19 ms·

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb https://github.com/billi

by L8D 12y ago

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb https://github.com/billiob/bfb

Alupis 12y ago
The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ https://tldrlegal.com/ If the author intends to allow anyone to use the codebase for anything, they should choose an existing license that permits this... such as the MIT, Apache, BSD licenses, etc. Making one up is not an acceptable replacement and would not hold up in court should it ever come to that. "But judge, the author said I could do 'WHAT THE FUCK I WANT'!". :(
- lloeki 12y ago
  FAQ #7: >> Can’t you change the wording? It’s inappropriate / childish / not corporate-compliant. > > The WTFPL lets you relicense the work under any other license. Also, see FAQ #6 and #8. [0]: http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/ http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    Especially #8.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    What stops me from re-licencing under my company's proprietary license, then suing the original author for copyright? (It appears this "license" allows implicit re-assignment of copyright). Not to mention, this "license" was not written by a lawyer, but rather a software developer. I'm no lawyer, and I'm confident any license I can make up would be shredded by real lawyers. Furthermore -- the codebase in question above, does not include the optional "No Warranty" clause, which means his software implicitly must be fit for use... and if it breaks something, he can be held liable. While I agree with the spirit and intent of this license, it really isn't a real license and is easily mis-used by even those who do wish to treat it as real. So, this license appears to be really a joke-license... not a serious one... and I still maintain the codebase's author should pick a real license if the intentions are to allow universal use.
    - cyorir 12y ago
      With respect to relicensing, I assume that depends on a country's specific copyright laws. Ordinarily this license is as close to the public domain as you can be while still still having a license. So the protections against re-licensing are similar to protections for works placed in the public domain. For example you can't relicense Bach's works and then sue people for playing those works. So the burden is on the relicensor to show that their license supercedes the WTFPL. Unfortunately, the specifics of how this burden is handled in a court as well as treatment of the public domain in general are per-country (and sometimes subject to international agreements). Likewise with warranty, different countries will have different treatments. What I don't quite get is why at this point you wouldn't simply place a work into the public domain or use creative commons or whatever. Maybe that is because different countries have different interpretations of "public domain."
    - clarry 12y ago
      Relicensing is a weird term and easily leads to confusion. I guess you can write your own terms and distribute copies under these new terms. But you cannot revoke the rights the original license has granted to people who have received the work under that license. Nor can you revoke the original author's exclusive rights. The license text (which is about the copying and performing of the covered work) does not grant you such powers.
      - belorn 12y ago
        A license is a permission granted by the author, and an extension of the authors wishes. This is why relicensing as a term indeed leads to confusion. People think the license is inherently a part of the work, and thus can be as readily changed as the software source itself. It is however not part of the work, but part of the author. If you want to change the license, you need to get the author to change his mind. Some licenses allow people to add new licenses on-top of existing licenses. That is not re-licensing, but simply the addition of more requirements. If you remove the original license, you loose the permission needed to use/copy the work created by the original author.
        12y ago
- sophacles 12y ago
  I'll go ahead and feed the troll: please back up your statement that the license won't hold up in court. The site you link to has an entry for the "do what the fuck you want license v2" and there is literally no warning, and the only restriction mentioned is that a change to the license text requires a change to the license name. So again: exactly what is the problem (beyond hand-wavy unevidenced claims about judges)?
  - Alupis 12y ago
    There are several. And no, just because a license appears on the site I linked to does not make it "solid". * The codebase in question neglected to include the "No Warranty" clause, which implicitly means his code is fit for use. So, if I run it on my machine and my machine crashes, he is liable. * Just because a license has yet to be challenged, does not make it solid. That would be rather dangerous in a corporate environment. * This license does not forbid me from re-assigning copyright to myself, then pursuing the original author. As I said before, licensing is serious business. There is a reason most licenses are pretty long, even the "do what you want" licensing like MIT or BSD.
    - xj9 12y ago
      How often are you going to use an IRC bot written in BrainFuck in a corporate environment?
      - Alupis 12y ago
        I was more speaking about the license in general, not the specific codebase example.
        xj9 12y ago
        The entire situation is context sensitive. Hobby projects with no practical value don't need serious licensing because they aren't serious projects. Things that other people might actually use are a different story, one that the author of the codebase in mention seems to be aware of.
- billiob 12y ago
  I am the author of bfb. It started as a joke with coworkers. I still consider it a joke but I'm proud of it! I like to use the wtfpl for simple code I wrote (like ptyproxy, a code I wrote on a sunday afternoon that I use to debug Terminology (under 2-clause BSD)). I don't expect much contributions on these projects anyway. If you're really concerned about the license and want to use my code in one of your projects, just send me an email and we'll talk about it. Since I'm the sole author of most of that code, I am still able to put it under a 2-clause BSD license. I do hope you're not restraining yourself from contributing to bfb because of the software license ☺ Could you please point me which licenses were made up or adapted on my repositories? The only repository I could change is photoalbum because it might useful to someone else.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    Glad to have you part of the discussion. I'm not discussing your repos, but rather the license choice. You appear to have forgotten to add the "No Warranty" clause to the repo's you use the WTFPL on. This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability). I wouldn't need you to re-license under BSD since the WTFPL allows me to do this already... without your knowledge nor permission. The WTFPL allows me to re-assign copyright to myself, effectively stealing your work. I might even be able to pursue you after claiming the codebase as my own work (and re-licensing it under a proprietary license). In any event, the WTFPL provides you with almost no protections against much of anything. As a fellow developer, I don't want anyone to get screwed. I agree with the spirit and intent of your license choice (I use Apache 2.0 for my projects specifically to allow others to do whatever they want, except claim copyright or re-license). However, I feel this license is more of a joke and could do more harm than good.
    - 300bps 12y ago
      This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability). I'm glad you mention this. I work at an investment bank programming high frequency trading algorithms and we've been evaluating BrainFuck Bot as a way of performing tens of thousands of stock transactions per second for a mission critical enterprise application. Since I now know the author of BrainFuck Bot did not checkmark the "No Warranty" clause thereby assuring me of perfect code and his infinite liability thereof, I feel more confident in betting the future of my bank on this code.
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  Dude, it's an IRC bot written in Brainfuck.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  I get that you care, but you don't seem to have a dog in this fight, so why care so much? More specifically, its always useful to say "Hey while that license is really creative, you realize that its also not doing you any favors. Three things that you might want to watch for are warranty issues, the ability to reassign to any license means you can be barred from using your own code, and someone can reassign the copyright to themselves and then take down your site with a DMCA. That is a lot of risk to carry just to be clever with the license." The author seems to like it the way it is and you've shined your light on the risk, hope it doesn't show up as another HN post on how evil lawyers did evil things.
- dgl 12y ago
  The very site the (downvoted) parent references points out that WTFPL is actually a perfectly fine licence: https://tldrlegal.com/license/do-wtf-you-want-to-public-license-v2-(wtfpl-2.0) https://tldrlegal.com/license/do-wtf-you-want-to-public-lice... See also GNU's site: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL Fair enough that they don't recommend it, but they believe it is GPL compatible.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

