14 ms·

The MIT license isn’t as bulletproof as you think it is.

• jrockway 8y ago
  The license doesn't really matter here. I'm only quoting it to set expectations. People are showing up demanding some sort of quality standard, when they explicitly agreed that there was no such standard. A related issue is that NPM distributed malicious code to people. That sounds like a problem between people that downloaded the malicious version and NPM. Not sure how the author is involved. To your point, if the author added the malicious code, I don't think the license would necessarily protect him. Intent is key. But he didn't.
  • heartbreak 8y ago
    > A related issue is that NPM distributed malicious code to people. That sounds like a problem between people that downloaded the malicious version and NPM. Not sure how the author is involved. It's an author/maintainer issue (and not an NPM issue) because the maintainer explicitly gave the bad actor the right to publish via NPM's delivery channel. The maintainer did so in gross negligence, in my opinion.
    • jrockway 8y ago
      If courts agree with you, the world of free software is over. It will be too risky to accept contributions. Github and NPM will be shut down over lawsuits. For that reason, I think you are wrong.
      • heartbreak 8y ago
        It is risky. Ask one of the 17 law firms involved with Oracle v Google if open source licensing is too risky.