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"... When I put the reference implementation onto the website, I needed to put a software license on it. I looked up all the licenses that are available, and th
by bootload 16y ago
"... When I put the reference implementation onto the website, I needed to put a software license on it. I looked up all the licenses that are available, and there were a lot of them. I decided the one I liked the best was the MIT license, which was a notice that you would put on your source, and it would say: "you're allowed to use this for any purpose you want, just leave the notice in the source, and don't sue me." I love that license, it's really good.
... So I added one more line to my license, which was: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." ..."
I was using JSMin (py) today ~ http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html wondering why there was no installer and poking around I found this article. Seems the addition of additional line in the MIT license gives lawyers headaches.
- davidw 16y agoNot just lawyers - anyone sensible. It's not open source any more - you can't restrict what open source is used for - and extremely vague. DIY licenses are a bad idea. In this day and age you should probably pick between MIT, Apache, LGPL and GPL, and maybe something like the Affero GPL for open source, in order of how much they limit people using your code.
- bootload 16y agodoesn't stop the code being used in google android though ~ http://google.com/codesearch?q=%22The%20Software%20shall%20be%20used%20for%20Good%2C%20not%20Evil.%22 http://google.com/codesearch?q=%22The%20Software%20shall%20b... in "git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/external/webkit.git› V8Binding› v8› tools› jsmin.py" for example using this license ~ http://google.com/codesearch/p?hl=en#N6Qhr5kJSgQ/V8Binding/v8/LICENSE http://google.com/codesearch/p?hl=en#N6Qhr5kJSgQ/V8Binding/v...
- davidw 16y agoMaybe they just figured it's unenforceable BS and went ahead anyway.