Re: One-line licence statement

[Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 at 20:34:05 +0200, Franck Joncourt wrote:
> As a matter of fact upstream tries to find something as close as possible to the
> public domain but keeping the copyright holders. It is a matter of *how to
> write it?*

A 2-line version that seems good is the one Joey Hess uses for the parts
of ikiwiki that get copied into users' wikis, among other things:

<http://git.ikiwiki.info/?p=ikiwiki;a=blob;f=debian/copyright>
    Redistribution and use in source and compiled forms, with or without
    modification, are permitted under any circumstances. No warranty.

It's shorter than the canonical version of the WTFPL, and seems to cover all
the necessary things for a permissive free software license:

* allows unmodified and modified copying
* allows binary distributions
* explicitly disclaims warranty (quite important in some jurisdictions, I hear)

There's also a semi-standard permissive license recommended by the FSF
for READMEs and similar trivial files:

<http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/texinfo/All_002dpermissive-Copying-License.html>
     Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
     are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
     notice and this notice are preserved.

Regards,
    Simon