Here's the source talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s
> I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.
I thought this was a funny joke. Then I read “IBM and the Holocaust”.
License to Use JSLint for Evil
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#12Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
Pretty sure most licenses have a clause stating that, if one clause is deemed invalid, that fact doesn't render the entire thing null and void. Check with your lawyer when in doubt.
It's called a severability clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#13Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
What effect do purely normative statements have on licenses? Because the original only says you should use it for Good, not that you must use it for Good.
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#14Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
Pretty sure it is human judges that enforce the licenses, not computers.
This is a pretty moot point - judges do go by license intent rather than literal license text whenever possible but putting abstract statements in licenses without severability clauses is a great way to make those licenses unenforceable. A license that includes the statement "This may not be used to further the end of mankind in any way" for instance - is completely null and void, the intent is clear but the set of actions that can be argued to fit that are... everything.
Also, that original intent can be lost to time (in three hundred years a judge might rule that they can't properly evaluated what we today consider good and evil since this was before we acknowledged residents of Alpha Centauri as intelligent beings and thus our moral code is incomprehensible) and in that case judges will take a literal reading of the text which can lead to issues like ambiguous comma styling[1].
1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matt...
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#15One of the weirder things I have done in my life is contributing some code to JSHint (a derivative of JSLint) so that it can finally be used for evil. The lead maintainer has a series of blogposts on the subject that are an interesting read: http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-...
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#16Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
Who are all these people going to court and getting their software licenses enforced?
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#17Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
The default for copyright is 'all rights reserved' though, so it would seem to me that it's in the software users best interest to hope it's enforceable, otherwise they can't use the software at all.
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#18Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
Do you think Douglass Crockford didn't know that? He was being cheeky and doesn't care. This was also a huge pain point for JSHint and a lot of work went into undoing that by finding a single commit that didn't have the clause iirc.
I guess some people might find it cheeky or funny to build an entire software product that does something people want, and then make it impossible for most people to use by adding a silly licensing clause. I’d consider it a huge waste of time, but hey, it’s not my project.
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#19Doug Crockford is a ray of sunshine.
Re: License to Use JSLint for Evil
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think Douglass Crockford didn't know that? He was being cheeky and doesn't care. This was also a huge pain point for JSHint and a lot of work went into undoing that by finding a single commit that didn't have the clause iirc.
I guess some people might find it cheeky or funny to build an entire software product that does something people want, and then make it impossible for most people to use by adding a silly licensing clause. I’d consider it a huge waste of time, but hey, it’s not my project.
Right. It's probably the second worse place to put jokes, next to an employment contract.