Quoting Tim Connors (tconnors@rather.puzzling.org):
I like the twb-loop.
(Please pardon me a moment, Tim, while I talk over your virtual shoulder.) Trent, I hope you know that proclaiming that a work is 'placed in the Public Domain' is problematic and has indeterminate effects[1] that may depend on the jurisdiction. And that you can achieve literally all of what you want to achieve -- without the feeling of ideological purity but also without the legal problems -- but just saying: Copyright (C) 2013 Trent W. Buck. You may do whatever you want with this work. You'd be doing a huge favour to anyone who might be tempted to include your script into a larger work -- and an even bigger favour to other coders who might be tempted to follow your example for a more-complex work where this sort of legal error can have more-drastic consequences. And yes, I do give this advice to pretty much everyone in the open-source community I see perpetuating this lurking threat to those doing code reuse. [1] Judges might rule it to have the intended effect, to have no effect and be void, to create a perpetual licence for unrestricted use, or possibly other outcomes -- differently for each jurisdiction. There is in general throughout the Berne Convention world, which I believe is now all countries, no mechanism for copyright owners to completely eradicate their copyright titles, and it's specifically known in certain jurisdictions including the UK that this ploy does not work at all.