Re: [libreplanet-discuss] WTFPL Worse License Ever?

[Mark Holmquist]

On 12/18/2015 08:32 PM, Julien Kyou wrote:
> [0]meaning only this document not the licensed materials?

Yes, the first "Do WTF you want" clause is about the license, not the 
works being licensed under it. That means the license is also modifiable 
and adaptable.

> > [1]so basically closing the source is ok?
> I was not really asking this, so much as pointing it out

Yes - this is the biggest difference between a copyleft license and a 
permissive license, and it's nothing new, and there's nothing wrong with 
it necessarily. I'd argue that the community of programmers often 
doesn't pull source code into secret, but if they absolutely need to, 
they have that freedom.

(I realize it was a rhetorical question, but since it's also a 
contention that allowing downstream to close the source is *necessarily* 
an issue, I answered it anyway)

> Absolutely, I agree 'permissive-non-copyleft' has a place but for most
> things I'd sooner just slap a GPL on and be done

The GPL, for all the good it does in the world, is a more complex 
license to administer and enforce. You must include license headers in 
all of the files in your project, for example, which may not be a viable 
option for some, or may be a step that others ignore.

To enforce the GPL, especially the parts about including a GPL'd library 
in a compiled binary of a larger project, requires a lot of sleuthing, 
or to simply rely on the goodwill of other programmers. The latter 
solution usually works pretty well, but if the Free Software movement 
asserts that non-free software is unethical, surely they're capable of 
ignoring license terms.

And, if you're working on a project that *is* non-free, but you want to 
release a library that you wrote for it as free software, you can 
release it under a permissive license (though admittedly, a company 
probably wouldn't want the WTFPL exactly, though it is modifiable, so 
they could transform it to say "You just DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO.") with 
relative ease, and avoid a lot of overhead of making sure you're 
complying with every single provision of the GPL or whatever other 
document you had discovered.

I guess I'm just adding examples to your statement that permissive 
licenses "ha[ve] a place", but I felt it would be useful. I often fear 
this mailing list is getting a little tone-deaf.

> Anyways, I just don't like seeing open-source being abused. So when I
> learnt of this zero clause license, I felt sick.

How is this an abuse of open-source? It's a valid open source license.



--
Mark Holmquist
mtraceur@member.fsf.org
http://marktraceur.info