License is non-free
spotrh opened this issue · 8 comments
This software has been submitted for possible inclusion into Fedora, but the license as it stands currently is non-free, because of the following wording:
⑨. This license document permits you to DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO as long as you APPRECIATE CIRNO AS THE STRONGEST IN GENSOKYO.
The reference to "CIRNO" and "GENSOKYO" appears to be some sort of internet meme, however, in a legal text, this clause has the effect of putting an unenforceable restriction upon the permission to "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO". Since this is the core permission text in the license, this makes the "Strongest Public License" non-free and non-open source.
You could resolve this by using the "WTFPL" instead, which is clearly what this license is based on, minus the unenforceable restriction. Alternately, simply dropping the text " as long as you APPRECIATE CIRNO AS THE STRONGEST IN GENSOKYO." would be sufficient. Last, but not least, if you are insistent upon keeping this "joke" clause, making it clearly optional would resolve the issue, e.g.
1. This license document permits you to DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.
2. At your option, you may APPRECIATE CIRNO AS THE STRONGEST IN GENSOKYO, but are not required to do so.
Thanks in advance for your help in resolving this license issue so that we can include img2xterm in Fedora.
Hello.
I'm Pavel and I submit that request to maintain img2xterm in Fedora - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1246795.
So be kind to fix license issue and we will continue.
Unlike Spotrh, I am a lawyer. Sadly, I am not your lawyer so I will not be offering legal advice.
I’m the author of the software this project was based on. The whole thing was a joke to begin with, so I really don’t care what you do with the license. I suggest a switch to ISC or a similar license though.
Moving to any other pre-existing open source license would work.
I was going to switch to CC0, since it's similar to WTFPL. Switching to ISC would add extra restrictions, but I guess I don't really mind either.
Well, it's done. Thanks for the heads up and I apologise for taking a month to respond :)
Aww, you could have kept the spirit of the license by making appreciating Cirno as an optional but recommended stipulation!