Is there a license where all rights are granted?

Question

The licenses I know, including open source and the less restrictive ones like BSD, make it mandatory to:

• Retain the copyright notice, and/or:
• Indicate that the precise part of source code was written by the original author.

Let's say I want to share source code I've written and I want to grant all rights, including the right to:

• Remove the copyright notice or substitute another one,
• Sell the source code or use it in a commercial product with no restrictions,
• Never indicate that this source code was written by me¹,

but at the same time disclaim any warranty as it is the case in BSD license.

Are there licenses which match this case?

Note: public domain is not a solution, since the term is unclear and change from one country to another.

---

^{¹ Why would anyone do that? Because we all have pieces of code which are not worth real licensing, but still useful for the community (example: removing diacritics from a text). Providing it "completely free" is in this case much for friendly that saying that in order to use your code, the person must read a few paragraphs or pages of an UNREADABLE ALL CAPITAL text, understand it, accept it, and then copy-paste your name and copyright notice every time the code is used.}

Answer 1

Creative Commons Zero is the closest you will get to dedicating a work to the Public Domain, largely because it's simply not possible to commit a work to PD in most countries.

Answer 2

When it comes down to it, unless a license has been successfully defended in legal proceedings in a particular jurisdiction, it has the same problems that public domain does. Given that you are trying to do this with as little effort as possible, I would just include a statement saying something like

> This code is released to the public domain. You may use it however you want, for whatever you want, including claiming it as your own.

If this isn't satisfactory to a particular user, they any other license probably won't be either.

An alternative is to use a variation of the MIT license, removing the part about requiring the notice to be kept on copies.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.

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 OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 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.

Answer 3

I think this is essentially what you are looking for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL It is the WTF public license. It states:

DO WHAT THE F*** YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
               Version 2, December 2004

Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <[email protected]>

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
as the name is changed.

       DO WHAT THE F*** YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. You just DO WHAT THE F*** YOU WANT TO.

Answer 4

The WTFPL the pauleck1 mentioned is a goodie. Also there is the Beerware one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware

/*
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
 * <[email protected]> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
 * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
 * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 */

Basically you could just put any notice you want at the top of your code to convey the (lack of) conditions.

Answer 5

What you want is not possible because your requirements conflict. If someone can remove your copyright notice, how can you disclaim any warranty? Someone could just remove your disclaimer and then distribute the code to someone else who could argue that they had no idea there was no warranty.

The closest to what you want to do, in the United States, is to put a notice stating that you disclaim all warranties and place the work in the public domain. Placing the work in the public domain should sever your legal connection to the code.