My solution when I want to do PD for source code is to include a small statement referencing CC0, like this:
programname: Brief description of program
Written by My Name <my@email>, 2013
This software and associated documentation files (the "Software") is
released under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication, version 1.0, as
published by Creative Commons. To the extent possible under law, the
author(s) have dedicated all copyright and related and neighboring
rights to the Software to the public domain worldwide. The Software is
distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.
If you did not receive a copy of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication
along with the Software, see
<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>
I trust the CC0 dedication more than other options; it seems very carefully written.
Even if this crazy bit of non-license were interpreted as a license, all you are doing is claiming that you are releasing copyright rights. You are not releasing patent rights. So by using your code, I'm opening myself up to you suing me for patent violation. Furthermore, "to the extent permitted by law" could mean, depending on the jurisdiction, as "not". You've put the onus on me to determine whether your goofy pseudolicense is legal or not.
I think CC0 is very wrong for code. I don't understand why people are so against a decent academic license in lieu of a murky public domain declaration of questionable legality and no patent release.
It's carefully written to address your concern about "to the extent permitted by law", including a public license fallback:
> 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").
tl;dr: It degrades to the MIT license but without the attribution requirement.
True, there is no patent license, but neither the MIT or BSD licenses nor the GPL before v3 have a patent grant either. You'd be slagging off projects from jQuery to Linux (GPLv2) to LLVM if you demand an explicit patent grant for everything you use.
I do find it worrisome that there'd be this much fear of the CC0 dedication, even if unfounded. Could my statement be rewritten to make it more clear?
> I don't understand why people are so against a decent academic license in lieu of a murky public domain declaration of questionable legality and no patent release.
Principle. I'm one of those nutters that hates all form of copyright becuase blah blah blah, information purity, I'll skip the lecture, though. We just don't want information we create to be distributed under terms at all, that it could just out there to be used as people will without needing to worry about the consumption of information the same way they have no concern using or consuming a hamburger and plate.
>I don't understand why people are so against a decent academic license in lieu of a murky public domain declaration of questionable legality and no patent release.
Your problem is with software patents. A dubious at best, outright unethical at worst practice that has hampered creative development in the last decades. A trend that would have made the development of a myriad of platforms from editors, languages and complete operating systems impossible in the past. It's misdirected frustration.
Case in point: Your refusal to use code based on its own merits.
>Furthermore, "to the extent permitted by law" could mean, depending on the jurisdiction, as "not"
Surely every license is, by definition, "to the extent permitted by law"? No court will ever interpret a license to be valid beyond the extent permitted by law.
