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>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

>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.)
      - khedoros1 10y ago
        I'd mostly be worried about that case if they, afterwards, decided to sue me for copyright infringement of my own code. I expect that that could be a difficult situation to explain in court. "Yes, your honor, I wrote the software, gave it away for free, and said that someone else could take credit." It just sounds weird, and I think it'd be a somewhat foreign concept for most people. If I'm putting my stuff out on WTFPL, it basically implies that I'm already OK with someone taking it, relicensing it, and distributing it under a new license (and even under a new attribution). Personally, I would have a problem with it, so I've never licensed anything under WTFPL.
  - hsivonen 10y ago
    > What's wrong with the MIT license? Navigate to about:license in Firefox. Does it seem like a good idea to have to reproduce every variant (with each unique notice) of MIT and BSD license?
- lmm 10y ago
  No. The FSF is broadly approving of the unlicense but recommends CC0 above it: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Unlicense https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Unlicense . The OSI has a specific concern about the patent language in CC0 and does not generally approve of public domain dedications; I don't see any specific concern about the unlicense though. Debian doesn't have any coments about either as far as I know. It sounds to me like the unlicense is the best option - the OSI's concern about CC0 sounds reasonable to me, and the WTFPL doesn't have any fallback for jurisdictions that consider public domain dedications invalid.
  - hannob 10y ago
    The Unlicense seems to be unapproved by OSI as well. I'm getting the impression the OSI for some reason doesn't want to approve any license without restrictions. One option is of course to "hack" the osi approval by, e.g., saying "this is licensed under CC0, alternatively it's licensed under MIT". (MIT is just an example and can be replaced with any other OSI-approved license). But it seems a bit stupid that there isn't an easy solution for this.
    - lmm 10y ago
      The OSI doesn't want to approve any public domain dedication, they believe it's better to use an open-source license (or else that a public domain dedication is outside their scope, since in a technical sense it isn't necessarily a license). I don't know why they evaluated the fallback license of CC0 and didn't evaluate the fallback license of Unlicense - maybe it's just a question of it never being submitted by the authors?
      - jcranmer 10y ago
        > The OSI doesn't want to approve any public domain dedication, they believe it's better to use an open-source license I've heard that the ability to dedicate your work to the public domain may not be possible in some European jurisdictions, and this concern was why public domain dedications were frowned upon.
      - 10y ago
Mithaldu 10y ago
When you say such things you should also mention that they did not approve it because it is redundant to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_License I.e. they're not saying it's bad, just superfluous. Also, i wonder what effect approval/rejection by the OSI has in any case. Does anyone care what they say?

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.)
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      I'd mostly be worried about that case if they, afterwards, decided to sue me for copyright infringement of my own code. I expect that that could be a difficult situation to explain in court. "Yes, your honor, I wrote the software, gave it away for free, and said that someone else could take credit." It just sounds weird, and I think it'd be a somewhat foreign concept for most people. If I'm putting my stuff out on WTFPL, it basically implies that I'm already OK with someone taking it, relicensing it, and distributing it under a new license (and even under a new attribution). Personally, I would have a problem with it, so I've never licensed anything under WTFPL.
- hsivonen 10y ago
  > What's wrong with the MIT license? Navigate to about:license in Firefox. Does it seem like a good idea to have to reproduce every variant (with each unique notice) of MIT and BSD license?
lmm 10y ago
No. The FSF is broadly approving of the unlicense but recommends CC0 above it: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Unlicense https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Unlicense . The OSI has a specific concern about the patent language in CC0 and does not generally approve of public domain dedications; I don't see any specific concern about the unlicense though. Debian doesn't have any coments about either as far as I know. It sounds to me like the unlicense is the best option - the OSI's concern about CC0 sounds reasonable to me, and the WTFPL doesn't have any fallback for jurisdictions that consider public domain dedications invalid.
- hannob 10y ago
  The Unlicense seems to be unapproved by OSI as well. I'm getting the impression the OSI for some reason doesn't want to approve any license without restrictions. One option is of course to "hack" the osi approval by, e.g., saying "this is licensed under CC0, alternatively it's licensed under MIT". (MIT is just an example and can be replaced with any other OSI-approved license). But it seems a bit stupid that there isn't an easy solution for this.
  - lmm 10y ago
    The OSI doesn't want to approve any public domain dedication, they believe it's better to use an open-source license (or else that a public domain dedication is outside their scope, since in a technical sense it isn't necessarily a license). I don't know why they evaluated the fallback license of CC0 and didn't evaluate the fallback license of Unlicense - maybe it's just a question of it never being submitted by the authors?
    - jcranmer 10y ago
      > The OSI doesn't want to approve any public domain dedication, they believe it's better to use an open-source license I've heard that the ability to dedicate your work to the public domain may not be possible in some European jurisdictions, and this concern was why public domain dedications were frowned upon.
    - 10y ago

Mithaldu 10y ago

When you say such things you should also mention that they did not approve it because it is redundant to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_License I.e. they're not saying it's bad, just superfluous. Also, i wonder what effect approval/rejection by the OSI has in any case. Does anyone care what they say?