In Germany it’s not possible to transfer or give up the “Urheberrecht” (author’s rights) so it’s not illegal, but rather impossible to release things to the public domain. The initial author will always retain their “Urheberrecht”.

Though this is separate from “Nutzungsrecht” (rights of use) and many other rights, which can still allow others to use the released work. How exactly needs to be defined however and therefore licenses are required.

PD is possible everywhere, but you need to die first (and then wait 50+ years) You cannot voluntarily reject your rights and place your work in PD though.

The same problem was in EEPs where “public domain” is not legal in some jurisdictions (it was confirmed by lawyers of Ericsson on @kennethL’s request).

No, it is not illegal to put something under public domain, it is impossible to do so (these are two different things). You may not be keen to sue anyone on “stealing” your work, but in case of author demise or putting someone under care (I do not know if there is English term for ubezwłasnowolnienie) then the designed handler of the rights is fully capable of suing anyone that uses that piece of work.

So in other words saying that “this work is in public domain” is void in many jurisdictions and mean nothing, so in the end that work is still proprietary (in law terms).

IANAL, but this is what I understand from my discussions with my lawyer friends (I am in weird position where half of my friends are programmers and other half is lawyers).

Basically yes, or rather you have no idea what can happen legally. The reason why it’s such a big thing is that you have chains of liability for infringements of intellectual property in software contracts.

When an organisation utilises a piece of software it’s keen on first having ensured that it can pass on any liability for infringements to the vendor. The vendor in turn has its vendors and will want to pass on any liability if possible.

When either large organisations ponder acquiring a license for a piece of software or say a startup is about to get bought up or invested in, teams of suits will review the licenses of the software that is used. I’ve seen teams disappointed for not being able to use a perfectly good piece of software. That’s a bit of a waste. Many times it’s just marked as a risk and not taken care of.

So public domain is when something isn’t protected at all. It can be out of scope of intellectual property laws in the first place or the protection period has lapsed. Also, different countries may have different exemptions from protection (public documents, libraries’ use etc.). But is it possible to commit something to public domain by your own actions and achieve the same effect? I’d say in most of Europe you cannot. In the Nordics you need to enter a specific contract, such as a FOSS license. Anything less will just be “no license, not allowed”. Look at the construct in the CC0 – if the jurisdiction does not recognise committing to public domain, then you grant a very wise license instead to try to achieve the same goal.

So the CC0 is “better” in that it’s more clear – but it’s not written with copyright of software in mind. In most jurisdictions, software is a particular subject matter with particular scope of protection and exemptions, still within the framework of copyright. There are plenty of FOSS licenses with better name recognition that will do the same.

Generally:

1. a permissive open source license for the code and
2. a Creative Commons license (not restrictive) for the documentation and other material

will get you very far.

Of course, there are advanced discussions to be had regarding reciprocity (copyleft) and if FOSS is tolerable due to competition with e.g. Amazon that may offer your software as a service.

Thank you Dimitri! I love to support the community and give back. I’ve had so much joy in weekend projects in Elixir and I’ve always found terrific support here. It is my experience that this forum is a very hospitable place and I’m a bit ashamed of momentarily being overly afraid of having awoken the flame war bear.

Glad to hear, health is everything. Will send you a message

Kind regards,
C / “Mr Defensive”

The SQLite docs mention some possible headaches around the concept of “public domain” under the Warranty of Title section.

Flipping the question on its head, what’s an example of a situation where an MIT license would give a result you don’t want? That might help folks figure out what license would fit better.

Assuming you really want to publish under public domain, then CC0 would be the way to go. It purposefully tries to relinquish copyright if allowed (part 2), or offer a license that’s as free as possible (part 3) as an alternative. Unlicense is the same but less wordy. WTFPL is the same but humorous.

Just writing “Published under public domain” won’t be enough, as has been noted by SQLite, since it’s just not possible to do that in some countries.

IANAL, but I don’t think a CLA is needed if you’re not intending to relicense the code later under a different license (or want to keep the door open for doing that).