Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#1

Post by samuel246 » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 1:37 AM UTC

Crockford on JSON license (2011)
gist.github.com

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#2

Post by markstos » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:34 AM UTC

Some lawyers need to discover eslint.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#3

Post by lmm » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:35 AM UTC

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.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#4

Post by jonny_eh » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

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.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#5

Post by joshmarinacci » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:44 AM UTC

I’m impressed that IBM is actually doing their due diligence.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#6

Post by macksd » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

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 remove those packages even for stuff that isn't really a military application just because it's not clear how military-adjacent something is allowed to be. It's especially ironic since it's being distributed by a Department of Energy national lab. I wonder if DOE national labs ever have military applications...

It's also not clear to me that this does actually make it illegal for the military to just use it directly, even if they cared about following the letter of the law. If copyright is the real power behind the enforcement of open-source licenses, I'm not sure usage is something the license grantor gets to dictate as long as you're not redistributing something.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#7

Post by rtpg » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:47 AM UTC

It is sort of interesting how there are practical logistical issues with making bespoke licenses.

I would not want my work to end up being used by weapons manufacturers[0]. I honestly would like to put this into licenses. But there would be endless kvetching at such a license being used, of course. But so much OSS tooling is relying on how we have ended up with a lot of mutual compatible licenses, and having any sort of weirdness ends up excluding you from being bundled in repros.

There is a line that could be crossed here (and has been crossed by more than one very large project!), and I get ... annoyed at 'licenses' like the WTFPL. But when people get frustrated at seeing American companies deploy tooling to help with things like mass censorship in authoritarian regimes, I think about how we might be a couple license changes away from making that job way harder.

[0]: Not making a blanket statement for people working there! I simply do not want to participate.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#8

Post by hunterhe » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:49 AM UTC

How do you define evil? that's a good question.

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#9

Post by brigadier132 » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:51 AM UTC

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

Re: Crockford on JSON license (2011)

#10

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:51 AM UTC

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.

[deleted]