Public-domain-equivalent license

WTFPL In 2000, the "Do What the Fuck You Want To Public License" (WTFPL) was released as a public-domain-equivalent license for software. published in 2013, removes half a sentence from the ISC license, leaving only an unconditional grant of rights and a warranty disclaimer. It is listed by the Software Package Data Exchange as the Zero Clause BSD license, with the SPDX identifier 0BSD. It was first used by Rob Landley in Toybox and is OSI-approved. MIT-0 The MIT No Attribution License, a variation of the MIT License, was published in 2018 and has the identifier MIT-0 in the SPDX License List. == Reception ==

In the free-software community, there has been some controversy over whether a public domain dedication constitutes a valid open-source license. In 2004, lawyer Lawrence Rosen argued in the essay "Why the public domain isn't a license" that software could not truly be given into public domain, a position that faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others. In 2012, Rosen changed his mind, accepted CC0 as an open-source license, and admitted that, contrary to his previous claims, copyright can be waived away. In 2011, the Free Software Foundation added CC0 to its free software licenses and called it "the preferred method of releasing software in the public domain" – the Foundation then reviewed its position specifically for softwares. In February 2012, when the CC0 license was submitted to the Open Source Initiative for approval, controversy arose over a clause which excluded any relevant patents held by the copyright holder from the scope of the license. This clause was added with scientific data in mind rather than software, but some members of the OSI believed it could weaken users' defenses against software patents. As a result, Creative Commons withdrew their submission, and the license is not currently approved by the OSI. In July 2022, the Fedora Project deprecated CC0 for software code for the same reasons, but will still allow its use for non-code content. In June 2020, following a request for legacy approval, OSI formally recognized the Unlicense as an approved license meeting the OSD. Google does not allow its employees to contribute to projects under public domain equivalent licenses like the Unlicense and CC0, while allowing contributions to 0BSD licensed and US government PD projects. ==See also==