Prepreamble
As you may have noticed, I’m a fan of writing overly verbose legal documents. Read the ICSA as an example, or just check out how many of them I’ve written. This one is also significantly longer than it needs to be, simply because that’s how I want it.
Preamble
For all the copyright nerds out there, this is technically a «DEDICATION» or a «WAIVER» but I think «LICENSE» sounds and looks better, especially in the URL, and license is a little bit clearer at first glance for what this talking about.
I was inspired by Kate Morley after blatantly stealing her CSS for styling forms which she makes available under the CC0. I did some introspection and realized that I expected all software to be free as in freedom and free as in beer, and it would be unfair if I didn’t make my work available also. Hence why I’m rambling to you now.
You may be wondering, if you know of such things, why I don’t just mark it with Creative Commons Zero and be done with it. The reason is that I wanted my work to actually be in the public domain, at least in my country, and not very nearly public domain. For many years, I’ve made my work available to the no one who wants to use it. My first license was a restricted source available, future apps were under a more permissive license like the GNU GPL, WTFPL, and the SQLite Blessing. Creative works have long been licensed with various Creative Commons licenses, like CC BY-NC-ND for some English work, up to CC-BY for my iNaturalist contributions. I am entering my next phase of: who tf cares. My thinking for reserving some rights is that I might be able to make some money off of it in the future. But that is not going to happen. So I might as well make it available to the most people. Now onto the dedication.
Amble
To any artistic or literary work or document or software or other piece of writing (collectively, “work”) to which this license or a representation or a reference or a notice of this license has been applied, then this work is dedicated to the public domain in the United States.
If you are in one of the other countries and:
- you are in an area that recognizes a foreigner’s right to dedicate their work to the public domain in the manner in which I have just done so for United States readers:
- then this work is dedicated to the public domain
- or you are in an area that does not recognize the public domain or does not allow a foreigner to place their work in the public domain in the manner in which I have done so above for United States readers or does not recognize a work that has been placed into the public domain by a foreigner in their home country if that work would otherwise be protected by your home country’s copyright laws:
- then this work is marked Creative Commons Zero
If, in the rare circumstance that none of the above conditions apply to you, then you have no permission to use my work in any capacity and I will sue you for every penny you’re worth.
Postamble
This could have been made much shorter by simply writing «This work is dedicated to the public domain the United States and marked CC0 elsewhere.» but they say brevity is the soul of wit, and this document is not supposed to be funny. Good day.