[dspillett]

> those in countries like Germany where you're not allowed to dedicate works to the public domain

That sounds like Germany's problem. If the system makes it difficult for someone to accept a gift of code from me, is it up to me to fight or work around that system? No matter what license you pick, in all likelihood some territory somewhere will have a problem with it.

> many companies don't allow you to use code with the unlicense because of its unclear legal status

Again, if I particularly care whether commercial entities use my stuff or not then I probably care about licensing enough to not use this the unlicense anyway. They can always contact me to negotiate specific commercial licensing for their use case.

--

There are to (at least) views that head in this direction:

* I don't care about licensing: I want people to use this, and I don't care how.

* I don't care about licensing: I don't care how people use this, I don't even care if you don't use it at all.

The one thing you should take care about, even if you don't otherwise care at all, is that some licences contain accidental traps which potentially enable legal grifters to bully people who use your stuff. The most obvious case of this is version 2 of creative commons licences (newer revisions are not prone to this, v4 (released in 2013) certainly, I've not looked to see how v3 (2007) stands in this regard), see https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-... amongst other places for details.

[jraph]

> is it up to me to fight or work around that system

If you want to make a gift, it's up to you to do it the right way / to allow people to get it, don't you think? You already put some effort to build and wrap it, you could as well stick some small label on it (put some working license), that's quite easy to do in comparison.

The rest of your comment hints at why you should pick a recognized license in any case.

[dspillett]

Depends.

Is it important to me that people can accept it, or is it just important to me that I'm not making it difficult for someone to be able to accept it?

If people have trouble accepting gifts because of local regulations, perhaps it is instead up to them to try get those regulations revised?

[FWIW: I'd not use these licence options anyway. I'm more AGPLv3 for code and CC BY-NC v4 for other content, not that I have any published ATM unless you count long forgotten stuff from a decade or two ago, other terms available subject to negotiation]

[jraph]

> or is it just important to me that I'm not making it difficult for someone to be able to accept it?

I don't know. By writing "Dedicated to the public domain" instead of "Licensed under MIT [or CC0]", you are doing comparable effort but you are definitely making it difficult for some people with no clear benefits.

Getting such regulations revised is very hard work and would probably not happen in our lifetime, and I'm not sure being able to dedicate something to the public domain when you can license your work liberally anyway is that desirable.

(but yes, me too, I'm more AGPLv3 for code anyway - and none of us is right or wrong in this philosophical discussion)