A Novel Open Source License

I’m in London, finishing up a European vacation with a visit to a couple of clients for work before heading back to Silicon Valley.

Today, one client’s CEO showed me around and introduced me to one of the tech guys. After shaking my hand, one of them immediately enlarged the newest open source license he wanted to get approved for his project:

The Do What the Fuck You Want License.

I had never encountered this license in the past and was a little flabbergasted to encounter it on-site on-screen for immediate approval.

I am happy to report, I managed to maintain some semblance of composure and let them know that for this particular client’s needs, this license was acceptable.

Also, I immediately went back to my hotel and looked up the history, as I couldn’t believe that this license was already on Version 2.0 after only a decade or so… The GPL is only on 3.0 after 23+ years!

  1. Matt Ginzton 2011.09.21 12:50pm

    I ran into this one with imapsync, when I wanted to migrate an existing IMAP mailbox to Google Apps — imapsync seems to be the best tool for this, and it’s licensed under the WTFPL, and between that and some amusing clashes between some ambiguous statements by the author and the ideology of various Linux distros, some still distribute it and some don’t.

    Here’s another good one I just ran into — though I don’t know if it’s actually used by anyone other than the guy who created it — the D&R (Death and Repudiation) license: https://github.com/indeyets/syck/blob/master/COPYING. OK, that’s not the same thing at all, because the WTFPL is actually useful. I just thought of this post’s title when I accidentally ran into the D&R license.

  2. Tennille 2011.09.27 8:09am

    Thanks, Matt.

    I’d never seen the Death and Repudiation license before.

    Hard to understand exactly what they were getting at, there…

    Good thing it’s dual-licensed with BSD. [grin]