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> WTFPL not allowed. We also do not allow contribution to projects under the WTFPL. I am assuming this does not apply to personal projects, but then why would

> WTFPL not allowed. We also do not allow contribution to projects under the WTFPL. I am assuming this does not apply to personal projects, but then why would you contribute Google code to something that you cannot use anyway due to licensing issues?

tokenizerrr 9y ago
Guess nothing I release will be used at Google. Oh well, none of it is particularly good or relevant anyway. Funny though, because they are doing exactly the opposite as what the license allows them to do.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  They're doing exactly what the license allows them to do: WTF they want. Which in this case, is not deal with it.
- _ph_ 9y ago
  I guess this is a case where the intent of the license might be obvious, but the legal details of the license not worked out well enough. I really don't understand why people, who basically want to open their sources to everyone, don't just take one of the more established licenses for that purpose, like MIT/BSD.
  - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
    Because it's an intentional thumbing-of-nose at licence wankery. WTFPL is a statement that "do what you want and stop being so precious about it".
    - _ph_ 9y ago
      Proper licensing of software is a technical requirement, if you want your software to be used. The technicalities of the law might be unneccessary complex, bizarre even in some cases, but thats how the law is. We programmers are not goint to change that. So, if you really don't care, just take the MIT license, which is about the simplest of the widely used licenses. With that license, anyone interested has a clear base to use your software. Unless of course, you don't intend to share your software for real in the first place.
      - burntsushi 9y ago
        Your original comment said you "didn't understand," not that you "didn't agree." The former prompts a very different answer than the latter, but you're acting as if you said the latter. To understand it, all you need to do is understand that some folks take actions based on ideological beliefs, often to the exclusion of pragmatism, knowingly or not.
        _ph_ 9y ago
        No, it doesn't. I really do not understand why one thinks this is a good idea. Yes, people are free in their beliefs and expression. But if they try to do this with a nonstandard license, it only means, that the software is effectively not published as open source. The technicalities of the law are very complicated. Tiny mistakes can render a license unusable or just invalid. So, the best advice I can give any author is to stick to one of the well-known license, as this makes it very likely that the software can be used by others.
        burntsushi 9y ago
        > I really do not understand why one thinks this is a good idea. You really don't understand that sometimes people act idealistically, often to the exclusion of pragmatism? What don't you understand about it? Please consider that not everyone has the same life priorities as you.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    WTFPL is essentially an ideological stance against the concept of intellectually property. To use the software you have to partially reject the importance of license compliance.
Klathmon 9y ago
It's not just because they can't use the code, it's also because WTFPL doesn't include some very important things for a license (like a warranty disclaimer), meaning just contributing to the code could get you into legal trouble.
- norrius 9y ago
  So basically WTFPL-licensed code is as good as not licensed at all, which is a nono?
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    That seems to be the general consensus among a handful of legal people I talked to when the whole left-pad thing happened (which was WTFPL licensed).
    - nwellnhof 9y ago
      That's what I'd expect legal people to say about a license that every layman can understand and that makes their consulting mostly unnecessary.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        The legal system and lawyers aren't just some kind of conspiracy that only exists to funnel money into their system, they solve a very real purpose. "Do what the fuck you want" isn't even a good sentence, let alone a statement on what you can do, how your liability is limited, rules on naming and attribution, etc... Questions like "Can I use this without attribution?", "Can I hold you liable for the code you wrote?", "Will you charge me for using this code?", "What does the license cover? (documentation? just the program? just source code?)", and "Who owns the copyright for this work?" are not answered by the license, leaving them all up in the air. I'm not going to use code that someone can attempt to charge me for using later, and I'm not going to contribute to code that can cause me to be sued for my contributions not working. I get the want for simple licenses, but I feel that licenses like MIT or Apache2 are simple enough to be understood by most people, and they fulfil all the checkboxes of a real license. It's especially telling that the WTFPL contains a clause which calls out a lot of this information for the license text only (must be distributed verbatim or have the name changed, all are permitted to distribute it, and a copyright for the license text).
jrockway 9y ago
Google's contention has always been that there is no such thing as a personal project. You can fill out a form to officially get permission to have a "personal project", however, but I doubt many people want to deal with the bureaucracy. You will notice 6 missing years in commits to my personal github. That is why. Every "personal project" I did ended up in the Google repository instead.
- Daycrawler 9y ago
  What do you mean fill out a form? There is a clause in the work contract?
  - geofft 9y ago
    There is a clause in the work contract that claims that Google has ownership of all your IP relating to Google's current or planned businesses. Given that it's Google, that's... a very broad category. You can apply (the process is described on the same website as TFA) to have Google declare that a certain project definitely is not one of their businesses and therefore not covered. You could also make your own judgment, but (having talked to a lawyer about this when considering a Google offer) my impression is that that is a very bad idea and you should go through the process. (I only know about the US-but-not-California version of the contract; it might be different in other jurisdictions.)
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    I think that laws should feature these extremelly large fines to companies for keeping clauses in contract that are already known to be in conflict with existing laws. A very large number of contracts will be so much better and more slim, and a lot of people will not be harrassed by scare tactics.
- fiiv 9y ago
  Interesting. By that do you mean that you chose to release your personal projects under Google or that your personal projects were useful to Google and hence you got their official blessing on them?
- 9y ago

tokenizerrr 9y ago

Guess nothing I release will be used at Google. Oh well, none of it is particularly good or relevant anyway. Funny though, because they are doing exactly the opposite as what the license allows them to do.

