Creative Commons Unlicense and Reflections of a Public Domain Advocate
tav
First of all, congrats for coming up with the term "Unlicense". It's
genius! As someone who has been placing all of his work into the
public domain for most of the last decade, I am very thankful that
there is finally a concrete movement emerging around unlicensing.
Now, if it's okay with you, I'd like to share my journey into the
world of public domain and gradually build up to a proposal of a
"Creative Commons Unlicense".
# Reflections of a Public Domain Advocate
They got me before I'd even hit puberty. The UK Intellectual Property
Office that is. At school they handed out leaflets on Copyright,
Trademarks and Patents. I was mesmerised. Having already written 2
books on music and working on various inventions, it was truly
empowering to know that the law would protect my rights as a creator.
Being able to dictate how your work is used. Being able to make money
from the royalties generated by your work. Being able to prevent
others from abusing your work for their own profit. It made perfect
sense. It appealed to that primal desire for being in control.
I was so in love with intellectual property that even my school notes
had a copyright statement at the bottom of each page. This continued
all the way till I was 17 when I started my first company. Being a
tech startup in 1999, it wasn't too long before an inevitable
encounter with the open source movement.
As you can imagine, this was quite an experience. In fact, it's really
nice to see some familiar faces from those times on this list: Mike
Linksvayer (from Bitzi days) and Peter Saint-Andre (from the early
Jabber days).
It took a few months, but by the time 2000 began, I was convinced of
the merits of open source. The copyleft nature of the GPL assuaged my
fears of having my work exploited by others. And the success of
projects like Linux and companies like VA Linux Systems served as
tangible proof that sharing worked.
And so I became one of those annoying free software fanatics. I am
sorry to say that I wasted countless hours arguing on various internet
forums about the merits of the GPL versus other licenses. But, on the
flip side, I did acquire various proprietary initiatives and release
them as free software.
In any case, it was an uphill struggle convincing investors of the
merits of open source. It simply did not make sense to them. Many
refused to invest for that reason alone. And, all the while, I kept to
my belief that a billion-dollar industry was possible by enabling
creators to make money from sharing their works openly.
And then finally, in either late 2001 or early 2002, one of my
friends, Tavin Cole, decided to spend an entire day of his life
questioning my stance on the GPL. To this day I am extremely grateful
for his effort — he enlightened me on the merits of the public domain.
In essence, his argument revolved around the fact that copyleft is
merely an act of control and true freedom would be to enable people to
do whatever they pleased with your work. He correctly identified fear
as being a prime motivator behind my love affair with the GPL and that
life would be a lot more pleasant without being gripped by it.
With my belief in the GPL shaken, I started experimenting with the
public domain. Python hackers seemed to public domain their work with
a single line, so I adopted a similar practice and added a minimal
header of the format:
# Released into the Public Domain by tav <t...@espians.com>
This worked out quite well until 2004 when I moved to Berlin for a
year. Here I came across various German hackers who argued that it was
impossible to place works into the public domain due to the
consideration of moral rights under German law.
I experimented with various structures to try and resolve this issue,
e.g. contracts between the individuals and a company based in the UK
which would then release the intellectual property into the public
domain, etc. But nothing was really satisfactory until Creative
Commons released the CC0 license.
It cleverly combined the public domain dedication with a fallback
public license for jurisdictions where one can't fully public domain
one's work. Not understanding why CC0 can't be used for code, I
adopted the license with enthusiasm and remixed it with a grant of
patent rights to create a Public Domain License which I've been using
for all my work — writing, code, designs, etc.
# Creative Commons Unlicense
As you can imagine, it sounded silly to be public domain-ing work
under the Public Domain *License* — but it seemed good enough.
However, once I heard about "Unlicense", I was smitten by its
awesomeness and have already migrated a few projects, e.g.
* https://github.com/tav/ampify
* https://github.com/tav/git-review
Now, whilst I've adopted the term wholesale, the text on unlicense.org
doesn't address a number of concerns:
* It is limited to just code. Software projects also tend to have
documentation, schemas, graphics, etc. It would be nice if the
unlicense covered all of these.
