Notable Works whose Copyrights were Waived by their Creators


This list was created to show that consciously waiving the copyrights to your work can lead to amazing things.

The two requirements to be on the list are…

  1. The work needs to have an article on Wikipedia to be considered notable.
  2. A reference needs to be provided that shows the creator explicitly choosing to waive the work’s copyright.

If you know any works that should be added to the list, please leave a comment.


The World Wide Web was dedicated by Tim Berners-Lee on April 30, 1993.
reference: Ten Years Public Domain for the Original Web Software

SQLite was dedicated by Richard Hipp on September 20, 2001.
reference: Dr Richard Hipp, Geek of the Week

S5 was dedicated by Eric Meyer on July 28, 2005.
reference: S5 1.1

LibriVox was dedicated by Hugh McGuire on August 10, 2005.
reference: why public domain and not creative commons?

Public.Resource.Org was dedicated by Carl Malamud on August 17, 2007.
reference: Public Domain Spotlight: Public.Resource.Org

Microformats were dedicated by Tantek Çelik on December 27, 2007.
reference: Making open standards as open as possible

The Online Books Page was dedicated by John Mark Ockerbloom on January 1, 2008.
reference: The Online Books Page: Copyrights and Licenses

The Zen Habits blog was dedicated by Leo Babauta on January 7, 2008.
reference: Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Content

The Personal Genome Project was released by George Church and Jason Bobe on March 11th, 2009.
reference: CC0 Spotlight: Personal Genome Project

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