A public license allows the licensor to authorise the general public
(i.e. everybody) to perform certain uses of his/her work; if such a
license is used, it is no longer necessary to grant individual
permissions (and e.g. answer dozens of requests per day). From the legal
point of view, a public license is an offer to conclude a contract;
this offer is then accepted by conduct when a user starts using the
licensed work. Therefore, public licenses are still binding contracts
which should be respected. When it comes to licensing of research data,
public licenses should be used whenever possible.
Standard ‘public’ licenses
started to appear in the 1980s in order to simplify the licensing process, avoid interoperability problems and achieve some common goals.