Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL

by frostnovazzz • 13 years ago

38 63 13 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

angersock6• 13 years ago

My gamedev bros use this for our libraries, and I'd love to see wider adoption of it--mostly due to the spirit of the thing.

However, the number of people who come out and bawww about not picking a more widely recognized license (generally, LGPL or BSD) is disappointing; folks, if you want good licenses, you have to set an example.

I implore my fellow developers to use this wherever feasible--show some guts.

protomyth2• 13 years ago

To be blunt, the name is horrible and LGPL, BSD, MIT, and CC have been around long enough for folks (and not unimportantly in a lot of situations: corporate lawyers) to understand what they mean. It also doesn't look like a particularly good license if a bad actor gets me in front of a judge because they used my code and failed miserably.

angersock6• 13 years ago

Eh, I may get dragged up in front of a judge and sued one day, but I'd rather know that I did it as somebody with some chutzpah.

jerf• 13 years ago

Is BSD not a good license, then? Legally it seems hardly different than this license (not necessarily zero, but hardly worth getting excited about), just more legalistically phrased.

ricardobeat2• 13 years ago

The MIT license is essentialy "do whatever the fuck you want" in legal terms: http://mit-license.org/

DannyBee11• 13 years ago

Sorry, but please don't. The license has serious problems for developers. To start simple, first, while yeah, a judge is probably going to find you can do whatever you want, because it's not very explicit, there will be arguments over what you were allowed to do. It is entirely possible a judge will decide what is really meant is that you can do whatever reasonable thing you want to.

Worse, it does not effectively disclaim liability for the software developer. He claims he doesn't want "obnoxious things", such as "reproducing a huge disclaimer that is written in all caps".

The reason that all caps language is used is because of a history of court decisions and laws around what is required to effectively disclaim implied warranties. Right now, the license does not properly disclaim any implied warranties, which puts the developer at risk.

Worse than this, the text block he suggests putting in text if you want to disclaim warranty (http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/) would likely be ineffective in a lot of places.

I know everyone likes to think they won't get sued. But it does happen. It will wipe you out. It isn't worth taking a moral stand against a few lines of text in a source file.

To answer your other point, if you want good licenses, you have to actually know what the hell you are doing.

I really do understand that people want to not have to give a shit about this stuff, and have simple and clear licensing. Really. But this is not the path to accomplishing that.

The legal and political world takes a long time to adapt. Things like like free and open source software will eventually be sanely handled in the law. WTFPL is not going to be anywhere in that history.

anon1385• 13 years ago

>there will be arguments over what you were allowed to do

much like the GPL then

burntsushi2• 13 years ago

If a warranty disclaimer from another well-vetted license were used in the WTFPL, would that solve most of the problem? (Sans the judge ruling that it's only limited to reasonable things.)

ValentineC• 13 years ago

> The reason that all caps language is used is because of a history of court decisions and laws around what is required to effectively disclaim implied warranties. Right now, the license does not properly disclaim any implied warranties, which puts the developer at risk.

Just trying to learn a bit about US law here. This part intrigued me, and from what I've Googled so far, it's because of a requirement for the warranty to be "conspicuous". [1][2] Is all caps the most commonly accepted minimum as advised by lawyers (especially when they're advising business types who couldn't care less about putting it in red or bold or something else)?

[1] http://www.mslater.com/post/104847-why-are-warranty-disclaim...

[2] http://www.adamsdrafting.com/all-capitals/

angersock6• 13 years ago

I really do understand that people want to not have to give a shit about this stuff, and have simple and clear licensing. Really. But this is not the path to accomplishing that.

You've hit it on the head--unfortunately, what else are we to do?

I don't trust the general legal intuitions of ourselves and our peers, since we seem to be so rubbish at creating a useful legal and political climate for our industry (based on ~30 years of case law).

So, in the meantime, let's instead live in our ideal world, pull no punches, and cross the legal bridges when (and if) they come up. Perhaps a proper rallying will be tenable then, instead of us all being chickens.

As for licenses, I think Apache currently is best for "serious grown-up usage", no, what with the patent indemnification and all, or am I misinformed?

carterschonwald• 13 years ago

There are many other licenses that are similarly permissive, but that lawyers actually have vetted.

If you ever want interesting commercial adoption of software, you need to make sure the associated ip / software licenses are solid

burntsushi2• 13 years ago

Well, the FSF has approved the WTFPL as compatible with the GPL. [1] Certainly that doesn't mean it's been as vetted as the other licenses, but it counts for something IMO.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL

tekacs• 13 years ago

You could always just dual license. ;)

kurotek• 13 years ago

Exactly. I think of legalese as a computer language. Publishing your software globally means that your license document will be run through many sepatate jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction is akin to a unique runtime interpreter.

I prefer to stick with idiomatic legalese to avoid running into interpreter specific bugs :-)

tunnuz• 13 years ago

How is this different from an impolite MIT license?

Edit: also, for the interested, there is a free e-book from O'Reilly explaining the major free software licenses http://oreilly.com/openbook/osfreesoft/book/index.html

dkuntz22• 13 years ago

the main difference is that this essentially places the work in the public domain, where the MIT license means it's freely available, but the copyright is still the creator's. Also, thou have to retain the MIT license and distribute it with all subsequent works.

aprescott• 13 years ago

I don't think this is true. MIT explicitly allows sublicensing, meaning you can essentially just change the license on any derivative. The copyright notice needs to remain, though.

