
“Good Luck with That” Public License - ihuman
https://github.com/me-shaon/GLWTPL
======
tener
This:

> 0\. You just DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO as long as you NEVER LEAVE A TRACE
> TO TRACK THE AUTHOR of the original product.

may be in fact quite tricky to ensure: unless you do an (potentially
expensive) audit of the code and all potential binary assets within you will
never be sure.

To see how difficult it is to erase all traces: see how the state-backed
hacking groups keep getting traced.

EDIT:

Why the downvotes? Yeah I know this is a joke license, but to a lawyer no
license is a joke, and to use something in a corporate environment you really
need to have one on board.

~~~
imtringued
"Copyright (c) [year] [fullname]"

I don't think it's possible to comply with this license because the license
text itself will already contain enough information to track the author.

~~~
lucb1e
Nobody said you had to leave it in there.

In fact, it explicitly states you have to get it out of there.

~~~
Someone1234
Maybe the license needs a license so we know how we're allowed to use it.

------
tzs
OT: has anyone tried licensing a program as a whole using a different license
than the individual components of the program?

If I ever release something that is large, I've considered licensing each
function and class separately using a BSD license, but licensing the program
as a whole as a compilation using a GPL license.

The idea is that if someone wants to just take a handful of useful things from
my program, such as my configuration file parser, a sales/VAT tax calculation
routine that supports the rounding modes of several jurisdictions, or things
like that, they can do so regardless of how they are licensing their code.
They can have the relatively low level building blocks.

If they are building something that fills the same niche as my program,
however, they have to be careful. For example, if we are both doing word
processors and they take my whole text processing engine (which consists of
dozens of individual components), then they really need to think twice if
their program is not GPL. Even though every function they have taken is
available under BSD, they have also taken the selection and arrangement of the
functions, which is covered by my compilation copyright.

~~~
ballenf
Depends on local laws. In the US, it's very tough to protect compilations of
otherwise public facts.

The real answer, however, is that if you had the funds and it made good
financial sense to challenge and pursue them, your whole perspective on the
affair would change. Litigating such a messy case would be _very, very_
expensive (again, in the US at least).

One goal in licensing is to think about "how do I make violations clearcut and
cheaper to enforce?" Your approach might require proving _how_ they compiled
their code together -- i.e., was it just coincidence that the two ended up
looking similar? What if they coded their own VAT tax code but used every
other piece of your code? Would that be enough to get around the GPL license?
Just a couple examples of why such litigation would be so complex and
expensive. You generally don't want to have to get into motives and process --
if you can't look at the two codebases and decide the case, it will be messy.

I'd just keep more of your code proprietary and only permissively license the
stuff with very broad appeal.

------
_ph_
Another joke license... somewhat funny, but I dearly hope, no one considers
using it for any code. If you think, your code should be thrown away, please
don't spam hosts like Github with it. But if you don't want to throw away your
code, and in my experience, most code has a value, then please publish it
under one of the well-known licenses. I think it is one of the great features
of Github, that on creation of a repository, it offers you to attach one of
the well-known licenses to your project. This ensures that your code can be
used without creating legal pitfalls and does not get lost.

~~~
Someone1234
> please don't spam hosts like Github with it

Huh? A GitHub repository is akin to a personal website. Why shouldn't people
put their personal doodles, experiments, and silliness on it?

~~~
_ph_
If you pay for your web site, feel free to do what like. With places like
Github, things become a bit more complex. First of all, I assume you are not
paying for those repositories. So I think it is decent to not randomly waste
such a free offer. It also makes it more difficult to search for serious
projects, if it is full of spam.

On the other side, in my experience, there is almost no code, which is so
silly that it is useless. Quite the contrary, a lot of my best code pieces
started with some sillines. It is sad, if code, which the creator made the
effor to upload, is wasted, because of a poor license choices.

------
eboyjr
I am not a lawyer, but many may feel more comfortable if it included something
like the following about having no implied warranties:

> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

Also, how can users "NEVER LEAVE A TRACE TO TRACK THE AUTHOR of the original
product" if the author's full name and date of creation is meant to be
included in the license?

~~~
lucb1e
> how can users "NEVER LEAVE A TRACE TO TRACK THE AUTHOR of the original
> product" if the author's full name and date of creation is meant to be
> included in the license?

By changing the license file.

~~~
eboyjr
Maybe it should be more explicit:

> No person shall, without the authority of the copyright owner or the law
> intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1202](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1202)

~~~
Shish2k
> No person shall, without the authority of the copyright owner

If the copyright holder is explicitly telling the user to remove all trace of
them, that seems like they are granting the authority to do so, no?

~~~
eboyjr
Basically yes. Thinking as a lawyer though you don't want to leave
interpretation of "trace or track" to a judge. In the rare case that there is
a dispute, it opens it up for ambiguities which increase risk.

------
lolc
> F*CK

Either you say fuck or you don't.

~~~
nkrisc
Maybe it's to bypass dumb corporate dirty word filters.

~~~
DannyB2
It will be censored by smart corporate dirty word filters.

------
rectang
There's a long tradition of licenses with a rebellious spirit, either
deliberately or incidentally drafted in such a way that makes them hard to
interpret. Before this "GLWTPL" there was the WTFPL, the JSON license, etc.

People who choose such a license should be aware that they are making
downstream adoption of their product more difficult. (For some authors that is
surely the point.)

~~~
BFatts
Our company has, in its policy, the allowance of licenses that fall into the
OSI spec. This license, along with the WTFPL, are patently denied due to their
joke licenses.

Regardless of how amazing your code is, you look like a kid when you need to
tag your code with one of these joke licenses. It loses a ton of credibility
in the corporate world where open source is taken very seriously.

~~~
thewhitestguy
Oh no! Some people, serving a corporation, who would leverage someone's work
in their business processes to a profit without compensating the author of the
work, have an opinion, which they take _very seriously_ , on the manner in
which the author of the work should license the free work so that they can
legally use that free work in the manner l that works best for _them_!?!?! :O

Ya'll get so lost in the process of exploitation that you forget you're
actually exploiting people.

------
Toorkit
Similarly permissive license: [http://www.wtfpl.net/](http://www.wtfpl.net/)

~~~
miguelrochefort
More permissive, as it doesn't force you to "NEVER LEAVE A TRACE TO TRACK THE
AUTHOR of the original product".

------
stephengillie

      When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
      Now, only God knows
    

This looks great for hobby projects; probably better than my "IDGAF" license.
(Obligatory IANAL)

~~~
thefifthsetpin
> IANAL

Yeah, we figured that out when you said that this looks great for some
projects. ;-)

------
nwsm
The meme about writing bad code is annoying

------
srirachafari
Seeing that you took the entire joke from u/disintegore, you should maybe
attribute them somewhere.

~~~
thefifthsetpin
I'm not sure if you meant he took the license itself or the joke in the
readme.

If the license, then he was requested to remove attribution.

If the quote, then I'd like to know how Karl Weierstrass managed to snag the
username disintegore more than a century before the introduction of the site.

------
samber
I have to many github repositories that would need such a license !!

------
shmerl
Does no attribution requirement make it non free?

------
BFatts
Another silly license just to include the word "f*ck". These are pointless and
only server to confuse open source development. These are so much more
appropriate for the FSF because of their intent with software.