by L8D 12y ago

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb https://github.com/billiob/bfb

Alupis 12y ago

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ https://tldrlegal.com/ If the author intends to allow anyone to use the codebase for anything, they should choose an existing license that permits this... such as the MIT, Apache, BSD licenses, etc. Making one up is not an acceptable replacement and would not hold up in court should it ever come to that. "But judge, the author said I could do 'WHAT THE FUCK I WANT'!". :(

lloeki 12y ago
FAQ #7: >> Can’t you change the wording? It’s inappropriate / childish / not corporate-compliant. > > The WTFPL lets you relicense the work under any other license. Also, see FAQ #6 and #8. [0]: http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/ http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/
- jackmaney 12y ago
  Especially #8.
- Alupis 12y ago
  What stops me from re-licencing under my company's proprietary license, then suing the original author for copyright? (It appears this "license" allows implicit re-assignment of copyright). Not to mention, this "license" was not written by a lawyer, but rather a software developer. I'm no lawyer, and I'm confident any license I can make up would be shredded by real lawyers. Furthermore -- the codebase in question above, does not include the optional "No Warranty" clause, which means his software implicitly must be fit for use... and if it breaks something, he can be held liable. While I agree with the spirit and intent of this license, it really isn't a real license and is easily mis-used by even those who do wish to treat it as real. So, this license appears to be really a joke-license... not a serious one... and I still maintain the codebase's author should pick a real license if the intentions are to allow universal use.
  - cyorir 12y ago
    With respect to relicensing, I assume that depends on a country's specific copyright laws. Ordinarily this license is as close to the public domain as you can be while still still having a license. So the protections against re-licensing are similar to protections for works placed in the public domain. For example you can't relicense Bach's works and then sue people for playing those works. So the burden is on the relicensor to show that their license supercedes the WTFPL. Unfortunately, the specifics of how this burden is handled in a court as well as treatment of the public domain in general are per-country (and sometimes subject to international agreements). Likewise with warranty, different countries will have different treatments. What I don't quite get is why at this point you wouldn't simply place a work into the public domain or use creative commons or whatever. Maybe that is because different countries have different interpretations of "public domain."
  - clarry 12y ago
    Relicensing is a weird term and easily leads to confusion. I guess you can write your own terms and distribute copies under these new terms. But you cannot revoke the rights the original license has granted to people who have received the work under that license. Nor can you revoke the original author's exclusive rights. The license text (which is about the copying and performing of the covered work) does not grant you such powers.
    - belorn 12y ago
      A license is a permission granted by the author, and an extension of the authors wishes. This is why relicensing as a term indeed leads to confusion. People think the license is inherently a part of the work, and thus can be as readily changed as the software source itself. It is however not part of the work, but part of the author. If you want to change the license, you need to get the author to change his mind. Some licenses allow people to add new licenses on-top of existing licenses. That is not re-licensing, but simply the addition of more requirements. If you remove the original license, you loose the permission needed to use/copy the work created by the original author.
      - 12y ago
sophacles 12y ago
I'll go ahead and feed the troll: please back up your statement that the license won't hold up in court. The site you link to has an entry for the "do what the fuck you want license v2" and there is literally no warning, and the only restriction mentioned is that a change to the license text requires a change to the license name. So again: exactly what is the problem (beyond hand-wavy unevidenced claims about judges)?
- Alupis 12y ago
