The people who wrote (and lobbied for) the copyright legislation was mostly interested in reserving the rights, not granting them to others. Some countries had a stronger public domain tradition, which made it into their legislation, but that wasn't the case in Sweden.
You can naturally write a paper saying you disclaim all rights, but I'm not sure how binding that will be. It's quite possible that Swedish legislation will allow you to change your mind and revoke your previous disclaiming of the rights. If you've written a legally valid document (signed, on paper) granting usage rights to one or more particular person(s) (or other legal entities), that would probably hold in a court of law, but an in blanco contract with "everyone" as the beneficiary is a bit more unclear what status is would have in case of a conflict.
I'm not sure what would actually happen in a Swedish court of law in this kind of case, but considering the vagueness of the legislation, I'm far from convinced that an attempt to release something into the public domain would hold up if the rights-holder has changed his/her mind afterwards. Especially if organizations are involved, where there could also be questions as to who actually has the right to sign an irrevocable legal document on behalf of the organization.
I don't think this is likely to be any real problem for us in _practical_ terms, but creating an iron-clad legal _guarantee_ for it could be more difficult.
/ Leif Stensson, Lysator
Previous text:
2002-11-11 22:15: Subject: pike.el
What is the closest thing you *can* do, then? Grant a non-revocable license to the public at large to do anything with the code?
I'm not really familiar with copyright law, but thair at to be some way to, for all *practical* purposes, disclaim one's onw copyright.
/ Niels Möller ()