scrollaway 9y ago
They're doing exactly what the license allows them to do: WTF they want. Which in this case, is not deal with it.
_ph_ 9y ago
I guess this is a case where the intent of the license might be obvious, but the legal details of the license not worked out well enough. I really don't understand why people, who basically want to open their sources to everyone, don't just take one of the more established licenses for that purpose, like MIT/BSD.
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  Because it's an intentional thumbing-of-nose at licence wankery. WTFPL is a statement that "do what you want and stop being so precious about it".
  - _ph_ 9y ago
    Proper licensing of software is a technical requirement, if you want your software to be used. The technicalities of the law might be unneccessary complex, bizarre even in some cases, but thats how the law is. We programmers are not goint to change that. So, if you really don't care, just take the MIT license, which is about the simplest of the widely used licenses. With that license, anyone interested has a clear base to use your software. Unless of course, you don't intend to share your software for real in the first place.
    - burntsushi 9y ago
      Your original comment said you "didn't understand," not that you "didn't agree." The former prompts a very different answer than the latter, but you're acting as if you said the latter. To understand it, all you need to do is understand that some folks take actions based on ideological beliefs, often to the exclusion of pragmatism, knowingly or not.
      - _ph_ 9y ago
        No, it doesn't. I really do not understand why one thinks this is a good idea. Yes, people are free in their beliefs and expression. But if they try to do this with a nonstandard license, it only means, that the software is effectively not published as open source. The technicalities of the law are very complicated. Tiny mistakes can render a license unusable or just invalid. So, the best advice I can give any author is to stick to one of the well-known license, as this makes it very likely that the software can be used by others.
        burntsushi 9y ago
        > I really do not understand why one thinks this is a good idea. You really don't understand that sometimes people act idealistically, often to the exclusion of pragmatism? What don't you understand about it? Please consider that not everyone has the same life priorities as you.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  WTFPL is essentially an ideological stance against the concept of intellectually property. To use the software you have to partially reject the importance of license compliance.

Klathmon 9y ago

It's not just because they can't use the code, it's also because WTFPL doesn't include some very important things for a license (like a warranty disclaimer), meaning just contributing to the code could get you into legal trouble.

norrius 9y ago
So basically WTFPL-licensed code is as good as not licensed at all, which is a nono?
- Klathmon 9y ago
  That seems to be the general consensus among a handful of legal people I talked to when the whole left-pad thing happened (which was WTFPL licensed).
  - nwellnhof 9y ago
    That's what I'd expect legal people to say about a license that every layman can understand and that makes their consulting mostly unnecessary.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      The legal system and lawyers aren't just some kind of conspiracy that only exists to funnel money into their system, they solve a very real purpose. "Do what the fuck you want" isn't even a good sentence, let alone a statement on what you can do, how your liability is limited, rules on naming and attribution, etc... Questions like "Can I use this without attribution?", "Can I hold you liable for the code you wrote?", "Will you charge me for using this code?", "What does the license cover? (documentation? just the program? just source code?)", and "Who owns the copyright for this work?" are not answered by the license, leaving them all up in the air. I'm not going to use code that someone can attempt to charge me for using later, and I'm not going to contribute to code that can cause me to be sued for my contributions not working. I get the want for simple licenses, but I feel that licenses like MIT or Apache2 are simple enough to be understood by most people, and they fulfil all the checkboxes of a real license. It's especially telling that the WTFPL contains a clause which calls out a lot of this information for the license text only (must be distributed verbatim or have the name changed, all are permitted to distribute it, and a copyright for the license text).

jrockway 9y ago

Google's contention has always been that there is no such thing as a personal project. You can fill out a form to officially get permission to have a "personal project", however, but I doubt many people want to deal with the bureaucracy. You will notice 6 missing years in commits to my personal github. That is why. Every "personal project" I did ended up in the Google repository instead.

Daycrawler 9y ago
What do you mean fill out a form? There is a clause in the work contract?
- geofft 9y ago
  There is a clause in the work contract that claims that Google has ownership of all your IP relating to Google's current or planned businesses. Given that it's Google, that's... a very broad category. You can apply (the process is described on the same website as TFA) to have Google declare that a certain project definitely is not one of their businesses and therefore not covered. You could also make your own judgment, but (having talked to a lawyer about this when considering a Google offer) my impression is that that is a very bad idea and you should go through the process. (I only know about the US-but-not-California version of the contract; it might be different in other jurisdictions.)
- thriftwy 9y ago
  I think that laws should feature these extremelly large fines to companies for keeping clauses in contract that are already known to be in conflict with existing laws. A very large number of contracts will be so much better and more slim, and a lot of people will not be harrassed by scare tactics.
fiiv 9y ago
Interesting. By that do you mean that you chose to release your personal projects under Google or that your personal projects were useful to Google and hence you got their official blessing on them?
9y ago