  There are several. And no, just because a license appears on the site I linked to does not make it "solid". * The codebase in question neglected to include the "No Warranty" clause, which implicitly means his code is fit for use. So, if I run it on my machine and my machine crashes, he is liable. * Just because a license has yet to be challenged, does not make it solid. That would be rather dangerous in a corporate environment. * This license does not forbid me from re-assigning copyright to myself, then pursuing the original author. As I said before, licensing is serious business. There is a reason most licenses are pretty long, even the "do what you want" licensing like MIT or BSD.
  - xj9 12y ago
    How often are you going to use an IRC bot written in BrainFuck in a corporate environment?
    - Alupis 12y ago
      I was more speaking about the license in general, not the specific codebase example.
      - xj9 12y ago
        The entire situation is context sensitive. Hobby projects with no practical value don't need serious licensing because they aren't serious projects. Things that other people might actually use are a different story, one that the author of the codebase in mention seems to be aware of.
billiob 12y ago
I am the author of bfb. It started as a joke with coworkers. I still consider it a joke but I'm proud of it! I like to use the wtfpl for simple code I wrote (like ptyproxy, a code I wrote on a sunday afternoon that I use to debug Terminology (under 2-clause BSD)). I don't expect much contributions on these projects anyway. If you're really concerned about the license and want to use my code in one of your projects, just send me an email and we'll talk about it. Since I'm the sole author of most of that code, I am still able to put it under a 2-clause BSD license. I do hope you're not restraining yourself from contributing to bfb because of the software license ☺ Could you please point me which licenses were made up or adapted on my repositories? The only repository I could change is photoalbum because it might useful to someone else.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Glad to have you part of the discussion. I'm not discussing your repos, but rather the license choice. You appear to have forgotten to add the "No Warranty" clause to the repo's you use the WTFPL on. This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability). I wouldn't need you to re-license under BSD since the WTFPL allows me to do this already... without your knowledge nor permission. The WTFPL allows me to re-assign copyright to myself, effectively stealing your work. I might even be able to pursue you after claiming the codebase as my own work (and re-licensing it under a proprietary license). In any event, the WTFPL provides you with almost no protections against much of anything. As a fellow developer, I don't want anyone to get screwed. I agree with the spirit and intent of your license choice (I use Apache 2.0 for my projects specifically to allow others to do whatever they want, except claim copyright or re-license). However, I feel this license is more of a joke and could do more harm than good.
  - 300bps 12y ago
    This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability). I'm glad you mention this. I work at an investment bank programming high frequency trading algorithms and we've been evaluating BrainFuck Bot as a way of performing tens of thousands of stock transactions per second for a mission critical enterprise application. Since I now know the author of BrainFuck Bot did not checkmark the "No Warranty" clause thereby assuring me of perfect code and his infinite liability thereof, I feel more confident in betting the future of my bank on this code.
tlrobinson 12y ago
Dude, it's an IRC bot written in Brainfuck.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I get that you care, but you don't seem to have a dog in this fight, so why care so much? More specifically, its always useful to say "Hey while that license is really creative, you realize that its also not doing you any favors. Three things that you might want to watch for are warranty issues, the ability to reassign to any license means you can be barred from using your own code, and someone can reassign the copyright to themselves and then take down your site with a DMCA. That is a lot of risk to carry just to be clever with the license." The author seems to like it the way it is and you've shined your light on the risk, hope it doesn't show up as another HN post on how evil lawyers did evil things.
dgl 12y ago
The very site the (downvoted) parent references points out that WTFPL is actually a perfectly fine licence: https://tldrlegal.com/license/do-wtf-you-want-to-public-license-v2-(wtfpl-2.0) https://tldrlegal.com/license/do-wtf-you-want-to-public-lice... See also GNU's site: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#WTFPL Fair enough that they don't recommend it, but they believe it is GPL compatible.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]