* It doesn't address moral rights in any way.
* It doesn't address patent rights in any way. This becomes even more
relevant when you're receiving patches from organisations who might
hold relevant patents.
* It doesn't provide advice on how to refer to the unlicense within
individual files. I've taken to having the following minimal header
instead of copying the entire text into every file:
# Public Domain (-) 2010-2011 The Ampify Authors.
# See the Ampify UNLICENSE file for details.
* It doesn't address third party code. Putting an UNLICENSE file in
the root of the repository without such consideration suggests that
all the code files are in the public domain — which may not be true.
In an ideal world, we'd all come together and build on CC0 and the
Unlicense to create a *Creative Commons Unlicense* which addresses all
of these concerns. I am not sure if this would be of interest to
anyone else, but it is of interest to me.
I've had a go at remixing the various texts into a new Unlicense:
* http://ampify.it/unlicense.html
Here is the raw text, including the accompanying authors file:
* https://github.com/tav/ampify/blob/master/UNLICENSE
* https://github.com/tav/ampify/blob/master/AUTHORS
Now I am not a lawyer and the text needs work, but I hope it's a good
starting point — or, at the very least, provides some idea of what I'm
getting at.
Is this of interest to any of you? Could we come together to manifest
a Creative Commons Unlicense?
Please do let me know what you think.
--
Cheers, tav
plex:espians/tav | t...@espians.com | +44 (0) 7809 569 369
http://tav.espians.com | http://twitter.com/tav | skype:tavespian
Peter Saint-Andre
> Please do let me know what you think.
Awesome stuff, tav. Let's get to work!
BTW, will anyone on this list be at FOSDEM 2011 in early February? It'd
be great to talk in person.
Peter
--
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/
Peter Saint-Andre
> Now, whilst I've adopted the term wholesale, the text on unlicense.org
> doesn't address a number of concerns:
>
> * It is limited to just code. Software projects also tend to have
> documentation, schemas, graphics, etc. It would be nice if the
> unlicense covered all of these.
Agreed -- one [un]license to bind them all!
> * It doesn't address moral rights in any way.
Yes, that is a major obstacle in some jurisdictions.
> * It doesn't address patent rights in any way. This becomes even more
> relevant when you're receiving patches from organisations who might
> hold relevant patents.
I need to think about this one a bit -- I don't like to conflate patents
and copyrights because they really are separate (I agree with Richard
Stallman that the term "intellectual property" is a package deal).
In what sense do you mean to address patent rights?
> * It doesn't provide advice on how to refer to the unlicense within
> individual files.
Is it the job of the license itself to instruct folks on how to use it?
Or do you mean that we unlicensers haven't provided guidelines (e.g., on
the website)?
> I've taken to having the following minimal header
> instead of copying the entire text into every file:
>
> # Public Domain (-) 2010-2011 The Ampify Authors.
> # See the Ampify UNLICENSE file for details.
>
> * It doesn't address third party code. Putting an UNLICENSE file in
> the root of the repository without such consideration suggests that
> all the code files are in the public domain — which may not be true.
True.
> In an ideal world, we'd all come together and build on CC0 and the
> Unlicense to create a *Creative Commons Unlicense* which addresses all
> of these concerns. I am not sure if this would be of interest to
> anyone else, but it is of interest to me.
>
> I've had a go at remixing the various texts into a new Unlicense:
>
> * http://ampify.it/unlicense.html
>
> Here is the raw text, including the accompanying authors file:
>
> * https://github.com/tav/ampify/blob/master/UNLICENSE
> * https://github.com/tav/ampify/blob/master/AUTHORS
>
> Now I am not a lawyer and the text needs work, but I hope it's a good
> starting point — or, at the very least, provides some idea of what I'm
> getting at.
Yes, it looks like a good start. I'll review it in more detail as soon
as I can.
> Is this of interest to any of you? Could we come together to manifest
> a Creative Commons Unlicense?
