If you want to give up control over your work completely, you can donate it to the public domain. Unlike publishing it under a copyleft license, this does not ensure that derivative work remains free, and it does not require that you are credited. In fact, you lose all rights regarding your work (that is the meaning of "public domain").
You can donate your work to the public domain only if it does not contain, use or cite works by others, unless those works are in the public domain, too. See Commons:Licensing for details. To effectively put your work into the public domain, please tag it with {{self|PD-self|cc-zero|cc-pd}} , which will look like this:
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
| Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
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I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.
In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:
I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
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This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. |
| The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.enCC0Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedicationfalsefalse
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This file has been released explicitly into the public domain by its author, using the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication
This file may be used for any purpose including unrestricted redistribution, commercial use, and modification.
 Note: Creative Commons has retired this legal tool and does not recommend that it be applied to works. It is recommended you use {{ cc-zero}} instead.
 This legal tool may not be effective or applicable in non-US jurisdictions. |
You may select the license of your choice.
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In the case that it is not possible to truly donate to the public domain (like most of the European Union), the CC-zero copyright waiver will function as an unlimited usage license, granting all relevant permissions to anyone who wishes to use the work in any way.
Of course, it is always possible to use a copyleft license that will ensure that all derivative work will also be free, and that you are credited as the author. There are several copyleft licenses acceptable on the Commons, see Commons:Copyright tags. The recommended way to license your work is a dual license of GFDL and CC-by-sa. To do this, use the tag {{self|GFDL|cc-by-sa-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0}}, which will look like this:
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
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Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.
www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.htmlGFDLGNU Free Documentation Licensetruetrue
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You may select the license of your choice.
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