5 ms·

Some of that reminds me when we tried to clean up the licensing situation in Gentoo. There's an incredible amount of self-invented licenses and if there's one

by hannob 10y ago

Some of that reminds me when we tried to clean up the licensing situation in Gentoo. There's an incredible amount of self-invented licenses and if there's one advice I'd like to give to all free and open source devs: Don't do this. It annoys people in Linux distros who have to decide what to do with your code, whether it's free and there almost certainly is an existing, widely used license that does what you want. Choose one of the mainstream licenses like MIT, GPL (2 or 3, whatever, we know what it means, it's fine), Apache-2 or even something like WTFPL. It's all fine, we know what it means. But don't pick three chapters of license A and one of License B to have your unique mix. I also remember we had a LICENSE as-is, which was supposed to mean something very specific, but it had a horrible result: Many devs used it as the license dumpster: "I don't know what license it is, so I'll tag it as 'as-is'." Thanks to lots of work, mostly done by Ulrich Müller, all of that mess is now cleaned up.

viraptor 10y ago
If you actually want your software used, then a known license is the best. In a corporate environment, it will be much easier to approve BSD or even GPL than WTFPL. There's most likely a preapproved list of known licenses and everything else needs to go through legal. You want your library used in the next big project? Don't use WTFPL.
- annnnd 10y ago
  Why not? It is basically a public domain license, it just uses more colorful language. IANAL, but I see no problem using such code in corporate environment. What are the risks?
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    YANAL, and IANAL, but those who are, are always suspicious of modified license texts. They always fear there's a hidden catch that the language (colourful or not) tries to hide and get you tricked. And they are not entirely unjustified to do so. Also, in a corporate environment, there's typically some additional overhead cost and bureaucracy and approvals that a new license text brings in, even when the engineers and lawyers manage to agree everything is OK.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    I don't think there's a problem. The situation I experienced is just that standard OSI licenses are preapproved. Anything else needs to go via manual process which takes days/weeks. So even if you say "do whatever you want", it's not a standard OSI license which means I have to get a confirmation first. And if I can find/write an alternative quicker, I will.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      There actually is a problem: There’s countries where "public domain" is not a thing, so the WTFPL becomes legally the same as "all rights reserved". Which is a problem.
  - halomru 10y ago
    It's very unclear how it works around the world in different legal systems. In comparison the CC0 spends a lot of words to work with all the jurisdictions where you can't legally give up all rights over a work. If you are operating internationally (like nearly the entire tech industry), complying in as many jurisdictions as possible is very valuable
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    WTFPL lacks a disclaimer of the implied warrant of merchantability. If you're the author of such code, you could be sued for damages if there is a bug in it.
- burntsushi 10y ago
  Not sure I really buy this. I have at least one project[1] that lots of people use despite the WTFPL. I don't use the WTFPL any more though. There's also SQLite, which is probably one of the most widely use libraries in existence. It's in the public domain. [1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > It's in the public domain. With an additional license for countries, like Germany, where the public domain doesn’t exist (as copyright isn’t really a thing, but only "creator rights" and "usage rights")
- lmm 10y ago
  > In a corporate environment, it will be much easier to approve BSD or even GPL than WTFPL. This is false in the large corporate environments I've worked in. The WTFPL is sufficiently established and mainstream that legal knows what it is and has a position that it's fine. Use of anything GPL requires a lot more specific review to ensure we'll be compliant.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    Yet true in my corporate environment. Corporate environments can differ.
    - lmm 10y ago
      I'm amazed. Your legal department is happy to approve the GPL (a long license that imposes significant obligations if you distribute anything) but not the WTFPL? I can understand maybe the WTFPL simply isn't on the list yet (though I'm still amazed they wouldn't put strict requirements on use of anything GPL, because you can't "statically" comply with the GPL - you have to take particular actions every time you distribute a derived work, and legal would need to be confident this was happening), but that's a one-time cost, and there's enough WTFPL software out there for it to be worthwhile.
      - belorn 10y ago
        A lot of companies have policy to always include license documents in specific place where customer can see it. Very few companies are fine to write "fuck" in documents that reaches customers. Very few are fine to have no license attached to software. A lot of companies distribute unmodified GPL software and have no issue with including the GPL licensing text (and source code) in ways that reaches customers.
        lmm 10y ago
        > Very few companies are fine to write "fuck" in documents that reaches customers. Very few are fine to have no license attached to software. Redistribute it under another license then? The WTFPL gives you permission to do that, after all. > A lot of companies distribute unmodified GPL software and have no issue with including the GPL licensing text (and source code) in ways that reaches customers. It's perfectly doable. But it's nonzero effort and it creates an ongoing obligation (as long as you're going to keep distributing the software, or something like 3 years after if you do the more customer-friendly thing of only distributing the source on request). I'm not surprised that a company would do it, but I'm amazed that a company would consider it less burdensome than the WTFPL.
eriknstr 10y ago
>even something like WTFPL In 2009, the Open Source Initiative chose not to approve the license as an open-source license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL#Discussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL#Discussion https://opensource.org/minutes20090304 https://opensource.org/minutes20090304
- hannob 10y ago
  Yeah, first I wanted to write CC0, but OSI also doesn't like that. But honestly, there's enough wtfpl code out there that it seems nobody has a big issue with it. And given hat it allows relicensing into any other free license it seems more a semantic issue. Is there a widely accepted "do anything you like"-license that everyone can agree upon? I noticed github had cc0 for a while, but now they offer "the unlicense".
  - viraptor 10y ago
    What's wrong with the MIT license? It's almost the same as WTFPL, but actually recognised.
    - hannob 10y ago
      MIT and all other BSDish licenses require attribution. There's an understandable wish by some people to just radically reduce the complexity of this whole topic. I don't want to have to say "You can use this for whatever, you just have to ...", even if "..." just means "you have to keep this line with the copyright info". I simply want to be able to say "you can use this for whatever you want, no restrictions".
      - sverige 10y ago
        Attribution does prevent the case where someone else takes your code, relicenses it under their name with a different license, and effectively locks you out of the house you built. (I know, it's hard to believe anyone would be so dishonest and petty, isn't it? That's where the complexity comes from.)

