For what it's worth, as someone who currently favours the public domain over copyright for his work, I will say that it's not especially because I think that it's simpler to choose the public domain; it's because I've tried to understand what copyright means and what public domain means and I think that public domain makes more sense and better serves my interests.
In particular, it reflects the fact that I don't think readers of my work should be obliged to follow any rules I might set (license) when they turn to the creation of derived works. They should go and do as they like and, where appropriate, acknowledge prior art (as a matter of professionalism).
I also feel that the problem of associating each "expression" with it's legal creator is a nasty problem fraught with difficulties; certainly, in this regard, you can say that I choose public domain because of its simplicity.
By the way, djb has argued in defence of the public domain here:
Anyway, I'm interested to read other developers views on this topic but I'm no authority and don't want to give the impression that I think it's unreasonable to choose differently. And anyway, most do! GPL, BSD and the rest seem much more popular than public domain.
In particular, it reflects the fact that I don't think readers of my work should be obliged to follow any rules I might set (license) when they turn to the creation of derived works. They should go and do as they like and, where appropriate, acknowledge prior art (as a matter of professionalism).
I also feel that the problem of associating each "expression" with it's legal creator is a nasty problem fraught with difficulties; certainly, in this regard, you can say that I choose public domain because of its simplicity.
By the way, djb has argued in defence of the public domain here:
http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html
Anyway, I'm interested to read other developers views on this topic but I'm no authority and don't want to give the impression that I think it's unreasonable to choose differently. And anyway, most do! GPL, BSD and the rest seem much more popular than public domain.