For a while now here at Nooskewl, we've been using a license called the Give it Your Own License, License for our free and open source software releases. Not much has been said about the license because I haven't thought about it all that much. But to clear things up (hopefully), here is what it means.
We used to license our stuff as public domain, and I became aware that "public domain" was not a real thing in some countries. Now, I'm not a lawyer, so this could be completely bogus, but our license is meant to give you all the freedoms you'd ever want from a public domain license, but with actual license terms so that it can be used in those countries where public domain doesn't exist.
The terms of the license are very, very simple. The content DOES have a license, but the license permits you to change the license to whatever license you want. That's a lot of license. To write the license out in detail we need only a few lines and a disclaimer:
License, which gives you the right to re-license this software under any
terms, or any existing license, you desire. Your new license terms shall not
affect the license terms of any future licensee of the software, as distributed
by the original author, nor shall your new license terms act retroactively on
any prior licensee.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR "AS IS". ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. THE
AUTHOR SHALL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR DAMAGE CAUSED
BY THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE LICENSED HEREIN.
Now if I'm completely wrong on the legality of this, forgive me. I haven't researched it (much, see the comments). I'm not knowledgable in the area of law. But until proven faulty, that is the Give it Your Own License, License, and we're using it on our FOSS.
Comments
Some folks over at http://www.allegro.cc have given me some pointers and I've updated the license accordingly.