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The Unlicense software license, published around 2010, offers a public-domain waiver text with a fall-back public-domain-like license, inspired by permissive licenses but without an attribution clause. [12] [13] In 2015 GitHub reported that approximately 102,000 of their 5.1 million licensed projects, or 2%, use the Unlicense. [note 3]
In the 1980s, a common way to share public-domain software [verification needed] was by receiving them through a local user group or a company like PC-SIG of Sunnyvale, California, which maintained a mail-order catalog of more than 300 disks with an average price of US$6. [9] Public-domain software with source code was also shared on BBS networks.
For computer software produced under FAR contract, the scope of the government's license does not include the right to distribute to the public, [12] but for "commercial off the shelf software", the government typically obtains no better license than would any other customer.
Examples of license-free software formerly included programs written by Daniel J. Bernstein, such as qmail, djbdns, daemontools, and ucspi-tcp. Bernstein held the copyright and distributed these works without license until 2007. [1] From December 28, 2007, onwards, he started placing his software in the public domain with an explicit waiver ...
A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell licenses rather than copies of the software because it enables them to enforce stricter terms on redistribution.
The 2000 released WTFPL license is a short public domain like software license. [5] The 2009 released CC0 was created as public domain license for all content with compatibility with also law domains (e.g. Civil law of continental Europe) where dedicating into public domain is problematic.
For software under the purview of copyright to be free, it must carry a software license whereby the author grants users the aforementioned rights. Software that is not covered by copyright law, such as software in the public domain, is free as long as the source code is also in the public domain, or otherwise available without restrictions.
The Free Software Foundation states that "Both public domain works and the lax license provided by the Unlicense are compatible with the GNU GPL." [1]Google does not allow its employees to contribute to projects under public domain equivalent licenses like the Unlicense (and CC0), while allowing contributions to 0BSD licensed and US government PD projects.