Here in Germany (and other countries) we do have a public domain ("gemeinfrei", "gemeinfreie Werke"), but it contains only works whose authors died at least 70 years ago. It is impossible for a living person to actively put their work into the public domain.
However, this is not as bureaucratic as it may sound. You can still sign off any exploitation rights ("Verwertungsrechte")! But there are other rights you cannot sign off, the author's moral rights ("Urheberpersönlichkeitsrechte").
In general, there are two flavours of copyright law in the world:
1) The copyright which centers around the act of copying or doing other things with the creative work. This is found in the USA and Great Britain.
2) The author's rights ("Urheberrecht", "droit d'auteur") which centers around the creators. This is found in Germany and France.
One problem with the licence is that the text primarily seems to concern itself. Compare MIT licence "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software" or public domain "This ... is public domain." which explicitly tell you what is licensed.
And when you find yourself in court being sued by the original author who says "Obviously, that licence was a joke, I never meant it", good luck....
Do some Googling, but there can be liability issues with public domain if your work causes damage. There have been some significant discussions about it over the last year in terms of public domain vs GPL and BSD licenses.
Comments
Is there any legal difference between using this license and releasing something under public domain?
In some countries there isn't a legal concept of public domain. I don't know much more than that but I think Germany may be one of them.
Yes and no.
Here in Germany (and other countries) we do have a public domain ("gemeinfrei", "gemeinfreie Werke"), but it contains only works whose authors died at least 70 years ago. It is impossible for a living person to actively put their work into the public domain.
However, this is not as bureaucratic as it may sound. You can still sign off any exploitation rights ("Verwertungsrechte")! But there are other rights you cannot sign off, the author's moral rights ("Urheberpersönlichkeitsrechte").
In general, there are two flavours of copyright law in the world:
1) The copyright which centers around the act of copying or doing other things with the creative work. This is found in the USA and Great Britain.
2) The author's rights ("Urheberrecht", "droit d'auteur") which centers around the creators. This is found in Germany and France.
One problem with the licence is that the text primarily seems to concern itself. Compare MIT licence "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software" or public domain "This ... is public domain." which explicitly tell you what is licensed.
And when you find yourself in court being sued by the original author who says "Obviously, that licence was a joke, I never meant it", good luck....
Do some Googling, but there can be liability issues with public domain if your work causes damage. There have been some significant discussions about it over the last year in terms of public domain vs GPL and BSD licenses.