Towards an OSI-approved "waive all rights" software license

[Lawrence Rosen]

Be very careful to include attribution and other conditions. It is only because a FOSS license imposes conditions that it may be enforceable by the parties. See /Jacobsen v. Katzer/. 

Whatever written works it includes, the public domain isn't a license and doesn't require a license; it has no conditions. It is truly free. 

/Larry



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dag-Erling Smørgrav [mailto:des at des.no]
> Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 12:38 PM
> To: Karl Fogel
> Cc: dc at moonflare.com; license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: Towards an OSI-approved "waive all rights" software
> license
> 
> Karl Fogel <kfogel at red-bean.com> writes:
> > I think the simplest possible "waive all rights" license already
> exists,
> > in the the New (Simplified 2-Clause) BSD License [1]:
> >
> >   http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license
> >
> > It doesn't actually require attribution; it does require that the
> > license text itself be reproduced with the sources, as you point out.
> 
> Not just the license text, and not just the source:
> 
>   Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
> notice,
>   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
> 
>   Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
>   documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
> 
> The ISC license is equivalent, but significantly shorter.
> 
> > For "waive all rights", CC0 is the best thing I can think of.
> 
> Or the zlib / libpng license, which, unlike CC0, is actually a software
> license.
> 
> DES
> --
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no