by hannob 10y ago

viraptor 10y ago

If you actually want your software used, then a known license is the best. In a corporate environment, it will be much easier to approve BSD or even GPL than WTFPL. There's most likely a preapproved list of known licenses and everything else needs to go through legal. You want your library used in the next big project? Don't use WTFPL.

annnnd 10y ago
Why not? It is basically a public domain license, it just uses more colorful language. IANAL, but I see no problem using such code in corporate environment. What are the risks?
- ptaipale 10y ago
  YANAL, and IANAL, but those who are, are always suspicious of modified license texts. They always fear there's a hidden catch that the language (colourful or not) tries to hide and get you tricked. And they are not entirely unjustified to do so. Also, in a corporate environment, there's typically some additional overhead cost and bureaucracy and approvals that a new license text brings in, even when the engineers and lawyers manage to agree everything is OK.
- viraptor 10y ago
  I don't think there's a problem. The situation I experienced is just that standard OSI licenses are preapproved. Anything else needs to go via manual process which takes days/weeks. So even if you say "do whatever you want", it's not a standard OSI license which means I have to get a confirmation first. And if I can find/write an alternative quicker, I will.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    There actually is a problem: There’s countries where "public domain" is not a thing, so the WTFPL becomes legally the same as "all rights reserved". Which is a problem.
- halomru 10y ago
  It's very unclear how it works around the world in different legal systems. In comparison the CC0 spends a lot of words to work with all the jurisdictions where you can't legally give up all rights over a work. If you are operating internationally (like nearly the entire tech industry), complying in as many jurisdictions as possible is very valuable
- jcranmer 10y ago
  WTFPL lacks a disclaimer of the implied warrant of merchantability. If you're the author of such code, you could be sued for damages if there is a bug in it.
burntsushi 10y ago
Not sure I really buy this. I have at least one project[1] that lots of people use despite the WTFPL. I don't use the WTFPL any more though. There's also SQLite, which is probably one of the most widely use libraries in existence. It's in the public domain. [1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml
- kuschku 10y ago
  > It's in the public domain. With an additional license for countries, like Germany, where the public domain doesn’t exist (as copyright isn’t really a thing, but only "creator rights" and "usage rights")
lmm 10y ago
> In a corporate environment, it will be much easier to approve BSD or even GPL than WTFPL. This is false in the large corporate environments I've worked in. The WTFPL is sufficiently established and mainstream that legal knows what it is and has a position that it's fine. Use of anything GPL requires a lot more specific review to ensure we'll be compliant.
- viraptor 10y ago
  Yet true in my corporate environment. Corporate environments can differ.
  - lmm 10y ago
    I'm amazed. Your legal department is happy to approve the GPL (a long license that imposes significant obligations if you distribute anything) but not the WTFPL? I can understand maybe the WTFPL simply isn't on the list yet (though I'm still amazed they wouldn't put strict requirements on use of anything GPL, because you can't "statically" comply with the GPL - you have to take particular actions every time you distribute a derived work, and legal would need to be confident this was happening), but that's a one-time cost, and there's enough WTFPL software out there for it to be worthwhile.
    - belorn 10y ago
      A lot of companies have policy to always include license documents in specific place where customer can see it. Very few companies are fine to write "fuck" in documents that reaches customers. Very few are fine to have no license attached to software. A lot of companies distribute unmodified GPL software and have no issue with including the GPL licensing text (and source code) in ways that reaches customers.
      - lmm 10y ago
        > Very few companies are fine to write "fuck" in documents that reaches customers. Very few are fine to have no license attached to software. Redistribute it under another license then? The WTFPL gives you permission to do that, after all. > A lot of companies distribute unmodified GPL software and have no issue with including the GPL licensing text (and source code) in ways that reaches customers. It's perfectly doable. But it's nonzero effort and it creates an ongoing obligation (as long as you're going to keep distributing the software, or something like 3 years after if you do the more customer-friendly thing of only distributing the source on request). I'm not surprised that a company would do it, but I'm amazed that a company would consider it less burdensome than the WTFPL.

eriknstr 10y ago

>even something like WTFPL In 2009, the Open Source Initiative chose not to approve the license as an open-source license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL#Discussion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL#Discussion https://opensource.org/minutes20090304 https://opensource.org/minutes20090304

hannob 10y ago
Yeah, first I wanted to write CC0, but OSI also doesn't like that. But honestly, there's enough wtfpl code out there that it seems nobody has a big issue with it. And given hat it allows relicensing into any other free license it seems more a semantic issue. Is there a widely accepted "do anything you like"-license that everyone can agree upon? I noticed github had cc0 for a while, but now they offer "the unlicense".
- viraptor 10y ago
  What's wrong with the MIT license? It's almost the same as WTFPL, but actually recognised.
  - hannob 10y ago
    MIT and all other BSDish licenses require attribution. There's an understandable wish by some people to just radically reduce the complexity of this whole topic. I don't want to have to say "You can use this for whatever, you just have to ...", even if "..." just means "you have to keep this line with the copyright info". I simply want to be able to say "you can use this for whatever you want, no restrictions".
    - sverige 10y ago
      Attribution does prevent the case where someone else takes your code, relicenses it under their name with a different license, and effectively locks you out of the house you built. (I know, it's hard to believe anyone would be so dishonest and petty, isn't it? That's where the complexity comes from.)