Suggest adding copyright notice

[matthijskooijman]

This license was exactly what I was looking for, it solves the two problems I had with WTFPL. Thanks for sharing!

I'm wondering if it would be good to recommend to people to include a copyright notice along with their content and license? I realize that asserting copyright is no longer neccesary to get it, but having a copyright notice helps a lot with tracing back code or other content to the original authors. A lot of other licenses do this by adding a dummy copyright line in the license itself, e.g.: http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Perhaps adding this to your license, or at least to the README might be a good idea?

[Beluki]

Hi!

This license was exactly what I was looking for, it solves the two problems I had with WTFPL. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for your interest! If you decide to use it, please let me know. I would like to have a list of projects that use the license (this is of course not a requirement).

I'm wondering if it would be good to recommend to people to include a copyright notice along with their content and license

I deliberately avoided adding a copyright notice. The rationale is that when there is one, people tend to naturally assume that you can't modify or remove it. Most licenses that include one do have this requirement.

Adding people or company names to the license can also make prospective users or developers uncomfortable when changing the license. Questions like "is it ethic to remove this person name from their work?" have to be answered even if the license makes it clear that it's permitted.

I believe the best way to avoid this is not to have names in the first place. If you can detach a work from the people who made it (at least to the extent the current law permits that) and present it as something stand-alone everyone can own, those problems disappear.

tracing back code or other content to the original authors

This is a legitimate issue. I recommend a separate "Authors" file for that. Or even better, a "Contributors" file (which doesn't carry the subtle meaning that an author may "own" the work).

[matthijskooijman]

Thank you for your interest! If you decide to use it, please let me know. I would like to have a list of projects that use the license (this is of course not a requirement).

I'm already using it here: https://github.com/matthijskooijman/scripts I'll likely be using it in other projects as well, when they come up.

(which doesn't carry the subtle meaning that an author may "own" the work).

Even though this license is very liberal, it does not actually remove or waive copyright (it's not placing things in the "public domain", which is tricky to get right across all jurisdictions AFAIU). So even with this license, an author still owns the work (and in the case of multiple contributors, they each own their own parts). But you make good points about making the wrong impression, so perhaps it's ok to leave it like this.

Adding people or company names to the license can also make prospective users or developers uncomfortable when changing the license. Questions like "is it ethic to remove this person name from their work?" have to be answered even if the license makes it clear that it's permitted.

This reminds me of an unrelated observation. The license currently allows changing the license, but doesn't explicitely say so (which might make people think it's not allowed). Would it be an idea to add it to the license explicitely, so something like "including, but not limited to, copying, modification, redistribution and changing the license"?

[Beluki]

The license currently allows changing the license, but doesn't explicitely say so (which might make people think it's not allowed)

Yes. This is unfortunate as it's a very important right and should be explicit. I'll add it to the license.

[Beluki]

Now that I was going to change it, I think it's actually explicit about that:

"this document and accompanying files"

"copying, modification, redistribution"

Adding "changing the license" would imply that the terms only apply to the files. As it is, I think it's clear that they apply to both, so modifying the license is covered too.

[matthijskooijman]

Wait, that's not what I meant. I meant changing the license, as-in redistributing the code under a different license.

[Beluki]

That's also what I mean.

The terms apply to both the license (this document) and the accompanying files, thus it's explicit that you can modify both (and therefore use the MIT, BSD or whatever other license).