AGPL-3.0-or-later but if
they're not going to then they should have access to the needed tools to put things
into the public domain (or at least coming as close to that as they can) safely,
effectively, and in a way that doesn't raise patent problems.
Creative Commons says that their licenses can be modified as long as it's renamed
and none of their trademarks are used, so I grabbed a copy of CC0 and worked with
three different patent attorneys in three different countries to incorporate language to
first waive any patents, and then license them if that is not possible for some reason.
The result is what I'm calling the Worldwide Public Domain Dedication (WPDD).
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Doesn't something overly permissive like MIT-0 or WTFPL accomplish the same
thing?
A: Not really. These are based in copyright and a person placing a work under MIT-0
or WTFPL isn't waiving any rights - The work is still copyrighted, even if the license
doesn't require preservation of notices saying so (a copyright notice isn't required to
exist for copyright itself to exist.). As such things like MIT-0 and WTFPL aren't trying to
accomplish the same policy goal, which is a total waiver of all rights, to whatever
extent that can be accomplished.
Q: Isn't it a bad idea to write your own license?
A: Indeed, which is why I didn't. The WPDD gets to take advantage of the work done
on CC0, with work from patent attorneys to form the patent pieces.
Q: Has anyone else looked at this?
A: I have submitted this to the FSF for their review. The response indicated that they'd
look into this, although no timeframe was indicated. I've also sent a message to some
well-known people in the area of licensing & policy issues in May but have not
received a response.
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