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Why the JSON license is supposedly "non-free"
- wulczer 16y agoYeah, well, hate to be a partybreaker and I personally love that "Goot, not Evil" clause, but in the world of lawyers jokes do not exist. It's cute, but for serious software keep the licensing simple.
- GrandMasterBirt 16y agoDoes that mean I can sue microsoft because I feel they are evil and they implement JSON?
- rbanffy 16y agoThey have a proprietary, pure-evil implementation. Since they don't use the original one, but their own, they are free to use it for their evil purposes, mwahaha included.
- wulczer 16y agoBy the way, just to prove I'm not such a stiff, I rememberd and quickly found this: http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions It genuinely made me laugh :)
- edw 16y agoMore importantly, RMS does not come across as a person with a sense of humor. (Has any Jacobin ever?) I would guess that the license is on the site because of RMS and not some lawyer.
- knowtheory 16y agoThat is absolutely not true. There's no bigger fan of jokes and jabs w/in constraints than lawyers, and judges in particular. I know of several law schools which have competitions amongst their classes to find the weirdest, funniest, or most bizarre citation or footnote w/in legal briefs/case law. There is some weird stuff in our legal system, however they (typically) are asides amongst the core arguments, or in support of the core arguments of a legal case. Remember that good lawyers are hackers. They're trying to find edge cases and tease at the margins of the representation of the world that has been encoded in law.
- wulczer 16y agoHeh, it might be true, but I'm sure that lawyers that work in software companies screening the project BigCorp wants to use for potential licensing problems will share a laugh amongst them, but will then write to the boss saying: "It's risky, don't use that code".
- knowtheory 16y agoOh, i should make a distinction. Actual litigators have different jobs from corporate attorneys. Big corp legal departments are like corporate security teams. They don't want to see anything that could surprise them, and ideally they're going to lock your corporate environment down as tightly as they possibly can. Their job is to make sure no one else can screw with the way they've modeled the world.
- orangecat 16y agoI was at one of Douglas Crockford's presentations on JSON. He mentioned that IBM had expressed concerns about the license, so he sent them an official authorization allowing them to use JSON for evil.
- wulczer 16y agoOops, I was in the process of writing a comment about that (with a link) and only saw yours after I sent mine...
- delano 16y agoPlease include the link.
- wulczer 16y agoWell since I've written that other comment before seeing this, the link is there, but what the hell, I can repeat it: http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions
- vanni 16y agoThe JSON Saga by Douglas Crockford - See slides 58-61. http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=www.crockford.com%2Fcodecamp%2Fjsonsaga.ppt http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=www.crockford.com%2Fcodeca...
- bkudria 16y agoRelevant historical information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II
- delano 16y agoThe ironical part about that entire page is that BSD-style licenses are the most free of all.
- rbanffy 16y agoBSD licenses defend only the freedoms of the developers. GNU-style licenses defend the freedom of the users by taking away some freedoms from developers. If you really believe there can be a license that's "most free of all", that would be public domain (like SQLite).
- delano 16y agoDoes that decrease net freedom? Edit: you added the comment about SQLite after I replied. The problem with public domain is that it's messy. It has a specific legal definition which is not the same across jurisdictions (and in some places it's not recognized at all). It's cleaner and more succinct to say, "use this for whatever you want, including commercial purposes, but don't blame me for any problems".
- rbanffy 16y agoSorry for the edit - I am a strong believer in the "release early and often" mantra. I believe that BSD may, in fact, decrease net freedom. With GPL-like licenses, you always increase the amount of software that's released as free, because no such software can be closed up. With BSD-ish there is always the chance of one entity grabbing the software and running with it. If you consider a win having the largest corpus of software released under a free license, then GPL is a superior solution, because it restricts no freedom but the one to close the software.
- delano 16y agoPerhaps that's true. The opportunity to generate a profit is a significant motivator for a lot of people though. That's not true for everyone and those people will write and release regardless. But for those that it is true, they will spend time on something they wouldn't otherwise and likely be more productive doing it. I don't mind people using the software I write to generate a private profit. I think there's a greater net benefit in allowing more opportunities for people to make a living.