Feedback

Are you a happy user of the WTFPL? A dissatisfied switcher? A skeptic? Let us know!

You can use the form below, or email us at contact@wtfpl.net.

83 Responses to “Feedback”

  1. Alain Thviillon

    Dans votre logo je vois une paire de couilles, je crois que vous devriez mettre les balises HTML qui vont bien pour que ce site soit repéré comme pornographique par les éditeurs de solutions de filtrage, afin que ceux-ci puissent protéger nos enfants. Sinon, je me verrais obligé de vous dénoncer auprès d’INTERNET !

    Reply
    • Sam Hocevar

      free·dom
      /ˈfrēdəm/
      Noun
      The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.

      Well if that doesn’t imply doing what the fuck you want to, I wonder what else it means. Please enlighten us on the correct definition of freedom™.

      Reply
      • Karel

        It’s “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”.

        I don’t really know the difference but you should not play the first one on TiVo.

        Reply
  2. nanashi san

    Are web pages and images, in WTFPL web site, licensed under WTFPL?

    Can I translate the FAQ page into other languages? Can I modify WTFPL buttons? Can I do WHAT THE FUCK everything?

    Reply
    • Sam Hocevar

      Text and images are under the WTFPL. The licensing of the webpage stylesheets is still unclear and we are going to fix this inconsistency soon. Feel free to do what the fuck you want to.

      Reply
  3. Marcel Foutre

    The jpg on the front page is 865 989 bytes. This is clearly an act of discrimination against low-bandwidth disadvantaged users.

    Reply
    • Steve Paesani

      Ah, young padme, you ask fo e-enlightenment.

      Freedom defined as the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint is freedom hindered by the freedom of another.

      Now, If I could in fact “do whatever the fuck I want” with the WTFPL I’d call it whatever the fuck I want because that’s the “freedom” YOU are looking to push.

      Be mindfull padme.

      Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward

    Could you remove references to religion-gays-abortions from FAQ? I want the most permissive license. I don’t want to make political statements or moral pronouncements. The “But profanity is offensive!” rant makes it look like WTFPL users should care if gays or atheists are killed. What if I don’t give a fuck? The first two sentences would suffice.

    Reply
    • Banlu Kemiyatorn

      The point of the license was that you shouldn’t care. wtfpl wasn’t created to promote any organization or religion. It was made to represent an individual’s decision. If you like it just take it, say it as in your own words.

      Reply
    • Steve Foerster

      Then don’t use it. Or change it to suit your needs. Also, if you really don’t care about people being killed because of what they believe or who they are, then you’re part of the problem in this world.

      Reply
  5. Frank

    The WTFPL got me laid three times within two days and made my penis grow 5 inches.

    Thank you, Sam!

    Reply
  6. Steve Paesani

    Freedom to say fuck faggots, fuck those who take the pill, fuck people who don’t like religion, fuck tattoos and the people who wear them, fuck the devil..
    ? oops, sorry, thought it was about freedom…
    sorry..

    Reply
  7. Steve Paesani

    “The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). ”

    Doesn’t that last part in parenthesis state that if the work based on the Program is NOT independent of having been made by running the program (for instance edits done in a GPL text editor) then the output is NOT covered?

    Because if that’s what that is saying then the GPL (v2 at least) is in fact a WTFPL wether Stallman or anyone for that matter likes it or not.

    And that in turn means that ALL GPLd code is fair game to do WTF you want.

    :)

    Ah, I really like this freedom.

    I can even use the feedback area as a personal blog…

    Reply
    • Banlu Kemiyatorn

      Well, it’s the software’s license, not a license to kill someone or anything beside that software. Like when someone passes you a dish and says “Eat”, you may have anything in that dish but you can’t eat him/her.

      Reply
  8. Atrawog

    I love the spirit of the WTPFL. But what are your plans when doing what you want includes patenting your stuff and sue you for patent infingrement?

    Reply
    • curt mayer

      If somebody grabs your stuff, patents it, and sues you for patent infringement, the correct response is to gun them down in the street like a rabid dog. any other questions?

