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Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

apebox.org

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Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#11

Post by masklinn »

jasonkester wrote: post #5

Seems like this could be avoided by simply approaching the author and offering to pay for a version of the software with the license you want. If I'm not mistaken, the author in question has in fact given companies in the past permission to use this particular library for "evil purposes". Most importantly though, one should refrain from making demands on people who are offering you things for free. If you like the co…

> Seems like this could be avoided by simply approaching the author and offering to pay for a version of the software with the license you want.

or taking the JSON grammar and implementing it from scratch. It's not exactly complex, the most complex part is strings and even those are rather simple.

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#12

Post by markokocic »

I don't understand. The guy complain that json license is not "Free" in the FSF sense of "Free". So what? Not all licenses has to be FSF or FSF compatible. How is it harmful to FSF is the license of some piece of code is not compatible with GPL?

Guess what, I can't use GPL in my projects, because it's not compatible with the kind of license I release my programs. You can't use this software because it's not comapatible with GPL. Feel the pain. FSF would advice people not to use GPL software if they can't stand the license. The same applies to you, if you really want to use your software for evil purpose, just license it that way. Otherwise, use something else. It's that simple.

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#14

Post by jasim »

The article is in bad taste. The title even more.

If you don't like Crockford's license you are at liberty to write that code yourself. Please don't call people who contribute a great deal to advancing computing (Free Software or not) names like 'harmful to Free Software'.

Even if there is genuine concern in the license and its usage in Free Software, it should be raised by pointing to the code and the license, not by making a personal attack.

Articles like this are harmful to Free Software because it discourages people from contributing. Not Douglas Crockford's license written in good humour and with nice intentions.

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#15

Post by scotty79 »

Good and evil are arbitrary concepts that are not formally recognized by courts (am I wrong?) so the phrase in the licence is meaningless. How can anyone be so lawyerised to care about that?

Lawyers, licences, copyrights, patents are modern though police. So many people consider every creative action (and unfortunately often abandon it) afraid of what laws they might be potentially braking by executing this action.

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#16

Post by rbanffy »

The author makes a valid point - people should be able to use free software for any purpose and inclusion of this restriction in the license makes it non-free.

In this specific case, I'd argue Mono is intrinsically evil and therefore should be prevented from using Crockford's software at all. If Microsoft embeds a Crockford-based JSON parser in their own releases, they are in clear violation of its terms. ;-)

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#17

Post by lmm »

markokocic wrote: post #12

I don't understand. The guy complain that json license is not "Free" in the FSF sense of "Free". So what? Not all licenses has to be FSF or FSF compatible. How is it harmful to FSF is the license of some piece of code is not compatible with GPL? Guess what, I can't use GPL in my projects, because it's not compatible with the kind of license I release my programs. You can't use this software because it's not comapatib…

It's a license that's misleadingly almost-free. It's like the old 4-term BSD license with the "obnoxious advertising clause".

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#18

Post by jahewson »

alexjarvis wrote: post #10

I think that this has probably been taken a little too literally. It would be interesting to get the original author’s opinion.. I agree completely with Sehe’s comment about the terms of the statement not being clearly defined and thus no judge could reasonably use it in court against any uses of the software. Good and Evil are subjective opinions to which each individual has their own beliefs.

There's no such thing as "too literally" in a legally binding contract, which is intended to be used anywhere on the world. All it takes is one open-minded judge. Sure it's 99.9% subjective, but why take a chance? What happens if it's used by a company that openly labels itself as evil? Not so subjective anymore...

Crockford's act of granting special licenses to companies who may have evil-doing clients is a strong indicator that the clause is not a joke, that in practice it is taken seriously. A court would take this into account.

The real problem with this stupid joke is that it requires a trip to court to invalidate it. Thanks Douglas!

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#19

Post by saraid216 »

jahewson wrote: post #18
alexjarvis wrote: post #10

I think that this has probably been taken a little too literally. It would be interesting to get the original author’s opinion.. I agree completely with Sehe’s comment about the terms of the statement not being clearly defined and thus no judge could reasonably use it in court against any uses of the software. Good and Evil are subjective opinions to which each individual has their own beliefs.

There's no such thing as "too literally" in a legally binding contract, which is intended to be used anywhere on the world. All it takes is one open-minded judge. Sure it's 99.9% subjective, but why take a chance? What happens if it's used by a company that openly labels itself as evil? Not so subjective anymore... Crockford's act of granting special licenses to companies who may have evil-doing clients is a strong i…

> The real problem with this stupid joke is that it requires a trip to court to invalidate it.

I find myself strangely okay with the idea of requiring people to walk into a courtroom and admit that they intend to enact or permit evil.

Re: Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

#20

Post by jahewson »

andrewguenther wrote: post #8

Here is the quote the post refers to from "The JSON Saga": When I put the reference implementation onto the website, I needed to put a software license on it. I looked up all the licenses that are available, and there were a lot of them. I decided the one I liked the best was the MIT license, which was a notice that you would put on your source, and it would say: "you're allowed to use this for any purpose you want,…

It's sad that Crockford thinks that causing this kind of hassle to diligent users of his software is funny.

Ha ha, stupid user, you took the legally binding joke which I inserted into a legally binding license seriously, hahah you sooo funny.

Yeah, a real barrel of laughs. Never mind that licensing law is a lot less flexible than contract law, in which unreasonable terms are readily removed.

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