I have some pieces of software which I always intended to release to the public domain. I understand that it not possible in all jurisdictions, so in the past I would allow CC0 in this case and used the following license statement:
# Originally written by Jason Tibbitts j@tib.bs in 2016. # Donated to the public domain. If you require a statement of license, please # consider this work to be licensed as "CC0 Universal", any version you choose.
Now, if course Fedora decided a couple of years ago that we can't use CC0 for code. Is there a Fedora-approved method for disclaiming copyright? I would like to do this the right way (in part because this software is used by Fedora and I would like to package it for Fedora), but it seems contradictory to use something like MIT-0 because the first line is literally "Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>". Does 0BSD work? That's at https://opensource.org/license/0bsd
HI Jason,
I would ask first, is your intention to "dedicate" your s/w into the public domain for a specific reason, or are you mainly trying to make it clear that the s/w is re-usable without any conditions?
Reason asking, given the challenges of public domain in terms of the legal definition v. how people try to "dedicate" something into the public domain, a license with not conditions upon re-use may be easier.
Given that MIT-0 and 0BSD are both allowed generally, I think either would be a good option.
Obviously, I'd also encourage you to use the SPDX identifier in the standard way in each source file: e.g., // SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT-0
Note that the notice you cite below is the kind of thing that creates churn downstream in determining what "license" the code is under, as it requires someone to read that and then make a determination, in contrast to a standard way to identify the applicable license definitely and in a machine-readable way :)
Thanks, Jilayne
On 2/17/25 10:49 AM, Jason L Tibbitts III via legal wrote:
I have some pieces of software which I always intended to release to the public domain. I understand that it not possible in all jurisdictions, so in the past I would allow CC0 in this case and used the following license statement:
# Originally written by Jason Tibbittsj@tib.bs in 2016. # Donated to the public domain. If you require a statement of license, please # consider this work to be licensed as "CC0 Universal", any version you choose.
Now, if course Fedora decided a couple of years ago that we can't use CC0 for code. Is there a Fedora-approved method for disclaiming copyright? I would like to do this the right way (in part because this software is used by Fedora and I would like to package it for Fedora), but it seems contradictory to use something like MIT-0 because the first line is literally "Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>". Does 0BSD work? That's athttps://opensource.org/license/0bsd
On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 12:50 PM Jason L Tibbitts III via legal legal@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
I have some pieces of software which I always intended to release to the public domain. I understand that it not possible in all jurisdictions, so in the past I would allow CC0 in this case and used the following license statement:
# Originally written by Jason Tibbitts j@tib.bs in 2016. # Donated to the public domain. If you require a statement of license, please # consider this work to be licensed as "CC0 Universal", any version you choose.
Now, if course Fedora decided a couple of years ago that we can't use CC0 for code. Is there a Fedora-approved method for disclaiming copyright? I would like to do this the right way (in part because this software is used by Fedora and I would like to package it for Fedora), but it seems contradictory to use something like MIT-0 because the first line is literally "Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>". Does 0BSD work? That's at https://opensource.org/license/0bsd
There are lots of similar Fedora-allowed alternatives to CC0 though I wouldn't characterize any as being specifically means of "disclaiming copyright". You aren't required to use a copyright notice with MIT-0, or (if you think you need the copyright line for some reason, it's certainly not required from a Fedora allowance or SPDX representation perspective) you can put whatever you want in the copyright notice like "Copyright I don't claim any copyright" or what have you. The Unlicense is a fairly popular non-license license that contains "release into the public domain" rhetoric if that's what you're looking for. We wouldn't recommend this but you can see that there are zillions of legacy public domain dedication formulations that have been allowed in Fedora.
Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com writes:
You aren't required to use a copyright notice with MIT-0, or (if you think you need the copyright line for some reason, it's certainly not required from a Fedora allowance or SPDX representation perspective) you can put whatever you want in the copyright notice like "Copyright I don't claim any copyright" or what have you.
That is not at all clear, so thank you for saying that.
The Unlicense is a fairly popular non-license license that contains "release into the public domain" rhetoric if that's what you're looking for. We wouldn't recommend this but you can see that there are zillions of legacy public domain dedication formulations that have been allowed in Fedora.
