<story><title>Debian and the PHP license</title><url>http://lwn.net/Articles/604630/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alupis</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s ambiguous for several reasons.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s not much preventing me from re-assinging copyright to myself (in countries that allow it) and then suing the original creator.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing to stop me from taking your code, re-licensing it under say a proprietary license, then suing the original creator.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing that stops me from taking your project&amp;#x27;s branding&amp;#x2F;symbol&amp;#x2F;graphics&amp;#x2F;name and claiming it as my own and then suing you.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing that stops me from taking your work and then not providing attribution back to the original creator.&lt;p&gt;By default there is nothing that absolves the license holder from warranty nor implied fitness for use. (If it destroys my computer running your code, I can sue you, and worse, you accept liability by default). That is, unless you include the optional snippet of text that absolves any warranty issues... but since it&amp;#x27;s optional, and not on the main license page (it&amp;#x27;s in the FAQ page), many authors forget to include this.&lt;p&gt;There are other things too... like, legally, what does &amp;quot;DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT&amp;quot; actually mean? The law is black and white (or at least we try to be), being in the grey opens the door for abuse. Has it been challenged before in a legal sense? Has a lawyer reviewed it?&lt;p&gt;While I certainly understand the intent and spirit of this license; this license appears to be nothing more than a bad (and somewhat distasteful) joke that serves more harm than good.&lt;p&gt;I agree, better off choosing a public domain license or one of the several vetted FOSS licensees.</text></item><item><author>yellowapple</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t see how &amp;quot;You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO&amp;quot; is ambiguous, legally or otherwise.&lt;p&gt;That said, this would probably be better served with an explicit public-domain declaration or equivalent (like the CC0 license).</text></item><item><author>Alupis</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad Debian is putting their foot down on this issue. There are way too many careless and sometimes downright bad licenses floating around.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen, and argued against, people using the WTFPL before: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wtfpl.net/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wtfpl.net&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some, even in projects that could be considered &amp;quot;serious&amp;quot; and reused in another project (I won&amp;#x27;t touch a WTFPL licenses project because to me, it&amp;#x27;s not a license and is way to legally ambiguous).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen way to many developers think they can write up some text and call it a license and it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;good&amp;quot;. Not the case.&lt;p&gt;Pick a real license that was written by lawyers and has well understood (and preferably previously challenged) legal ramifications.</text></item><item><author>ecaron</author><text>Another conversation along the similar vein of &amp;quot;Debian putting its foot down about a license&amp;quot; is Firefox (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Mozilla_Corporation_software_re...&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clarry</author><text>We discussed this before[1] but you failed to back up any claims about this re-licensing and re-assigning business you vent about here.  You still haven&amp;#x27;t explained how you can &lt;i&gt;take away someone else&amp;#x27;s rights&lt;/i&gt;.  Copyright licenses are used to grant other people rights, not to take them away.  You still haven&amp;#x27;t read the Berne convention, have you?  Can you point at a case in any country that suggests the license could be interpreted outside the context of copyright?  I.e. that &amp;quot;do what the fuck you want&amp;quot; in a copyright license can be seen as granting someone rights beyond the ones (related to copying, modification, performance, etc.) that are normally exclusive to the author and therefore require him to use a license to grant others these same rights?&lt;p&gt;If you can&amp;#x27;t back anything up, I don&amp;#x27;t think you should be spreading your own interpretations in this manner, presenting them as truth.  We already have far too many people confused over licenses, and passing that confusion on doesn&amp;#x27;t help anyone.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8043969&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=8043969&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Debian and the PHP license</title><url>http://lwn.net/Articles/604630/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Alupis</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s ambiguous for several reasons.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s not much preventing me from re-assinging copyright to myself (in countries that allow it) and then suing the original creator.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing to stop me from taking your code, re-licensing it under say a proprietary license, then suing the original creator.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing that stops me from taking your project&amp;#x27;s branding&amp;#x2F;symbol&amp;#x2F;graphics&amp;#x2F;name and claiming it as my own and then suing you.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing that stops me from taking your work and then not providing attribution back to the original creator.&lt;p&gt;By default there is nothing that absolves the license holder from warranty nor implied fitness for use. (If it destroys my computer running your code, I can sue you, and worse, you accept liability by default). That is, unless you include the optional snippet of text that absolves any warranty issues... but since it&amp;#x27;s optional, and not on the main license page (it&amp;#x27;s in the FAQ page), many authors forget to include this.&lt;p&gt;There are other things too... like, legally, what does &amp;quot;DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT&amp;quot; actually mean? The law is black and white (or at least we try to be), being in the grey opens the door for abuse. Has it been challenged before in a legal sense? Has a lawyer reviewed it?&lt;p&gt;While I certainly understand the intent and spirit of this license; this license appears to be nothing more than a bad (and somewhat distasteful) joke that serves more harm than good.&lt;p&gt;I agree, better off choosing a public domain license or one of the several vetted FOSS licensees.</text></item><item><author>yellowapple</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t see how &amp;quot;You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO&amp;quot; is ambiguous, legally or otherwise.&lt;p&gt;That said, this would probably be better served with an explicit public-domain declaration or equivalent (like the CC0 license).</text></item><item><author>Alupis</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad Debian is putting their foot down on this issue. There are way too many careless and sometimes downright bad licenses floating around.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen, and argued against, people using the WTFPL before: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wtfpl.net/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wtfpl.net&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some, even in projects that could be considered &amp;quot;serious&amp;quot; and reused in another project (I won&amp;#x27;t touch a WTFPL licenses project because to me, it&amp;#x27;s not a license and is way to legally ambiguous).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen way to many developers think they can write up some text and call it a license and it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;good&amp;quot;. Not the case.&lt;p&gt;Pick a real license that was written by lawyers and has well understood (and preferably previously challenged) legal ramifications.</text></item><item><author>ecaron</author><text>Another conversation along the similar vein of &amp;quot;Debian putting its foot down about a license&amp;quot; is Firefox (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Mozilla_Corporation_software_re...&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>daxelrod</author><text>&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s not much preventing me from re-assinging copyright to myself (in countries that allow it) and then suing the original creator.&lt;p&gt;In what jurisdictions would that be interpreted as copyright reassignment? I can see how you might argue that &amp;quot;re-assign copyright to myself&amp;quot; is WTF you want to do, but the onus is on the &lt;i&gt;creator&lt;/i&gt; to assign copyright to you.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s nothing to stop me from taking your code, re-licensing it under say a proprietary license, then suing the original creator.&lt;p&gt;Suing them for what? There&amp;#x27;s nothing to prevent you from suing pretty much anyone, for any reason, including any of the other licenses. Second of all, if you&amp;#x27;re saying there&amp;#x27;s nothing preventing your suit from being successful, I still don&amp;#x27;t understand on what grounds. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what licence you&amp;#x27;ve relicensed under if the original author holds copyright.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s nothing that stops me from taking your project&amp;#x27;s branding&amp;#x2F;symbol&amp;#x2F;graphics&amp;#x2F;name and claiming it as my own and then suing you.&lt;p&gt;You could do this no matter what the license. What about the WTFPL would make your lawsuit any more successful than any other licence?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s nothing that stops me from taking your work and then not providing attribution back to the original creator.&lt;p&gt;This is fully within the intent of the WTFPL.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; By default there is nothing that absolves the license holder from warranty nor implied fitness for use.&lt;p&gt;You have a good point that this is something many people would want. Do you know in which jurisdictions this is actually needed? I wasn&amp;#x27;t able to find any sources for this.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Has it been challenged before in a legal sense? Has a lawyer reviewed it?&lt;p&gt;Excellent points.</text></comment>