Fedora abandons CC0 “No Rights Reserved” software

The Fedora Project has announced that it will no longer allow Creative Commons ‘No Rights Reserved’ code, also known as CC0-licensed code, in its Linux distribution or the Fedora Registry.

The organisation acknowledges that this “fairly unusual change” may have an impact on a small number of Fedora packages.

Existing Fedora packages with a CC0 licence may be grandfathered. Software patents, according to Software Freedom Conservancy policy fellow Bradley M. Kuhn, are a constant threat to the rights of FOSS users and redistributors.

Software developers are better off using transparent licences like GPL or copyleft-next rather than CC0, which does not waive patent rights, or licences with ambiguous patent clauses.

In the past, Fedora recommended using CC0 when compared to ‘Unlicense,’ whereas Google has begun to reject software patches licenced under either CC0 or Unlicense.