Seriously, these licenses are amazing.

Let’s start with the Beerware license, by Poul-Henning Kamp.

/*
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 * "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
 * <phk@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
 * can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
 * this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 */

So seriously, what is about these terms that took 42 revisions to perfect?  And after 42 revisions, why isn’t there a period after return?

Next up is the Good Luck With That License.

Preamble: The author has absolutely no clue what the code in this project does.  It might just work or not, there is no third option.

You just DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO as long as you NEVER LEAVE A TRACE TO TRACK THE AUTHOR of the original product to blame for or hold responsible.

Nice.  There is also a NSFW version if prefer.

I do like the Chicken Dance License.  It states that the licensee must listen to chicken dance music and, depending on volume, dance to it.  Also:

Any employee or person affiliated with the product must be prohibited from saying the word “gazorninplat” in public at all times, as long as distribution of the product continues.

“OMG, Johnson from QA has gone rogue!  He’s all over the Internet saying ‘gazorninplat’!”

How about the Passive Aggressive License?  This sums it up very well:

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 copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, but NOT including the right to run, execute or use the Software or any executable binaries built from the source code.

There’s a nice repo on GitHub of bad licenses.  Here’s a few choice ones:

• the For Good Eyes Only license, which stipulates that one may not use the software if you will “behave in unethical ways or have ever been guilty of any inexcusable offences”.  It then lists innumerable sins and marks which are “inexcusable”.  One of the offenses is “causing environmental damage (especially climate change)”.  And someone is going to read that on their laptop, which is made…never mind.  See also the Katharos license.  Or the Opinionated Queer License.  Or a number of others.
• Are you good at Overwatch?
• Are you evil?

And then there’s the perfection of the YOLO License.  You’ll just have to go read it.  Out loud.  To a beat.

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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