      Reply
  9. Eldritch Anchovy

    If I am coerced into doing something I’d rather not do with a WTFPL-licensed work, I am not doing whatever the fuck I want to. Is this therefore a violation of the license?

    Reply
  10. Mark

    There are many things I want to do but don’t for a variety of reasons (not brave enough, social pressures, not enough time, seems too hard, etc).

    If I don’t actually do what the fuck I want am I in violation of the terms of the license?

    Reply
  11. MichaelWH

    I’ve been a fan (and user) of WTFPL for ages. Nice to see it growing its own presence that gets away from that whole GPL/BSD/MIT/whatever nerd slap fight.

    Reply
  12. Jack

    So, given you guys are under the WTFPL license. I am taking this site and all your ideas and changing the name to

    You May Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License
    YMDWTFYWTPL

    Thanks

    Reply
  13. MiB

    So what’s preventing anyone from getting the product that comes with this license and including all of it in their own product, copyright it separately in a traditional manner, and build a business suing anyone else using the same product including the originators that are releasing under this license?

    Reply
    • Sam Hocevar

      They cannot “copyright it”; that’s exactly why the WTFPL is not the public domain. Even if they copyrighted a derived work, they wouldn’t be allowed to sue the copyright holders of the original work.

      Reply
  14. rfichoke

    This is the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Especially the FAQ. Everybody’s so uptight about everything. It’s nice to see somebody chillin’ like a boss and generally just, well, DOING WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT.

    You rule.

    Reply
  15. Canof Sand

    I hope your license never grows to be very popular. It would signal that far too many people are as vulgar-minded and childish as you are. (This is already true to some degree, but the world certainly doesn’t need your kind making it worse.) Your rant defending this crap on your FAQ page only proves my point further, with your foolish insertion of stupid and irrelevant political nonsense. This isn’t about political correctness, which is garbage. It’s about basic decency and respect, not to mention professionalism, none of which you seem to comprehend, let alone hold.

    Reply
    • Sam Hocevar

      Thank you for your kind words. We’re surely all going to watch you make the world a better place! Take care.

      Reply
    • knutz

      I just read the FAQ’s and I’m pretty sure there’s no political correctness involved. Everything mentioned in the FAQ’s can also coincide with decency, respect and professionalism. I don’t know any workplace that doesn’t make gratuitous use of the word “Fuck”, so that covers professionalism; and suggesting that homosexuality, atheism and the right to express yourself through body art is against decency and respect makes you about as decent and respectful as Adolf Hitler. However, since I believe you can Do What The Fuck You Want To I’ll just say “Fuck You” and leave it at that.

      Reply
    • Steve Paesani

      If we’re seriously going along this vein the professional, decent and to some of us simply human thing to do is to use a distributed or shared cost licence coupled with transparency (to show what that cost is).
      That requires people who naturally work along those lines and are willing to remain dedicated to so doing in spite of all adversity and attempts to corrupt and that is incredibly difficult to come by let alone start.
      Now, out of respect for this site and the WTFPL let us ask, in Jesus’s name, amd only if it be good in his eyes, that the popularity of the WTFPL be at least sufficient so that all those professional and decent people Canof is refering to use the WTFPL cause in their case it would actually be a big step forward unless of course he’s referring to someone other than the ms, apple, intel, ibm etc

      pirate crew or their fsf puppets.

      Reply
  16. Chris

    I find it highly amusing that, according to the license text, only the license file itself is granted those permissions.

    Setting aside those who would nitpick, though, great license and one I will probably use in the future.

    Reply
  17. Jan van Oort

    You, dude Hocevar, have understood a basic thing, namely that all of us, but especially developers, software architects and sytems engineers, wish to do whatever the fuck we want to do . From this day on, I am going to use the WTFPL as sole license for all my APIs, frameworks, classes and even subroutines.

    Reply
  18. Shurikn

    I wish this license was not needed, and publishing anything anywhere without a license would be understood by everyone as meaning exactly what this license means. But we live in a fucked up world, so thank you for this great license.

