Re: Is 'The Unlicense' DFSG-compliant?
On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 07:33:45AM +0100, Jan Gru wrote:
> Dear debian-legal-members,
>
> I am wondering, whether you consider 'The Unlicense' [0] to be
> DFSG-compliant? On the OSI-mailing list [1] has been a discussion
> arguing, that this license model is
>
> a) not global
> b) inconsistent and
> c) unpredictable in its applicability
>
I think I'd agree with all of the above, especially in light of the comments
you refer to below. "Public domain" is a difficult concept eg in the US.
[It may be that some Federal employees place code into the public domain
by default but they are the only ones].
The author disclaims all interests for themselves: given that the
UnLicense includes a verbatim copy of the MIT licence - just attribute
the fact that the code was under the UnLicense, note that you are
relicensing the code to the MIT licence and go from there?
In countries that recognise copyright laws - almost all of them - a full
disclaimer of copyright is not possible.
this just my opinion. If allowable, it reduces the set of unknown, unenforceablelicences by one and produces greater legal certainty.
This is explicitly different to a Github case where there is no discernible
licence and therefore no permission to do anything with the code.
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
> Searching debian-legal, however, I did not find any conclusive
> discussion about this. So, what do you think about this? Can projects
> under the Unlicense be safely included in Debian's package archives?
>
> Thanks already in advance for clarifying this issue.
>
> Best regards,
> Jan
> ---
> [0] https://unlicense.org/
> [1]
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170301020915/https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/001386.html
>
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