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No, they did not. JSlint has a license that says “may not be used for evil.” which is ill-defined. What’s evil? Is what you consider evil what I consider evil?
by Xylakant 7y ago
No, they did not. JSlint has a license that says “may not be used for evil.” which is ill-defined. What’s evil? Is what you consider evil what I consider evil? So they asked for a well-specified license. In return they were granted a license to use JSlint for evil purposes, which is obviously a good joke at their expense, but combined with the original license encompasses all uses, and, as such, is well-defined.
- candiodari 7y agoI love it.
- Xylakant 7y agoI love the joke, but I hate the license. It makes using JSlint a pain in any corporate environment. Strictly speaking it’s also incompatible with the GPL.
- dragonwriter 7y agoStrictly speaking, it's neither an Open Source nor Free Software license, because of th usage restriction which is incompatible with both the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition.
- Xylakant 7y agoCorrect. It would still be compatible with many of them, though. There’s no provision forbidding additional restrictions placed on the software in MIT, BSD, APL, MPL for example.
- dragonwriter 7y agoThere's two kinds of license compatibility one might care about, relicensing compatibility and license merging compatibility (“can a project using a particular license adopt components with another license with no effect on the restrictions imposed downstream” [a somewhat weaker form of this that is unconcerned with additional notice requirements that have no substantive effect on what downstream users can do is perhaps the more common form] vs. “can a project use upstream component under one license simultaneously with upstream components under another license at all”). JSLint has license merging compatibility with some F/OSS licenses, but not even the weaker form of relicensing compatibility (although permissive license will often have at least the weaker form of relicensing compatibility going to the JSLint license.)
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoWhich is good. And puts both Open Source and Free Software in a less than wholesome light, ethically. "We don't care what you do with this as long as you reshare/etc" encourages a misleadingly narrow focus within the bigger picture of corporate and professional ethics. IMO there's no realistic presumption of unquestioned goodness on the part of GPL. If someone wants to create code with a "No evil" license, they're perfectly entitled to apply one. Everyone else has to live with the consequences, just as they have to live with GPL etc.
- Xylakant 7y agoCertainly, everyone is entitled to use whatever license terms they wish. I don’t consider that a solution for the ethics problem, though. What’s good and what’s evil is a very grey area. Ambiguous terms don’t make a good license. Most people consider themselves good. Many Facebook engineers consider themselves good, I’d wager. Does that make Facebook good? Russian intelligence officers probably consider themselves good. Does that make their use of JSlint good? Even Nazis considered themselves good. The entire ideology was centered around that narrative. So how can a license using those terms solve the ethics problem?
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoYou said "no they didn't" then described how they did exactly what the parent said, just with a gloss describing why they wanted to be allowed to "use it for evil".
- lallysingh 7y agoPlease no it just means their lawyers aren't morons. What's evil? Are they getting sued for charging interest? Selling products on Sunday? Supporting the sale of secular texts?
- Xylakant 7y agoNo. They want clarity on what’s considered evil. Or alternatively clarification what the license allows and disallows under which circumstances.
- matz1 7y agoYes, what considered evil is relative so why ibm even need to worry about it.
- Xylakant 7y agoLook, I consider Ananas on Pizza evil. Can Pizza Hut not use JSlint on its website now? That would be furthering evil. On a more serious take: I support causes that a lot of fundamental Christians could consider evil. Equality for queer people, for example. Marriage for all. Am I allowed to use JSlint for a website that supports those goals? Why do lawyers worry about things like that? Because it’s their job. Unclear definitions worry them, which is good. Ambiguity ends you up in court.
- matz1 7y agoYes, likewise pizza hut could argue that they do not consider it evil
- Xylakant 7y agoMy point exactly. How would that get decided if things end up in court.
- matz1 7y agoI wouldn't be be concerned, The other side too have to think twice before suing me.
- Xylakant 7y agoLawsuits are costly in terms of money and time invested. They’re a drag. Just the threat of suing often is enough. Incentives are not necessarily equal. You might have on one side a startup just trying to get a product out of the door, on the other side a zealot trying to push his agenda. The whole thing could end up sinking the startup. What’s a viable risk/payoff trade off? Copyrights can be inherited, too. Who knows if the estate doesn’t have a particular view on good and evil and spends the entire inheritance suing small scale developers just to prove a point. Now, in this case, it’s a fairly obviously benign case, but for good reasons, (corporate) lawyers stick to well-known licenses and risk avoidance.