    Reply
  19. funlw65

    You don’t need an obscene expression to do what you want with your intellectual property. Anyway, this proves nothing and in fact does not provide any protection of your intellectual property. In fact, with this “license” you say that you don’t have any intellectual property and anyone can do what ever they want with your creations. I’m not that stupid – at least, a little copyright is worth the effort.

    Now, can I see what you are creating (if any)? I guess you are not that stupid after all, don’t you?

    Reply
    • YourName

      Just take a look at the license itself. It’s not under the WTFPL.
      But who said that you should license everything with WTFPL?

      Reply
    • pierfu

      This guy has been Debian Project Leader, among many other great things.
      Have a look at his personal site :p

      Reply
  20. Howard

    As long as the act you intend to do doesn’t cause any true suffering of the others, sure, why not just do whatever you want? But purely existing as part of the society, there are many things that you do affect the others.

    Like say how someone use the work of others under this licence to make a genocide weapon. Well, if everything was under this licence no guarantee no one wouldn’t do this.

    So people always try to find the right balance between law and chaos. Hitler just took it a bit to the extreme while he doesn’t absolutely know true happiness

    Reply
  21. Rob

    Great idea!

    One minor thing about the definition of WTFPL: It would make it a lot more self-describing if instead of calling it “Do What The Fuck You Want” you call it “Do Whatever The Fuck You Want With It”.

    Saying “Do What The Fuck You Want” sounds as if you are asking a question “What The Fuck Do You Want?”.

    Other than that, this a great and very promising start that could potentially start a revolution!

    Reply
    • Brian

      @stephan http://www.wtfpl.net/txt/copying/

      @funlw65 “You don’t need an obscene expression to do what you want with your intellectual property”? no shit. This license grants me no rights, and obligates you to nothing. Technically I don’t need a license either. This license brings a smile to peoples faces(or gets prude’s(like yourself) panties in a bunch(which brings a smile to my day))

      @howard typically people who create genocide weopons, release them under an unwritten WTFPL if they release the plans to anyone. however these are typically megalomaniacal people that just deploy the weopons once they have them.

      @rob if you don’t like it, create your own. “Do What The Fuck You Want” and change it

      @sam This site needs a more prominent / interactive showcase. I’m willing to code it and/or moderate it, if you’re interested.

      Reply
  22. Andreas Olofsson

    Using this license for our Minecraft mod. Good, simple to understand license. Not 100% fond of the name (could maybe use a less “harsh” word), but it’s good stuff, and gets the message across.

    Cheers
    // Andreas

    Reply
    • Tut

      If you don’t like the wording the WTFPL has a clause which permits changing the wording or the words behind “WTF”. Under an alternate interpretation WTFPL stands for “What the Friendly Public License”. Now who could object to such a friendly license? Do whatever the friendly you want to!

      Reply
    • David Eldridge

      @Andreas maybe you could ask for permission to rename the license for your own use. :)
      I love the license, not the name. I think I will change it to serve my own purposes to something more like this:

      Copyright (C) <2014> <me>

      Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

      The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

      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. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

      Then, I think I will call it the MIT license.

      Reply
  23. Tom

    It’s easier not icnlude any license at all, just upload and done. But having license is kinda more interesting, kinda “Use As Your Own” looks like, I like WTFPL. I’ll be using it.

    Reply
  24. anon

    As much as I like the (idea of the) GPL, I have to say the WTFPL’s simplicity is extremely attractive. Although I probably won’t be using it for anything big I release for legal reasons (as much as I like giving people freedoms, I don’t like giving people the “freedom” to restrict mine), I will certainly use this for every other piece of software I release, even if only to make a point.

    On a side not, I find it amusing that some people are complaining about the foul language. Unfortunately for them, this is the internet, we use that kind of language here you dumb fucks. It’s almost as if… we do what the fuck we want.

    Reply
  25. yuwash

    It’d be useful if there were a permalink for the version 2 for referencing. Further, I wonder if is there’s a version 1 as well?

    Reply
  26. Yes i have a name

    One missing reference to upset the double standard christians out there a little bit more:

    A connection from WTFPL to satanism:

    “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”
    Aleister Crowley

    And now start complaining about it while drinking a bottle of morality….

