Licence and Legal FAQ/Why would I want my contributions to be public domain: Difference between revisions

Public Domain is the idea that a work can exist without anyone claiming any rights to it. In some jurisdictions you can create something and place it in the Public Domain explicitly; in other jurisdictions your right as an author cannot be signed away, so in these jurisdictions Public Domain is understood as a shorthand for "Yes I may be the author of that but you just do whatever you please with it." (In lawyer's terms this sounds something like "I grant anyone a permanent and irrevocable license to use my work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.").

 

 

Reasons why [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Users_whose_contributions_are_in_the_public_domain some people] consider Public Domain superior to more restrictive forms of licensing include: