I don't know about the US, but in the EU there are certain rights that you can't give up --- such as moral rights, which are much stronger in the EU than in the US. This is one reason why Creative Commons has the CC0 license, which is a reasonable attempt to put works into the public domain where possible, and if it's not, provides a practically equivalent do-what-thou-wilt license instead: https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/
On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 at 12:23, Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Michael Lustfield <[email protected]> writes: > > > On Sat, 30 Aug 2025 18:47:39 +0200 > > "Andrea Pappacoda" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> License: public-domain > > > > As a rule of thumb, nothing is actually public domain unless it's very old. > > There are licenses that attempt to replicate public domain, but it is not > > possible to simply state you release something into public domain--at least > > not > > in EU or US. > > Do you have any reference explaining that claim? > > My perception is that there are frequent current publications of public > domain content, including stuff from NIST based on this "license": > > https://spdx.org/licenses/NIST-PD.html > > Another example are DJB's libraries, for example lib25519: > https://lib25519.cr.yp.to/license.html > > /Simon
