6502.org

I was somewhat attracted to WTFPL license (see http://www.wtfpl.net/) but I am somewhat perplexed by the license itself bearing a copyright notice, which seems against the whole idea of WTFPL. After all, if someone 'illegally copies' and claims ownership to that particular one-line license, who cares?

Edit: read the FAQ. Seems that he is only concerned with you changing the license but calling it WTFPL. This seems like an application for trademarks, not copyright law (unless the new license is derived from his WTFPL license). I think if I create an unrelated text and call it WTFPL, copyright has not much to do with it. And really, if you publish a WTFPL license, is it not disingenuous to say 'anything goes, but don't mess with the acronym of my license?'

Yes, it's very short.. according to our corporate copyright lawyer it's too short, he's been in court lots of times working with copyright issues. The problem is that due to the origin of copyright law (e.g. musical work) you need to state explicitly what the user can do with the work. It's been some time now since I had that one-day session with the lawyer, but what he said was something like this: You have to state explicitly that the user can use, copy, modify and distribute, as a minimum. The reason for this is historical: In the past, a composer could write a piece of music, and sell the work to a publisher. Say, back in the 17th century. Common practice. The publisher could then print and sell the music, and the composer didn't get any more money. Fine so far. However, the publisher could then modify the music, something that the composer would not be happy about. So when copyright was invented, part of the process was to prevent anyone given rights to copyrighted works to modify the work unless explicitly given this right by the composer (the original copyright owner).
Our corporate lawyer told me the typical pitfall for companies was to have a contractor develop some software for them, with a contract stating something like 'use for any purpose'. But it turns out that is not enough: The word 'use' gives you basically no rights.
There's a reason all those licenses (MIT, BSD) include those four words I listed above.. they really need to be there.

-Tor