The WTFPL brings blissful clarity to a heated issue.
While I endorse its spirit, I'm afraid it suffers from the failings of many other such licenses, namely, lack of indemnification.
If you've ever been through the process of getting business - esp. E&O - insurance, you'll understand that indemnification is pretty important. Which is why some licenses have been updated recently (e.g., Apache 2.0) to indeminify. Sure, it won't stop you from getting sued, but it makes harder for the plaintiff to get very far unless they can prove malicious intent.
A simple indemnification clause is pretty simple to cut&paste. Too bad WTFPL didn't take the time to add that as item (1). Changing names does not protect the innocent.
This issue is also a sore point for me wrt the Artistic license, which does a poor job of clearly stating indemnification. Whenever possible/appropriate, I've found the AFL accomplishes what I intend (i.e., "do what the f*ck you want, but I'M NOT LIABLE")
Re:Not so fast my friend…
Aristotle on 2006-09-30T02:09:37
I agree, but the AFL falls short on a count at which the WFTPL is unbeatable: brevity and simplicity.
Personally, my ideal licence (for works I am not significantly invested in; GPL otherwise) would state the following:
- Do not claim the work is yours.
- Do with it whatever you want.
- Don’t blame me.
This is very close to the MIT licence, except there is no copyright notice obligation. You may just not claim you wrote it.
Re:Not so fast my friend…
Matts on 2006-09-30T02:57:42
See SQLite.Re:Not so fast my friend…
Abigail on 2006-09-30T11:35:58
Not allowed to claim you wrote the software doesn't prevent my brother from claiming I wrote it.
I prefer to use MIT, with releasing it into the public domain as a close second. I seriously dislike the GPL.
Re:Not so fast my friend…
Aristotle on 2006-09-30T16:20:20
Good catch on the loophole, but I wasn’t drafting licence text – merely outlining the statements. One would hope that a lawyer would catch that, and I would never write an actual licence without having a lawyer look at it.
I does not surprise me that you dislike the GPL. Frankly, I would have been surprised if you didn’t. I think copyleft has its place, though. (Just like non-free software does.) The MIT licence is what I use as well when I don’t care about copyleft (ie. in most cases).
Don’t put things in the public domain. Many jurisdictions do not have such a legal construct (German law, f.ex.), so putting things in the public domain will make them harder to use for some of your audience than if you retained copyright.