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

Thanks for the link. I remember how much trouble I had trying to pick a license when I first released code (even though it wasn't a big project or likely to be used by many people). I think I finally made my decision through research on StackOverflow and Wikipedia. This book would have been very useful.

nefreat• 13 years ago

This sounds like a more care-free way to do the same thing as http://unlicense.org

Personally I'd choose unlicense instead of WTFPL.

ernesth• 13 years ago

First, unlicense is a bad name for a license that is so different from no license.

Second, the first sentence and the third paragraphs do not work in most of the world: you cannot put a work in the public domain, even in countries that "recognize copyright laws".

Kiro• 13 years ago

Hackers care too much about licenses...

dkuntz22• 13 years ago

Not really. I mean, yes, more than the average person, but that's because code licensing helps make the world go 'round, and means we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we want to do something.

It's mostly because modern copyright law really doesn't want knowledge to be shared easily, or until the author has had a good, long profit run. Or until Disney has a good long profit run with the author's work.

charlesjshort• 13 years ago

OMWFL

Obey my will forever license. Copying or creating derivative works shall irrevocably enslave you to my will forever.

brokenparser• 13 years ago

BeerPL

I'd like a beer.

iso8859-12• 13 years ago

It's a bad license for two reasons: One, it does not cover the case where it's not possible to place stuff in the public domain (CC0 does). Two, it's alienating some users unnecessarily. Licenses are practical, there's no reason to invent a new term for concepts that already have well-known identifiers. Put your jokes outside the license section.

viraptor• 13 years ago

Another reason not to use it would be pre-approved licences in corporations. I can use software released under many popular free licenses without issues. But something like this one forces a roundtrip through the legal department which takes days / weeks.

If you want your software to be business/corporate friendly, make sure you're using something popular (and preferably not mentioning patents or special linking clauses).

SamHocevar• 13 years ago

(disclaimer: I wrote WTFPL v2)

I fart on your recommendation of the CC0.

Your first “reason” is totally bogus. There is no need to cover cases where it’s not possible to place stuff in the public domain, because there is no need to place stuff in the public domain. That’s a fabrication of the CC0 license and one of the reasons why the OSI does not recommend it. A license shouldn’t even mention public domain since it’s not a widely accepted concept.

Your second “reason” sounds like a matter of taste to me, especially since the CC0 goes to great lengths defining new terms such as “Commons” and “Affirmer”. If there’s a joke here, it’s the CC0, in needing more than a thousand words to basically say “do what the fuck you want”.

Moreover, here is a quote from the OSI about the CC0: “the Committee felt that approving such a license would set a dangerous precedent, and possibly even weaken patent infringement defenses available to users of software released under CC0”.

It’s also worth noting that the WTFPL predates the CC0 by nine years. Nine years to fill a non-existing void, and they couldn’t even do it properly.

octatone2• 13 years ago

This may be nitpicking, but it seems rather restrictive to force renaming of the license in the case of its modification. That is not very "do what the fuck you want to" ...

dpcan• 13 years ago

So, if I can just do what the Fuck I want to, then can I download your code and then re-license it as proprietary and charge royalties to everyone else who is just doing what the fuck they want to with it? I mean - I'm doing what the fuck I want to soooooo......

This is probably a stretch or something, but really, my point is that this license is so incredibly open to interpretation that I get worried about using code licensed with it every time.

steveklabnik• 13 years ago

With anyone who uses your re-licensed version, yes. Not the people who aren't.

ricardobeat2• 13 years ago

Of course you can. Companies use MIT/BSD/Apache/etc licensed work in proprietary systems all the time, that's what they are for. You're better off using one of those since they leave no room for confusion.

otikik• 13 years ago

I use MIT for this. Already well known, stablished, and has the same effect.

It is also less offensive to people who get offended by words.

That can be an advantage or a detriment; it depends on you.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

Exactly, the MIT license is my favorite out of all of theme. Apache, BSD, CC, etc - needlessly complicated and full of lawyer-lingo. MIT speaks to me and my priorities.

dnautics4• 13 years ago

I tend to do things with less legalism, with the copyheart (which is not a licence)

http://copyheart.org/

mjg59• 13 years ago

Am I allowed to modify copyhearted material? Distribute modified versions? Perform them? Incorporate them into works that are copyrighted?

dnautics4• 13 years ago

why are you asking for permission? You've already lost.

http://mimiandeunice.com/2011/06/23/allowed/

rwmj• 13 years ago

So no one can safely use your code, and you can be sued because you don't disclaim liability properly. Great idea!

dnautics4• 13 years ago

why should I have to 'disclaim liability'? Because our litigious society would like to take advantage me and sue my pants off for no real reason? Then the flaw is not in my code, is it?

pygy_• 13 years ago

See also it romantic counterpart: https://github.com/pygy/The-Romantic-WTF-Public-License

/shameless plug

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

wow didn't know this was fsf approved.

the in-your-face-ness of the name makes it a great tool for talking about copyright with someone and making a point.