License Committee Report for April 2009

Alon von Bismark al.von.bi at googlemail.com
Thu Apr 2 18:25:47 UTC 2009


The context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL

2009/4/1 Ernest Prabhakar <ernest.prabhakar at gmail.com>:
> From what I can tell, either "Do whatever you want" is literally true, in
> which case it offers nothing over public domain --  or, if you insist on an
> international equivalent, CC0: http://creativecommons.org/license/zero/

The CC0's primary instrument is the outright abandonment of copyright:

"Waiver. To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention
of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently,
irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all
of Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights and associated claims and
causes of action, ..."

The copyright *license* part is only a "Fallback" option.

"Public License Fallback. Should any part of the Waiver for any reason
be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law ..."

See

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

Given that the WTFPL, prima facie, doesn't contain such an abandonment
instrument, one just can't equate both.

>
> Or, if it is not _really_ true that I can do whatever I want, it is a
> misleading title, and worthy of rejection on the grounds of potential
> confusion.

Why are you in doubt that you, AS WTFPL LICENSEE, HAVING ACCEPTED the
WTFPL, somehow can NOT do whatever you want (that can be stopped by
your WTFPL LICENSORS under copyright and/or contract laws), given the
clear language that "You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO"?

It is only if you are not willing to become a licensee (e.g. being
constrained by "cannot be mentioned in polite company" attitude or
whatever), you can NOT do whatever you want to (in the sense of being
constrained by the copyright law).

-alvbi

--
http://www.albert-einstein.org/archives13.html



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