The Unlicense is very interesting; thanks for the reference. I think it basically says what I was trying to.
Just to be clear, I'm reading the second sentence as a recommendation against just lifting one of the many public domain dedications that are allowed or coming up with my own, as opposed to being a recommendation against the Unlicense.
Am 17.02.25 um 21:53 schrieb Jason L Tibbitts III via legal:
Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com writes:
You aren't required to use a copyright notice with MIT-0, or (if you think you need the copyright line for some reason, it's certainly not required from a Fedora allowance or SPDX representation perspective) you can put whatever you want in the copyright notice like "Copyright I don't claim any copyright" or what have you.
That is not at all clear, so thank you for saying that.
The Unlicense is a fairly popular non-license license that contains "release into the public domain" rhetoric if that's what you're looking for. We wouldn't recommend this but you can see that there are zillions of legacy public domain dedication formulations that have been allowed in Fedora.
The Unlicense is very interesting; thanks for the reference. I think it basically says what I was trying to.
Just to be clear, I'm reading the second sentence as a recommendation against just lifting one of the many public domain dedications that are allowed or coming up with my own, as opposed to being a recommendation against the Unlicense.
The bcrypt-Solar-Designer license [1] might be the closest thing expressing, what you are wanting to do; it is also listed as an allowed license for Fedora [2].
[1] https://spdx.org/licenses/bcrypt-Solar-Designer.html [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/allowed-licenses/
On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 4:38 PM Jason L Tibbitts III j@tib.bs wrote:
Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com writes:
You aren't required to use a copyright notice with MIT-0, or (if you think you need the copyright line for some reason, it's certainly not required from a Fedora allowance or SPDX representation perspective) you can put whatever you want in the copyright notice like "Copyright I don't claim any copyright" or what have you.
That is not at all clear, so thank you for saying that.
The Unlicense is a fairly popular non-license license that contains "release into the public domain" rhetoric if that's what you're looking for. We wouldn't recommend this but you can see that there are zillions of legacy public domain dedication formulations that have been allowed in Fedora.
The Unlicense is very interesting; thanks for the reference. I think it basically says what I was trying to.
Just to be clear, I'm reading the second sentence as a recommendation against just lifting one of the many public domain dedications that are allowed or coming up with my own, as opposed to being a recommendation against the Unlicense.
I meant it to refer to lifting one of the many bespoke public domain dedications, but in a sense the Unlicense isn't different from Fedora's perspective. Fedora doesn't (currently) specifically recommend the Unlicense for anything; it is, however, an allowed license. The difference between the Unlicense and using a legacy bespoke PDD is that the latter seems significantly less justifiable just because we generally value de facto standardization of FOSS licenses and arguably picking the Unlicense supports that (since it's already a pretty widely used license) while using some random PDD from 1993 arguably does not support that.
AFAIK Fedora actually does not currently have any specific license recommendations for anything other than (if this hasn't changed) the use of CC-BY-SA-4.0 for Fedora documentation. In the past I believe Fedora had some informal recommendations around use of the GPL (GPLv2?), LGPL (2.1?) and the MIT license for certain specific categories of things, and I think there were some informal recommendations to use CC0 in some situations and (though I imagine this had no practical significance) SIL OFL 1.1 for fonts.
Richard
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On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Richard Fontana via legal wrote:
AFAIK Fedora actually does not currently have any specific license recommendations for anything other than (if this hasn't changed) the use of CC-BY-SA-4.0 for Fedora documentation. In the past I believe Fedora had some informal recommendations around use of the GPL (GPLv2?), LGPL (2.1?) and the MIT license for certain specific categories of things, and I think there were some informal recommendations to use CC0 in some situations and (though I imagine this had no practical significance) SIL OFL 1.1 for fonts.
Having an actual permissive license makes it clear to a potential user that there is no copyright violation.
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Björn 'besser82' Esser -
Jason L Tibbitts III -
Jilayne Lovejoy -
Richard Fontana -
Stuart D Gathman