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Crockford on JSON license (2011)

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Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#11

Post by getmeinrn »

I was talking with a small startup founder about a project I had licensed under AGPL. He asked, "How do you know if someone uses your project against your licence though?" with a smile. His point wasn't anything new, but I still didn't have a great answer. I just said that it would require the company being honest and purchase a commercial license, and that I have personally worked at companies that evaluate their licenses to make sure they are in compliance.

But his immediate reaction being the thought of abusing the license was irritating. I can't say that I have never thought this way (of using "free" software, licenses be damned) when I was younger & in school. But as the owner of legitimate business, it seems so perverse. It screws small creators and discourages them from sharing their work with everyone.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#12

Post by em-bee »

lmm wrote: post #3

So the whole thing had no point other than making life hard for organisations with actual principles, like Debian. And he wonders why people get pissed off.

actually, the way i see it, the fact that people took the effort to contact the developer shows that they really wanted to use that. otherwise they would have just used it silently and the developer might not even find out about it. in some cases that might even have been an opportunity to earn some money.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#13

Post by abigail95 »

lmm wrote: post #3

So the whole thing had no point other than making life hard for organisations with actual principles, like Debian. And he wonders why people get pissed off.

If Debian's principles are free software then obviously their values are incompatible with this license due to the restrictions it imposes.

It's not a hard choice for Debian to make - they just put it in non-free with thousands of other packages.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#14

Post by lstamour »

I’d heard this one before. And yep, sure enough, it was sourced from a video from 2011. Definitely one of my favourites tho. It was also previously discussed in 2022 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31027104 and in 2013 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138866 and probably at other times, but I’m on my phone and can’t search it up now. Also, I’m pretty sure if you wanted to, you can now use JSLint for evil. (And if you really think about it, if you’re evil, wouldn’t you just break the license terms as part of your evil deeds? Or is this how they catch you, like tax evasion?)

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#16

Post by asynchronous »

macksd wrote: post #6

While this is funny, it does highlight that you should probably have an actual legal opinion if you decide to write your own license. A less tongue-in-cheek example that I've run into is https://dst.lbl.gov/ACSSoftware/colt/license.html . "any usage related to military applications is expressly forbidden", which is still poorly defined enough that it makes lots of corporate lawyers nervous and you end up having to re…

Can confirm DOE labs work on military adjacent things all the time

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#17

Post by Vecr »

brigadier132 wrote: post #9

Amazing writing. Question, is there any US judicial precedent for what is evil and what is not?

Probably. Most of the US has a legal system based on common law. I think it would really depend on the context though, because I don't know how you can use a linting program "for evil."

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#18

Post by verve_rat »

macksd wrote: post #6

While this is funny, it does highlight that you should probably have an actual legal opinion if you decide to write your own license. A less tongue-in-cheek example that I've run into is https://dst.lbl.gov/ACSSoftware/colt/license.html . "any usage related to military applications is expressly forbidden", which is still poorly defined enough that it makes lots of corporate lawyers nervous and you end up having to re…

I mean... no?

There is nothing compelling these organisations to use that particular piece of software. When contacted the author could just shrug and say "not my problem" and the organisation would just have to find some other software to use.

The author has no obligation to make things easier for people that don't know if they are doing evil or not, or if they are military or not.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#19

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

jonny_eh wrote: post #4
lmm wrote: post #3

So the whole thing had no point other than making life hard for organisations with actual principles, like Debian. And he wonders why people get pissed off.

He makes a good point. Don’t ask me what it is though.

I only just got here but I believe the point is that IBM and their customers (and minions, of course; strangely, not their patsies but maybe they fall under minions) are privileged to use this software for Evil.
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