I won't be able to make today's call. But on the topic of "vanity licenses", I would like to add that the WTFPL, while flippant and contrarian, doesn't seem like a vanity license to me. There is a standard form, and developers from different communities use it. That despite the fact it's easier to "roll your own" one-line equivalent of the WTFPL than probably any other recognized form.
Looking at it again, the majority of the standard license text is about identifying itself as "WTFPL" and protecting that name "WTFPL" from variations and derivatives. Those are tools for preserving cohesion among those using the terms to cast a kind of protest vote---this dynamic may be much stronger in large repositories like npm and APT, chock full of very large as well as tiny-tiny "units" of open-source code--- and not to make room for idiosyncratic variations that gum up review processes. They've been a part of WTFPL since v1. I know of several downstream users of the license list, small and large, who appreciate being able to identify and assess WTFPL-licensed packages as a coded group. Personally, I'm not happy that there are so many--- it speaks to a general alienation from the history of OSS licenses and what they accomplished for the community---but I'd never want to be seen as silencing voices and picking standards to "scold" a particular form. I'm very grateful SPDX took the time to list WTFPL. If there's anything I end up telling open source maintainers over and over again, it's to defend their time, and not get sucked into process that will eat all they can give. SPDX has to play defense, too. I regret my practice doesn't afford me the flexibility to engage as the working group prefers, with the exception of messages to this list. But I hope these tidbits might be useful nonetheless. -- Kyle Mitchell, attorney // Oakland // (510) 712 - 0933 _______________________________________________ Spdx-legal mailing list Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-legal
