Public License Fallback

[kwinz]

Thanks for your great work and interesting choice of cipher. Even more impressive to release it to the public domain and make it so open!

There was an interresting thread on reddit about the problem in countries where there is no concept of public domain. Please spare others the legal uncertainty and add a permissive fallback license,
like the one in clause 3 of creative commons 0 public domain

3. Public License Fallback. Should any part of the Waiver for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, then the Waiver shall be preserved to the maximum extent permitted taking into account Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose. In addition, to the extent the Waiver is so judged Affirmer hereby grants to each affected person a royalty-free, non transferable, non sublicensable, non exclusive, irrevocable and unconditional license to exercise Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights in the Work (i) in all territories worldwide, (ii) for the maximum duration provided by applicable law or treaty (including future time extensions), (iii) in any current or future medium and for any number of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever, including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes (the "License"). The License shall be deemed effective as of the date CC0 was applied by Affirmer to the Work. Should any part of the License for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, such partial invalidity or ineffectiveness shall not invalidate the remainder of the License, and in such case Affirmer hereby affirms that he or she will not (i) exercise any of his or her remaining Copyright and Related Rights in the Work or (ii) assert any associated claims and causes of action with respect to the Work, in either case contrary to Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose.

~ kwinz

[resilar]

Let's say I'm a bit hesitant to relicense my code to work around a bug in the German legal system. I'll have to consider this though.

[mvirkkunen]

I think this ticket belongs upstream at whichever issue tracker is correct for the German justice system.

[kwinz]

Because it's not just Germany. Public domain is more of a https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Law thing. Look at the map.
So if it doesn't hurt why not add a fallback license? In any case I know you must prioritize your time but nobody wants to deal with this legal shit. Or don't do it - it's just a suggestion.

[PetteriAimonen]

AFAIK public domain is not really a concept in Finnish copyright law either, so a fallback license would be a good idea.

[mvirkkunen]

You'd think this part is quite adequate even if the concept of "public domain" didn't exist at all:

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.

[resilar]

Dual-licensing with CC0 won't make everyone happy; for example, Open Source Initiative (OSI) dislikes CC0 because of some dumb patent clauses and the fact that it isn't designed for software.

Let's try a similar arrangement as SQLite3: stick with Unlicensed but provide (personalized) licensed versions on request (for free, though, and if that turns out to be too much hassle then make it cost bitcoins).