    Reply
  27. tim

    Hi there, splendid license.

    I have a question about using the WTFPL. On your FAQ-page (http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/) it says to include the following text in the source code if I want a no warranty clause:

    /* This program is free software. It comes without any warranty, to
    * the extent permitted by applicable law. You can redistribute it
    * and/or modify it under the terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want
    * To Public License, Version 2, as published by Sam Hocevar. See
    * http://www.wtfpl.net/ for more details. */

    My question is whether after inlucding this text I still must follow step one and two from the “How do I use the WTFPL?”-section of the FAQ page.

    Reply
  28. Shane Heyns

    I rate this was the best license ever thought of and i believe it holds the true meaning of freedom and honestly if people are offended by it and disagree with it in anyway you have the freedom of choice so dont use it but me i always use it thanks for the great work Sam Hocevar.

    Reply
  29. swine

    “They cannot “copyright it”; that’s exactly why the WTFPL is not the public domain. Even if they copyrighted a derived work, they wouldn’t be allowed to sue the copyright holders of the original work.”

    This would probably be useful if it was covered in FAQ. Great license otherwise, exactly what I was looking for for years now.

    Reply
  30. Jake

    Fantastic idea, I will be using this on all my fun/gimmick sites… Don’t change the name!

    Reply
  31. Le Concombre Masqué

    Is this license case aware? In other word, may I create a modified version and call it “Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License” (notice the capitalized T in “To”)

    Reply
  32. arsene

    I was arguing this idea to a few people for the past few days without knowing of this. I don’t know how some people can call something free if the license includes restrictions. That’s the opposite of free.

    Anyway, great that someone agrees. I’ll use it without the exclusive copyright line which sort of goes against the spirit of ‘do what you want’. I hope to see a version 3 or something that ignores exclusive copyright of anything, including the license document. You actually explicitly recognise the right of anyone to copy the license so using the (C) symbol is sort of confusing and misleading. Also I like to not brand anything I say with others’ names.
    I can always just write a similar message with my works but since this is already a recognised (:popular) license it would be nice to use it.

    Ciao

    Reply
  33. Beastie

    Sam, your link to the ‘BSD’ (supposed FreeBSD) license on this page is outdated and non-specific as to which ‘BSD’ (your text) license you are linking to.
    http://www.wtfpl.net/about/
    http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/license.html

    The above link is to the old ‘4-clause’ BSD license, with a note regarding removal of the advertising clause below.

    The current license, most particularly for all new code, is now the ‘2-clause’ BSD license.
    http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html

    You may find all the various names for older ‘BSD’ licenses at the fsf and foss license compendium sites.

    Please update your links and text. Thanks.

    Reply
  34. Jossel

    Can i download your work, claim is mine and then sue you for “stealing my work”?
    if not then i can’t do what the fuck i want to

    Reply
  35. Jacques

    My soul was hurt when this site went down. I am now happy. Thank you.

    Reply
  36. Gwyneth Llewelyn

    What WTFPL would look like if written by a lawyer paid by the word:

    https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.en

    All right, just joking. I’m fond of minimalist licenses. CC0 is waaaaaaay too wordy, and they don’t even seem to know if it’s a “license” (since they call it a “deed” to, uh, “clarify” [?] the issue…).

    We really, really don’t need such complex licenses for something that is so simple: do what the fuck you want with my work.

    WTFPL FTW!

    (Note: I usually license my own work under the MIT and/or BSD licenses, but that’s just because they include a no-warranty disclaimer. Aye, I’m aware I could add such a disclaimer to the WTFPL, as the a href=”https://github.com/isaacs/st-example/blob/master/LICENSE”>dWTFPL3 mentioned in an anonymous comment before. But that would be just tarnishing the beauty and simplicity of the WTFPL by creating Yet Another Similar License. We already have way too many. The WTFPL is good enough if you don’t care if you get sued for lack of warranty.)

    Reply
  37. Archivist

    Hi, I need a verbatim copy of the original version 1 WTFPDL license text by Michael Seemann. Is it available anywhere on this site anymore? Thanks

    Reply

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