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The Unlicense is a
public domain equivalent license Public-domain-equivalent license are licenses that grant public-domain-like rights and/or act as waivers. They are used to make copyrighted works usable by anyone without conditions, while avoiding the complexities of attribution or license co ...
for software which provides a
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
waiver A waiver is the voluntary relinquishment or surrender of some known right or privilege. Regulatory agencies of state departments or the federal government may issue waivers to exempt companies from certain regulations. For example, a United St ...
with a fall-back public-domain-like license, similar to the
CC Zero A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
for cultural works. It includes language used in earlier software projects and has a focus on an
anti-copyright Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implem ...
message.


License terms

The license terms of the Unlicense is as follows:
This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or
distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled
binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any
means.

In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors
of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the
software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit
of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and
successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of
relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this
software under copyright law.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

For more information, please refer to <http://unlicense.org/>


Reception

The
Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...
states that "Both public domain works and the lax license provided by the Unlicense are compatible with the GNU GPL." However, for dedicating software to the public domain it recommends
CC0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
over the Unlicense, stating that CC0 "is more thorough and mature than the Unlicense".
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
does not allow contributions to projects under public domain equivalent licenses like the Unlicense (and CC0), while allowing contributions to
0BSD BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...
licensed and US government PD projects. Notable projects that use the Unlicense include
youtube-dl youtube-dl is a free and open source download manager for video and audio from YouTube and over 1,000 other video hosting websites. It is released under the Unlicense software license. As of September 2021, youtube-dl is one of the most starred ...
,
Second Reality Second Reality (originally titled Unreal ] - The 2nd Reality) is an IBM PC compatible Demo (computer programming)">demo created by Future Crew. It debuted at the Assembly (demo party), Assembly 1993 demoparty on July 30, 1993, where it was entere ...
, and the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
of the 1995 video game
Gloom Gloom is a low level of light which is so dim that there are physiological and psychological effects. Human vision at this level becomes monochrome and has lessened clarity. Optical and psychological effects Light conditions may be considered g ...
.


History

In a post published on January 1 ( Public Domain Day), 2010, Arto Bendiken outlined his reasons for preferring public domain software, namely: the nuisance of dealing with licensing terms (for instance license incompatibility), the threat inherent in copyright law, and the
impracticability The doctrine of impracticability in the common law of contracts excuses performance of a duty, where the said duty has become unfeasibly difficult or expensive for the party who was to perform. Impracticability is similar in some respects to the d ...
of
copyright law A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
. On January 23, 2010, Bendiken followed-up on his initial post. In this post, he explained that the Unlicense is based on the copyright
waiver A waiver is the voluntary relinquishment or surrender of some known right or privilege. Regulatory agencies of state departments or the federal government may issue waivers to exempt companies from certain regulations. For example, a United St ...
of
SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the most ...
with the no-warranty statement from the
MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...
. He then walked through the license, commenting on each part. In a post published in December 2010, Bendiken further clarified what it means to "license" and "unlicense" software. In December 2010,
Mike Linksvayer Mike Linksvayer is an intellectual freedom and commons proponent, known as a technology entrepreneur, developer and activist from co-founding Bitzi and leadership of Creative Commons. He is GitHub's Policy Director. Biography Linksvayer holds ...
, the vice president of
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
at the time, wrote in an
identi.ca identi.ca was a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several o ...
conversation "I like the movement" in speaking of the Unlicense effort, considering it compatible with the goals of the
CC Zero A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
, released in 2009. On January 1, 2011, Bendiken reviewed the progress and adoption of the Unlicense, saying it was "difficult to give estimates of current Unlicense adoption" but there were "many hundreds of projects using the Unlicense". In January 2012, when discussed on
OSI OSI may refer to: Places * Osijek Airport (IATA code: OSI), an airport in Croatia * Ősi, a village in Veszprém county, Hungary * Oši, an archaeological site in Semigallia, Latvia * Osi, a village in Ido-Osi, Ekiti State, Nigeria * Osi, Ekiti ...
's license-review mailing list, the Unlicense was brushed off as a crayon license. In particular, it was criticized for being possibly inconsistent and non-standard, and for making it difficult for some projects to accept Unlicensed code as third-party contributions; leaving too much room for interpretation; and possibly being incoherent in some legal systems. A request for legacy approval was filed in March 2020, which led to a formal approval in June 2020, with an acknowledgement of a "general agreement that the document is poorly drafted". In 2015,
GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
reported that approximately 102,000 of their 5.1 million licensed projects (2% of licensed projects on GitHub.com) used the Unlicense. Until 2022, the
Fedora Project The Fedora Project is an independent project to co-ordinate the development of Fedora Linux, a Linux-based operating system, operating with the vision of "''a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive, w ...
recommended
CC0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
over the Unlicense because the former is "a more comprehensive legal text". However, in July 2022, the CC0 license became unsupported and software to be released in the Fedora distribution must not be under CC0, due to CC0 not waiving
patent rights A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
.


See also

*
CC0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
*
WTFPL WTFPL is a permissive free software license. As a public domain like license, the WTFPL is essentially the same as dedication to the public domain. It allows redistribution and modification of the work under any terms. The title is an abbreviat ...
*
Comparison of free and open-source software licenses This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and ...


References


External links

*
Official mailing list
{{FOSS Software licenses Public-domain software