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Crockford on JSON license (2011)

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Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#31

Post by pabs3 »

getmeinrn wrote: post #11

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 li…

GPL violations are constant and everywhere, this definitely isn't new. I've even seen BSD license violations before. My DSL modem/router violates the licenses of micro_httpd (BSD), samba/Linux/busybox (GPL) and probably more. Basically, you have to go out and look for violations and prosecute them. If the Software Freedom Conservancy prevails in their lawsuit against Vizio, then it will make it possible for any recipient of GPLed binaries to sue for GPL compliance. That means that lawsuits for compliance don't need to involve the copyright holder and projects can outsource compliance efforts to the userbase of open source copylefted projects. That doesn't necessarily help your project though, since it sounds like most users of your project will be on the proprietary/commercial version?

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#32

Post by jrflowers »

School-Cotton wrote: post #23
brigadier132 wrote: post #9

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

No, which is why this license is probably much more restrictive than its author intended. Many serious organizations simply won’t use something for which the meaning of the license terms is unclear to this extent. That of course doesn’t mean they “plan on using it for evil” or anything of the sort.

I’d think that it wouldn’t make for a very restrictive license. Since there’s no agreement on what “evil” means whatsoever, it doesn’t seem that different from putting “You can not use this code to hooplebop shanglefronks”

Edit: I guess there’s that TV show “Evil”. It would be funny if IBM had that production company as a client.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#33

Post by [deleted] »

fortenforge wrote: post #30

Cryptographers often tell software engineers that they shouldn't roll their own crypto. I think lawyers would tell software engineers that they shouldn't roll their own license. If you really intend or want other people to be able to use the software you wrote, for the love of god please pick a sane, well-known license so that people can use your software with full knowledge of the legal implications.

[deleted]

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#34

Post by psunavy03 »

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…

For those not aware, DoE is literally responsible for the design, testing, and manufacture of US nuclear weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_En...

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#35

Post by macksd »

pabs3 wrote: post #28
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…

Hmm, doesn't the LGPL allow you to remove any additional restrictions?

Interesting - do you mean because of the "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed" clause? I wonder.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#38

Post by harry8 »

macksd wrote: post #21
verve_rat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's nothing compelling the author, no, except for in the situation outlined above they're really doing nothing to prevent military use, but they are hampering adoption among companies scrupulous or careful enough to not run afoul of a poorly defined legal term. Seems counter-productive to the apparent motives.

Only law abiding people follow the law too, what's the point of them?

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#39

Post by lmm »

em-bee wrote: post #12
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.

I mean if he didn't charge IBM (and for such a broad license) he's surely not charging anyone else. I guess he opens a line of communication with them in some sense, but it's with some random staffer in the legal department rather than anyone who's going to be hiring contractors, and surely there would be friendlier ways if that was the goal (hell, just asking people to say hi would be starting you off on better terms).

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#40

Post by lmm »

abigail95 wrote: post #13
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.

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

Restrictions which he clearly has no willingness to actually enforce. So they only serve to make life hard for the decent folks.

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

Sure, but that then has other consequences - they can't use it as a dependency in their build system, they have to move downstream stuff into contrib or look for replacement dependencies, ....

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