WTFPL – Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License

pulls out soap box The WTFPL is great, though. It's a shame not more people use it. It seems to me that for truly free speech, restrictive licenses need to be abandoned, even if it's at the sake of a content donor's money (traditional copyright) or fame (copyright and copyleft). There are a lot of good arguments for the copyfree movement, in general. If we see freedom as being the absence of limitations, licenses like the WTFPL can really be considered the most free, and general arguments for free software can be applied appropriately.

And, as we've seen with the advent of unauthorized content distribution networks, people will treat work of merit as if it's licensed WTFPL anyway, whether the author/s like/s it or not. Rejecting confusing license terms makes it easier for projects to thrive in the open source community as well. It really confounds me how RMS can reject DRM but be so supportive of his own freedom-limiting psychological DRM of sorts.

Here's a list -- http://copyfree.org/licenses/ -- of these sorts of licenses, and a good, slightly more serious introduction to the public domain/copyfree/WTFPL movement in general, for those interested.

Don't write your own license.

Don't write your own contracts.

Don't write your own legal documents.

There are plenty of solid, well written and unambiguous licenses out there that one can use to offer your users the same freedoms without the WTF.

People will punch others in the face outside bars on Friday nights too, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable, even if it's hard to prosecute universally.

Some content creators (OK, let's be honest: an awful lot of content creators) would rather their work isn't used by the other side's political party, or by XYZ bigoted group, or by Megacorp in their advertising campaign. If you don't want to release all rights to a creative work, you don't have to. There are legal protections available to content creators right now, so there is still a justifiable benefit in retaining some rights, regardless of any arguments about licence-ignoring personal use and interpersonal distribution.

I think you are unfair by calling copyleft licenses "DRM of sorts". Copyleft licenses voluntarily make a compromise: they chose to lessen the freedom of individuals to grow the freedom of the group/community. You may or may not agree with that, but you have to recognize that such trade-offs are necessary to organize a society. A clear example is the law which forbid one to kill someone else: at the individual level, they deprive you of the right to kill people, but at the same time they increase the freedom of the society as a whole. DRM are not the same: at no points they benefit to the people who are restricted by them.

I would call copyfree licences more permissives and copyleft licences more restrictives. But I would not call copyfree licences more free than copyleft licences. I would do the opposite. Maybe this says that I value the freedom of the society more than the freedom of individuals, because I do not believe at all that the freedom of the society is the mere sum of the freedom of the individuals who compose it.

https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL

From Joshua Gay:

> Our interpretation of this license is that it is > intended to allow you to do whatever you want with the > work. Therefore, we assume that this includes using, > copying, modifying, and distributing modifications for any > purpose.

He was, however, cautious to say "I can not conjecture how a court would interpret that phrase" and recommended to consult a lawyer.