41–50 of 187 posts
Who will sue? EFF? Crockford?
I am no expert in "license law", but I am sure a you-are-using-this-for-evil accusations would not stand a chance.
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.
Well, those diligent users can reimplement the software if they don't like it. It's only the implementation that's got that clause, not the spec. Obviously that's not easy for them to do, but nobody says they have to use his implementation if they don't like the terms it's licensed under.
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 b…
The article was itself childish, but then again, it's a personal blog, not some kind of official statement.
> it discourages people from contributing
True, but my perspective is different - what discourages people from contributing are ego-driven testosterone-filled spoiled brats. Incidentally that's why we also have so few women contributing.
There is no place for humor or overly subjective terms like "evil" in a software license or other legal document, and the problem with Douglas Crockford's license is that he fails to understand that. That is, unless his intent is to keep every entity with sane lawyers from using his software. I don't think that's his intent. He said he wants to keep people without a sense of humor from using his software, but sane la…
The post could have made a sane argument that the license is ambiguous and should be avoided in Free Software. But it focused on the author and made unjustifiable personal remarks. Not cool.
The author also seem to forget that there are advocates of the MIT license who would never use GPL software because of its viral nature. Does that mean Richard Stallman is 'harmful to software'? Criticize the license, but don't name-call the author who has made major positive contributions to the field.
I'm sorry, is there some definition of Open Source that I'm not aware of?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
" I'd argue Mono is intrinsically evil" Could you explain why this is? I use Mono and I'm genuinely interested.
>> " I'd argue Mono is intrinsically evil" > Could you explain why this is? I use Mono and I'm genuinely interested. From the op's profile: "I really don't like Microsoft much." Apparently not liking MS much is reason enough to dislike an open source project implementing an interesting runtime and languages, which provides options to use aforementioned runtime and languages without being married to MS.
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 b…
People need to be aware that using childish clauses in licenses can have legal repercussions. This is not about "Free Software" or "Open Source" either, because that same clause can get you in trouble even if it comes in the EULA of a proprietary product. The article was itself childish, but then again, it's a personal blog, not some kind of official statement. > it discourages people from contributing True, but my p…
> True, but my perspective is different - what discourages people from contributing are ego-driven testosterone-filled spoiled brats. Incidentally that's why we also have so few women contributing.
Ego and Testosterone in the same sentence - that has to be bad! But it is a different conversation altogether.
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…
This non-Free license is intended to mock people who take licensing seriously. It seems to be working. (Though I might add a "too" in front of seriously). Sometimes ridiculous things need mocking. (And just for the record, I do fully expect future generations to find our preoccupation with "owning" and "licensing" every stray line of text or bar of musical notes to be thoroughly ridiculous.)
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…
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 asking a lawyer.
Also, GPL is a license that has restrictions on distribution and not usage. Usage of GPL-software is completely free. Of course, sometimes the usage/distribution boundaries are blurred when you're speaking about platforms, so GPL 3 drew a line in the sand to prevent cases such as Tivo, however to quote Linus Tolvards which represents the other side of the coin in any talks related to GPL [1]:
"""If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want."""
This is also not a matter of free / un-free. But rather a mater of legal liability. If somebody can prove that you used the software for "Evil", whatever that may mean, then you're legally liable. So what's evil anyway? Is making money evil?
[1] http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/09/torvalds-linux-licensing-cz...