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Evil, or why Douglas Crockford is harmful to Free Software

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

#151

Post by iSnow »

rwmj wrote: post #121
iSnow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing OpenSource software used to be a real of real amateurs, people who do it because they love to do that stuff and derive fun out of it. Now, it seems, the license has become the most important aspect in this. IMHO, this is a most unfortunate development, sadly driven by license fundamentalists like Debian. It is high time that someone like Crockford throws a fistful of sand in those gears and causes butthurt. M…

"license fundamentalists" ...? You mean, "people trying to obey the law and not get sued"?

Wake me when Crockford gets sued for his "license".

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

#152

Post by ygra »

Evbn wrote: post #141
theorique wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a real, major user requested a clarification / amendment to their software license in order to use the software. Crockford granted such a clarification / amendment. I don't see the problem here. Software is written and licensed by people, and is susceptible to their quirks and foibles.

The solution for the anti-joke contingent is to organize a mass flood of exemption requests for Crockford to deal with.

He isn't obliged to even answer them :-) That's just a courtesy and if abused he might just as well say “take it under the license as is or don't; I won't make exceptions anymore”.

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

#153

Post by benatkin »

bad_user wrote: post #50
raganwald wrote: post #34

Shouldn't this be, Why you should know what you're doing legally before you contribute code to free software? Or perhaps, The system works, notice how we avoided the mistake of including software with an eccentric and non-free license from being included in free software? It takes me back to the frenzy over VLC on iOS. People write code, we need to respect their choices with respect to how they license it, even if th…

I agree with your argument, however I don't agree that the GPL is un-free . First of all, there's a clear distinction between the GPL and this modified MIT license - the GPL was written with the help of actual lawyers and it's a solid license that can stand on its own in a court of law. If you think that the GPL gives you certain privileges or takes away some freedoms, then it's actually easy to verify that by simply…

The GPL says plainly that it shall not be modified. I find that equally worrying. What if I save a word wrapped version of it to a file?

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

#154

Post by jlgreco »

polyfractal wrote: post #91
chris_wot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hope Actually, I don't really care either way. If it becomes legally enforcable not to commit evil, I win. If it isn't legally enforcable, then I still win, only to a much lesser degree. By which I mean I lose through winning. Which countries laws are we dealing with here? :P e.g. I believe lots of US employee laws would be very illegal in EU. You merely illustrate my point. Too vague to be enforcable.

I believe the general consensus is that "evil" is subjective. See the abortion argument above. "Evil" can be spun many different ways. It's "evil" to use automation software because it eliminates jobs of hard working Americans. etc etc

All the things people are saying about this being a terrible legal clause are 100% true.

But that seems to be the point, doesn't it? It's a license that filters out people who care too much. How much is too much? According to this license, the threshold is "listens to this ridiculous license".

Maybe in practice that makes it a non-commercial license, or a "hobby project only", license, or perhaps in the extreme, a "nobody" license.

Who really cares? He owns the copyright, he can license it as he pleases.

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

#155

Post by lucisferre »

tptacek wrote: post #108
jahewson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's sad that Crockford wrote a piece of code and gave it away for free in such a way that some people feel they can't use it? How much sadder than all the code every YC company writes and doesn't publish at all?

Ugh, startup code, be glad they don't push all that crap up to Github. I'm more than happy that most sane contributors to open source have a filter on. Not every piece of internal code is needed or wanted be the community.

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

#156

Post by lucisferre »

tptacek wrote: post #118
monochromatic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If others are encouraged to make similar "jokes," yes.

So, just to be clear, your take is that the authors of software are not in fact entitled to use whatever license they please?

How is anyone making that argument? From what I can see all people are saying is that making an obtuse licencing clause is a bit of an asshole thing to do. I can't see why anyone would disagree with that either.

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

#157

Post by jlgreco »

zb wrote: post #23
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. That's not an option for Free Software distributions like Debian, so everybody loses except evildoers.

If its not an option for Debian, it is only because of their own peculiarity that it isn't. The type or magnitude of the "payment" is unspecified and open to any negotiation at all. They could even send him an email asking for a GPL license to it in exchange for rewards in the afterlife.

He may not go for it, but they are certainly capable of asking.

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

#158

Post by tptacek »

pbreit wrote: post #137
tptacek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that Crockford wrote a piece of code and gave it away for free in such a way that some people feel they can't use it? How much sadder than all the code every YC company writes and doesn't publish at all?

Kind of a lame and unnecessary rip on YC?

Sure, if you're hypersensitive or just looking for a fight. I like a lot of YC companies.

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

#159

Post by tptacek »

lucisferre wrote: post #156
tptacek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just to be clear, your take is that the authors of software are not in fact entitled to use whatever license they please?

How is anyone making that argument? From what I can see all people are saying is that making an obtuse licencing clause is a bit of an asshole thing to do. I can't see why anyone would disagree with that either.

This is one of those situations where 80% of the commenters in the thread will think I am trolling because their sense of entitlement to anything they can read in on a Github page is so powerful that they forget they're talking about the time and effort of an actual human being.

If you feel like you can call someone an "asshole" for writing "use this software for good not evil" in their license, then, and I mean this respectfully but directly, you need to unplug for awhile and interact with actual human beings in the world.

Similarly, if you can write a whole blog post calling Douglas Crockford "childish" and implying that he's not only a hypocrite but hypocritically evil for working at Paypal simply because of something he put in the license of a piece of software he gave away for free, you are a whackjob nutbag and nobody should listen to you.

Here is a clue before 8 different HN'ers explain to me how damaging idiosyncratic license clauses are and why that justified this nutball post: you can write a post about why people shouldn't use a specific free library without calling its author names.

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

#160

Post by jlgreco »

apgwoz wrote: post #128
ygra wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why large corporations have hordes of lawyers to help with such things. There is no such thing as accidentally using code under a certain license and there are procedures in place to handle that. It's no different with using commercial code that was licensed to you, anyway. You still have to adhere to the licensing terms and if you don't they can sue you.

Of course large corporations have lots of lawyers to protect against this (and of course they hire enough engineers to rewrite the thing to begin with), which means I didn't illustrate my point very well. The point is that there is potential negative impact on free software as a result of a "cute" addendum like this.

Frankly I think the GPL, or even worse, the AGPLv3, have just as much, or even moreso, potential to "harm" free software as you describe. Nobody loses sleep over other people using those licenses as they please though.

I think maybe I'll switch to an AGPLv3 license with a no-evil modification for my future personal projects...

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