> Surely the warranty and liability disclaimer found in licenses like MIT exists for a reason

Obviously IANAL, but I entirely don't see how the WTFPL (which does not ask the consumer to accept any restrictions) would create an implied contract (which would seem to be a necessary precondition for a warranty obligation)?

IANAL either, so my own legal theories are as creative as yours, but I'd like to offer the following data point: All unrestricted open-source licenses that were written by actual lawyers, from MIT to CC0, have found it necessary to include such a liability clause.

In what sense is the MIT license "unrestricted"?

In the sense that when people want to use a piece of MIT-licensed software in another piece of software, they don't in practice find themselves restricted from doing so by the conditions of the license. "Permissive" might be a word I should rather have used.

The MIT license does place one specific license restriction on its users. Specifically: "subject to the following conditions: the above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software"

This is what I was getting at. The MIT license has restrictions, so calling it "unrestricted" doesn't make sense.

Off the top of my head the CAPITALIZED WARRANTY DISCLAIMER is specific to a subset of states in the US. If you’re outside those jurisdictions (or any other where it is required) then for aesthetic or principled reasons I can see why you wouldn’t kowtow to the legalese spiral.

Maybe don't drop the warranty disclaimer just yet.

> The MMWA requires conspicuous disclosure of warranty terms (e.g., designations like "Full" or "Limited" as prominent titles).

> The common practice of ALL-CAPS WARRANTY DISCLAIMERS (e.g., "AS IS, NO WARRANTY") stems primarily from state adoptions of UCC § 2-316, which requires disclaimers of implied warranties to be "conspicuous" (and suggests all-caps as one way, especially in plain text).

- Grok https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_5c7db73a-ffd2-48b2-bb36-296f...

That said, maybe it wouldn't be too hard to argue there is obviously no implied warranty with a crass license like WTFPL.