Problem
I would like to use CC0 to help me dedicate some of my software to the public domain. I would like to include a copy of CC0 with my software since that’s recommended. Parts of CC0 are legal code, so parts of CC0 were dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Parts of CC0 aren’t legal code, so parts of CC0 are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Other than the Creative Commons trademarks (licensed subject to the Trademark Policy below) and the text of Creative Commons legal tools and human-readable Commons deeds (dedicated to the public domain as specified below), all content on this site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license unless otherwise marked.
Creative Commons makes the legal code of its licenses and the CC0 Public Domain Dedication available under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Quotes from “CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code” by Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Elements of the license page that are not part of the legal code
Anything not specifically named as legal code above, including:
- “CC is not a law firm” disclaimer at top
- […]
Quote from “Legal Code Defined” by Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)
I’m perfectly fine with adding some attribution information whenever I distribute a copy of one of the legal tool’s text. The problem is that most software developers who included a copy of CC0 with their code (or a CC license on their assets) probably didn’t know that they needed to provide attribution. I sure didn’t when I started using it.
Another problem is that this partial licensing situation is overly complicated.
Description
Dedicate the entirety of each legal tools' text to the public domain. This would remove the requirement for attribution and make the situation less confusing. It would also cure the accidental violations that have already happened.
Alternatives
We could add documentation that explains this and gives attribution instructions for the legal tools' text. This would make it more of a hassle to use the plain text versions of the licenses.
Another possible solution is to include attribution information in the legal tools' text.
Neither of these alternatives would do much to address the accidental violations in the past. Neither would make the copyright situation less complicated.
Additional context
It seems like CC intended to dedicate all of the legal tools’ text to the public domain anyway.
[…]the text of Creative Commons legal tools and human-readable Commons deeds (dedicated to the public domain as specified below)[…]
Legal text (we call this legal code) and Commons deeds: Creative Commons makes the legal code of its licenses and the CC0 Public Domain Dedication available under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
To me, legal text would be the entire text of a legal tool and legal code would be something different. Those quotes from “CC’s Licensing Statement for Content and Software Code” imply that they’re the same thing.
Implementation