UPDATE (9/21/2013): Pull requests merged. New Custom Dedication made for Open Hardware.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication tool ("CC0") permanently dedicates works covered by copyright, database right, and publicity right laws to the public domain. By placing a work under CC0, the dedicator irrevocably waives all of their privileges under these legal regimes. Should that waiver not be possible due to the idiosyncrasies of a particular jurisdiction's laws, then the dedicator provides an irrevocable, all-permissive license under the applicable laws (i.e. copyright, database right, and/or publicity right laws).
The license text itself is a fantastic piece of legal writing. This project seeks to provide modified versions of CC0 to better address specific use cases. In particular:
a) CC0 does not dedicate patents or trademarks to the public.
Providing such dedication may be useful for certain projects; in particular, collaborative open source software.
b) CC0 does not provide any options for "Dedicator Requests". For example, a potential CC0-dedicator may want to irrevocably waive their power to legally enforce "reciprocal" licensing (e.g. Share-Alike, GNU GPL), but may nonetheless want to send a message to recipients that they would strongly prefer that "downstream" distribution also be done under CC0-style terms.
Providing a set of different "Dedicator Requests" that dedicators could choose from could address the needs of dedicators that want to donate works to the public domain, while still making demands of recipients, albeit demands based entirely on ethical expectations and an "honour system", rather than the threat of litigation.
Pull requests are welcome!
LICENSE: This project is dedicated to the public domain under CC0, as can be found in the LICENSE file. If you send me a pull request specifically for inclusion in this repository, then you agree that your pull request is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.
NOTE 1: None of these license texts should be used as a license until further notice! These texts are works in development and are not ready for use by the general public.
NOTE 2: While Creative Commons refuses to assert copyright in its licenses themselves, allowing endless customization by third-parties, Creative Commons does not allow the use of "CC" or "Creative Commons" in the title of modified licenses. These licenses will be named: (name to be determined at a later date)
NOTE 3: This GitHub repository does not contain legal advice, and browsing this GitHub repository does not create a lawyer/client relationship between you and the repository holder.