I think we're starting to build some good momentum here. Let's see where
it leads. I don't want to presume that this conversation will lead to
CC[u] or a modified CC0 or whatever, but it's been productive so far.
> Please do let me know what you think.
See above. But more to come...
Ben Lavender
as Arto and I saw them when we were working on it (and let me just say
that while 'we' is appropriate for 'working on it', every word was
written by Arto):
> Now, whilst I've adopted the term wholesale, the text on unlicense.org
> doesn't address a number of concerns:
>
> * It is limited to just code. Software projects also tend to have
> documentation, schemas, graphics, etc. It would be nice if the
> unlicense covered all of these.
On purpose. The various issues involved for non-code IP and code IP
are separate. They warrant separate paperwork. CC has published
statements amounting to the same.
> * It doesn't address moral rights in any way.
Correct. Specifically addressing moral rights incorrectly is a
problem, and having recently tried to do this for a real-life thing,
it's a huge, huge issue, different in many countries, and all but
impossible to get right. It can take pages and pages in Germany.
But one has to remember that contracts are not parsed by computers,
but humans. If a particular contract is invalid in a jurisdiction, a
*judge* will generally attempt to determine intent. The unlicense is
designed to stand quite well as a statement of intent in jurisdictions
that do not respect public domain assignments.
Curiously, it can be better to be *less specific* and allow a human
being, one day, in a court, to use common sense.
> * It doesn't address patent rights in any way. This becomes even more
> relevant when you're receiving patches from organisations who might
> hold relevant patents.
Same issue as licenses. Can't be helped.
> * It doesn't provide advice on how to refer to the unlicense within
> individual files. I've taken to having the following minimal header
> instead of copying the entire text into every file:
>
> # Public Domain (-) 2010-2011 The Ampify Authors.
> # See the Ampify UNLICENSE file for details.
See above about humans parsing contracts, not computers. You can of
course put that in every file, but:
* Someone interpreting the unlicense PD assignment won't need it.
The unlicense is clear.
* I can just strip those statements out and republish the public
domain work. Why bother?
> * It doesn't address third party code. Putting an UNLICENSE file in
> the root of the repository without such consideration suggests that
> all the code files are in the public domain — which may not be true.
Same issue as licensing. I put a 'gotcha' about other code at the top
of my unlicense file when including licensed code.
> I've had a go at remixing the various texts into a new Unlicense:
>
> * http://ampify.it/unlicense.html
This is dangerous in jurisdictions that have inalienable moral rights.
If you assign a license at all, and don't do it right, you can be
screwed.
For example, I learned not 2 weeks ago that this line from your document:
"In addition, to the extent the Waiver is so judged Affirmer hereby
grants to each affected person a royalty-free, non transferable, non
sublicensable, non exclusive, irrevocable and unconditional license to
exercise"
makes this an invalid contract in Germany, as there's no such thing as
an irrevocable license; there are always some circumstances that allow
an author or his heirs to retake control, and you have to account for
them in excruciating detail. You'd have been better off not to use the
word 'license' at all, and let a judge interpret it. You do have some
good language about 'if this is found to be invalid, use this as a
statement of intent, and apply it insofar as is possible', and that
may be a good idea, but the existing unlicense is pretty clear and
that's what would happen anyway. It might be an update worth doing.
You have patent language that may or may not be a good idea that I
can't speak any kind of intelligently about it. I don't know that some
of the corporate signoffs to RDF.rb would have happened with it
included.
BTW, I'm not a lawyer, and my lawyer would have me clearly say that
none of this is legal advice. It's just what I had to pay a lawyer
recently to worry about.
Anyway, I hope this doesn't come across as 'GO AWAY!'. Nothing's
perfect, and I see no reason to necessarily consider the unlicense a
final version, so this stuff can always be talked about. Just
addressing how we saw some of your concerns a year ago.
And a big welcome to the club!
Ben
Mike Linksvayer
> Now, if it's okay with you, I'd like to share my journey into the
> world of public domain and gradually build up to a proposal of a
> "Creative Commons Unlicense".
