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by indigane 1116 days ago
I stand corrected then. I had heard a similar comparison that you should prefer Unlicense over WTFPL, but I had not heard it is impossible to dedicate works to the public domain. What a weird world.

If I want to use Unlicense, can I dual license as MIT and Unlicense?
1 comments
aliceryhl 1116 days ago
Dual licensing should be fine. (IANAL)
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indigane 1116 days ago
Actually I read through your links, and they seem to imply, that there does not exist (can not exist?) a license that you could use if you want to release your code to the public domain. That's a bummer if so.
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jraph 1116 days ago
In many countries including mine, willingly putting work in the public domain is not possible.

In France, you have to wait 70 years and then the end of the year for your work to be in the public domain (sometimes, it's 70 years after the death of the author).

So you need a license like CC0 to "emulate" public domain, that does whatever is possible to give as many rights as possible to the extend permitted by law, in each jurisdiction. This is tricky, that's why CC0 is so long.

Public domain is just an area where the author cannot impose anything. If you can give all the possible rights that matter, it does not seem to really matter if you can't just put it in the public domain, or am I missing something?

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orra 1116 days ago
> that there does not exist (can not exist?) a license that you could use if you want to release your code to the public domain

In what jurisdiction? Yes, it's widely thought it's not possible e.g. in Germany, because you cannot seem to waive your moral rights.

What about the U.S.? There's no explicit law saying you can dedicate your copyright to the Public Domain. True, so some think it's not possible. But others think you can simply abandon copyright, like you can any other personal property. Why wouldn't that be the case?

FWIW, I like the clarity of a permissive MIT or ISC license. But I think you may be able to dual license Public Domain (in many jurisdictions) OR MIT.

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jraph 1116 days ago
> you cannot seem to waive your moral rights.

If it's like France, moral rights cannot be given up and stay in perpetuity, even when the work reaches public domain.

That's patrimonial rights that expire after 70 years, making the work reach public domain. These are the ones you would want to give up to put something in the public domain but can't.

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orra 1116 days ago
Perpetuity? Interesting. So, if the moral rights don't end when you die, then I suppose your heirs and successors can nominally enforce moral rights, centuries later. Wow!
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jraph 1116 days ago
> I suppose your heirs and successors can nominally enforce moral rights, centuries later

I don't know about this. That's quite possible. But yes! See [1,2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_moral

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aliceryhl 1116 days ago
That's my understanding as well.
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