Worldwide Public Domain Dedication (WPDD)

Hello, and welcome to Jason Self's Worldwide Public Domain Dedication (WPDD)

What is it?

This Worldwide Public Domain Dedication (WPDD) is a way to permanently relinquish your patent, copyright and related rights. The primary target is computer software, but it should be usable with any work where copyright or patent may exist.

First please let me say that you shouldn't use this, or any other tool with a similar purpose (eg CC0, The Unlicense, etc.). The simple fact is that your copyrights are valuable. They can be used to apply strong copyleft licenses like AGPL-3.0-or-later, which requires that modified versions also remain free. Licenses like that help defend against the proprietization of our stuff, which is a significant and ongoing problem that we need help with.

If you don't want to engage in license enforcement yourself there are options where you can assign your copyright, like Software Freedom Conservancy.

But if you're bound and determined to waive your rights regardless, then this Worldwide Public Domain Dedication (WPDD) is one way to go about doing that. I think it's the best way under the circumstances (more mature than The Unlicense and addresses patents, which CC0 doesn't.)

The WPDD is currently in the drafting phase. Please feel free to review and comment.