Hi Tav and all,
Extremely cool to run into you again, here.
I will attempt to add to this thread at length soon. I like the ideas
Tav brought up. Will take a really long time to make happen as a CC
tool (CC0 2.0 or whatever), simply because CC moves very slowly and
carefully on new instruments, which is mostly a good thing.
I'm prompted to respond at all now because there has been discussion
of public domain software instruments with FSF and others, leading to
them adding CC0 to their licenses list, and CC adding deployment
instructions for CC0 and software (lack of which I think I mentioned
previously as a barrier to use).
See https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/27081
Mike
Peter Saint-Andre
Mike, thanks for sharing the good news and for all the work you folks
did to make this possible.
For further discussion, I notice that the FSF's free license list
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html> also says:
###
The Unlicense
The Unlicense is a public domain dedication. A work released under
the Unlicense is dedicated to the public domain to the fullest extent
permitted by law, and also comes with an additional simple license that
helps cover any cases where the dedication is inadequate. Both public
domain works and the simple license provided by the Unlicense are
compatible with the GNU GPL.
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.
###
Because I'm not a fan of license proliferation (I worked to deprecate
the old Jabber Open Source License or JOSL in the XMPP community), I
look forward to further discussion about working on a "unified" PD
license. However, first I need to revisit Tav's message and dedicate
some thinking time to the underlying issues...
Charles
its destination. On that note, a "unified" PD license should include
something like "how to Obtaining An Explicit License To Use this work"
as in sqlite which is public domain software, but also sells licenses
for those who want them <http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html>
I'm new around here, and if you're interested some relevant work of
mine on this subject from my lab <http://mr.danoff.org> is a report
"Exploring how to release something into the public domain" <http://
www.danoff.org/leftinfront/?p=1639> and a short video "The Public
Domain Paradox" <http://www.archive.org/details/
ThePublicDomainParadox>.
- Charles
--
Charles Jeffrey Danoff
Lab: http://mr.danoff.org
Home: http://danoff.org
On Apr 15, 9:46 am, Peter Saint-Andre <stpe...@stpeter.im> wrote:
> On 4/15/11 7:32 AM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 19:56, tav <t...@espians.com> wrote:
> >> Now, if it's okay with you, I'd like to share my journey into the
> >> world of public domain and gradually build up to a proposal of a
> >> "Creative Commons Unlicense".
>
> > Hi Tav and all,
>
> > Extremely cool to run into you again, here.
>
> > I will attempt to add to this thread at length soon. I like the ideas
> > Tav brought up. Will take a really long time to make happen as a CC
> > tool (CC0 2.0 or whatever), simply because CC moves very slowly and
> > carefully on new instruments, which is mostly a good thing.
>
> > I'm prompted to respond at all now because there has been discussion
> > of public domain software instruments with FSF and others, leading to
> > them adding CC0 to their licenses list, and CC adding deployment
> > instructions for CC0 and software (lack of which I think I mentioned
> > previously as a barrier to use).
>
> Mike, thanks for sharing the good news and for all the work you folks
> did to make this possible.
>
> For further discussion, I notice that the FSF's free license list
> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html> also says:
>
> ###
>
> The Unlicense
>
> The Unlicense is a public domain dedication. A work released under
> the Unlicense is dedicated to the public domain to the fullest extent
> permitted by law, and also comes with an additional simple license that
> helps cover any cases where the dedication is inadequate. Both public
> domain works and the simple license provided by the Unlicense are
> compatible with the GNU GPL.
>
> 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.
>
> ###
>
> Because I'm not a fan of license proliferation (I worked to deprecate
> the old Jabber Open Source License or JOSL in the XMPP community), I
> look forward to further discussion about working on a "unified" PD
> license. However, first I need to revisit Tav's message and dedicate
> some thinking time to the underlying issues...
>
> Peter
>
> --
> Peter Saint-Andrehttps://stpeter.im/
>
> 8KViewDownload