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Computing: Software Unassessed

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This article was nominated for deletion on 29 December 2006. The result of the discussion was Keep.

This article was nominated for deletion on 18 September 2008 (UTC). The result of the discussion was no consensus.

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SOFTWARE Licence

Please explain why this licence is only a SOFTWARE licence. As far as I can see, it works for anything. Atleast me and some of my friends using it to licence artwork, document templates or even tweets.

If this is not only a software licence, please change the first sentence and maybe others to clearify that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.229.130.94 (talk) 06:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that too. So I was WP:BOLD and removed that word there. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:56, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Rarely used?

What is the source for WTFPL being rarely used, for me it seems like WTFPL is one of the must common licenses? 193.150.208.92 (talk) 01:09, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I did a scan of all the packages in ubuntu we had at work, and found about 150 with WTFPL. That's out of 30,000+ packages available (or is that 50K+, I forget). I think that qualifies as "rarely used" (although I'm not the one who wrote that in the wiki page). I also expect that number to go down as some companies have decided that WTFPL is not a license their lawyers are comfortable with being valid in the US, and they have been asking the license owners to relicense under something else 2601:647:4F00:7B00:A634:D9FF:FEA2:90D1 (talk) 20:21, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

The word rare isn't used in the article as of today, but it would be justified (example). –Be..anyone 💩 04:09, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Effectiveness as license or waiver

The section Effectiveness as license or waiver was identified as original research. Additionally it's off topic, not one of the references in this section addresses the WTFPL. It's perfectly possible that the WTFPL is ineffective, but this is an encyclopedia, it needs reliable 3rd party sources, not off topic speculations with "could". Suggestion: Remove the section. Criticism is welcome, but it must exist somewhere outside of enwiki to be added to enwiki. Be..anyone (talk) 06:14, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I added the original research tag to this section and I would agree with removal. @Marcmerlinw: Pinging because this was also discussed on your user talk page. -- intgr  09:04, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I tried to save the original conteibution be refomulation. While I agree that the current section is OR it is valid and notable topic which was duscussed outside enWP. I will try to find suitable sources. Cheers Shaddim (talk) 10:19, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

There's no deadline. –Be..anyone (talk) 06:05, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Intgr:. When I read that section, I indeed found that the references given were quite helpful in understanding the point being made, even if said resources do not explicitly list all the licenses they could apply to (obviously not known to those who wrote said resources), the amount of references made the paragraph useful to me and definitely much more than just some person's opinion with nothing to back it up. When you say "agree with removal", you mean "of the tag", or "of the whole section written there" ? Marcmerlinw (talk) 15:15, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

@Marcmerlinw: I would agree with the removal of the section. -- intgr  10:15, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Overlong lead

Per the title, the lead is a tad bit long. The main issue I have is the presence of this clause: "making it the 19th most used FOSS license." Is that really important enough to be in the lead? I don't see why its position on a list is important when the article already just mentioned that <1% of projects use the license. Michael Reed (talk) 18:26, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

well, I agree let's move that to reception, more details should be in the specialized chapters. cheersShaddim (talk) 23:02, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I must say that I see no point whatsoever in any mention of the rank of a fraction of a percent, unless we’re trying to illustrate just how little diversity exists in the field, which I don’t think is what we want. Statistics like these would best be reported as MIT, GPL, Apache, BSD, maybe LGPL, and Other (16%). —67.14.236.50 (talk) 15:47, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

So, is there any point in mentioning this bottom rank? What are we trying to say with it? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 14:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand your problem with it. What tells us 1% ? What tells us 19th rank? Both are hard to grasp alone... together they the reader at least some idea where to position the WTFPL in the spectrum of licenses. Shaddim (talk) 22:49, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Some random person said…

The section § Reception and discussion had namedropped people without giving any context of who they were or why we were quoting or referencing them specifically. I’ve attempted to remedy this by introducing the passage with: Individual open-source software developers have differing opinions regarding on the sincerity of the WTFPL. Thoughts? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 14:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I like what you did; seems fine to me. Michael Reed (talk) 18:33, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Unnecessary specificity

I don’t understand why the article includes this line: Specifically, the WTFPL does not disclaim warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, nor does it expressly disclaim liability for unintended damage caused by the software. If the license does not include a disclaimer, what’s the point of listing what types of disclaimer it doesn’t include? We already said it doesn’t have any. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 16:32, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I'm unsure why it's included too; maybe its inclusion would seem more sound to a lawyer. Regardless, I didn't find it in the citation, so perhaps it should be removed. Michael Reed (talk) 18:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Done. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 20:03, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, it is quite easy to understand why "Specifically, the WTFPL does not disclaim warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, nor does it expressly disclaim liability for unintended damage caused by the software" was included, it explained the scope and gave more details of an complex legal concept. Especially, it allowed to Wikilinks to specific sub concepts (like merchantability) which could have helped the reader understanding the overall concept. This chance is now lost, with this bare minimum version. Shaddim (talk) 23:13, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you're saying, but it doesn't address the fact that the claim was not mentioned in the source (hence the failed verification tag). Then again, my analysis of the source was hasty, so I could have missed the claim.

To be clear, I'd probably welcome the re-inclusion of such a claim, provided it's properly cited. Michael Reed (talk) 23:41, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, the sourcing was the main problem (as it often is on Misplaced Pages). The cited FAQ did not go into any sort of detail about what kind of disclaimer was not included, but the relevant part of the MIT license is cited, so I would think that should be sufficient for contrast if it’s necessary at all. Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “it explained the scope”; the scope was any disclaimers of any kind, since the license includes none. The FAQ does say that the license is meant to be all-purpose and not just for software, so I’m not convinced the standard software disclaimer concepts are even relevant here. But if it can be reliably sourced, go for it. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:26, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

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