Which license is better for public domain works? I will provide my judgement here:
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The Unlicense is shorter, but still longer than a simple declaration of being in the public domain. Thus, it may be a good choice to get started for very small works.
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CC0 is longer, but it appears to be more widely adopted in the modern era. Just a few years ago (2014), it was actually pretty hard to find major parties that used the CC0. Nowadays, all of GitHub’s legal terms and conditions are CC0 Public Domain.
- Also, due to the impact of Wikipedia, Creative Commons licenses are generally the preference for literary works. Due to the impact of Flickr, Creative Commons licenses are sometimes the preference for photographic works.
Truly, I wish that public domain declarations could be more painless. They could be, but only if you ignore the jurisdictions that don’t recognize a public domain.
20180529/https://github.com/github/site-policy
20180529/https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
But wait! Our discussion isn’t finished. What are other people saying about CC0 versus Unlicense?
Now, this is the most compelling evidence I’ve found for the Unlicense: The Unlicense is based off of the SQLite public domain dedication, one of the most successful public domain software projects in the world. Also, the Unlicense is purportedly more popular, especially with small-time projects.
But anyways, I guess you can say I’ve come to a round-about discussion on the judgement here. The length of the license correlates with the length of the world in question.
Finally, an important point to note on the critique of the Unlicense. Even though it is “explicitly illegal” in Germany, for sure SQLite is used in Germany regardless of its anti-public domain law. At this point in time, for software it doesn’t matter what the local jurisdiction laws might say forbidding public domain. People simply can no longer live without the concept of public domain.
20180529/DuckDuckGo cc0 or unlicense
20180529/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-is-wrong-with-the-unlicense#147120
20180529/https://github.com/github/choosealicense.com/pull/38
20180529/DuckDuckGo sqlite public domain germany
20180529/https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/5736/sqlite-is-illegal-in-germany-really#5738
20180529/https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20170316-tg.htm#e20170316-tg_wlog-10-tg
20180529/http://unlicense.org/
- Footnote: Wow, indeed, looking at the Unlicense page of how much very important, core, essential software is in the public domain, public domain software is an unescapable reality of the modern-day world. It is simply infeasible for any country that wants to plug into the modern economy to forbid it.
So, another question to ask. Can you dual-license under both CC0 and Unlicense? Maybe, but an Internet search doesn’t seem to show that to be very common.
20180529/DuckDuckGo dual license cc0 unlicense
So now you ask, “What are you going to do with this blog?” Well, currently it is under the Unlicense. As of today, I haven’t yet finished the import of all my older articles that I have already written. For the time being, I will wait until the bulk of the old articles have been imported before making the changes. However, due to the discussion above, any change between the two shouldn’t really affect most people. Yes, even people living in jurisdictions where public domain is “illegal” won’t be affected, as the people in those jurisdictions don’t actually observe that legal constraint anyways.
What are other people discussing about public domain in Germany? Well, the conclusion here is that the same as what you’ve said: regardless of the fact that France and Germany don’t recognize public domain, people use it and treat it as that anyways.
20180530/DuckDuckGo public domain software in germany sqlite 20180530/http://sqlite.1065341.n5.nabble.com/philosophy-behind-public-domain-td101i40.html 20180530/https://www.cnet.com/news/is-public-domain-software-open-source/