12 ms·

License to Use JSLint for Evil

132 points by erenon 5y ago

ascagnel_ 5y ago
Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amp108 5y ago
  Pretty sure most licenses have a clause stating that, if one clause is deemed invalid, that fact doesn't render the entire thing null and void. Check with your lawyer when in doubt.
  - TheDong 5y ago
    If you're curious about the specific license being referenced, it didn't have any clause like that: https://github.com/kaizhu256/jslint/blob/e188c37059ec66aedf929da98d93b706b207811b/jslint.mjs#L3-L23 https://github.com/kaizhu256/jslint/blob/e188c37059ec66aedf9...
    - bromuro 5y ago
      Thanks for sharing! It’s always nice listening to Douglas Crockford! What an interesting story about XML too :)
  - user3939382 5y ago
    It's called a severability clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability
- tbranyen 5y ago
  Do you think Douglass Crockford didn't know that? He was being cheeky and doesn't care. This was also a huge pain point for JSHint and a lot of work went into undoing that by finding a single commit that didn't have the clause iirc.
  - msdrigg 5y ago
    I looked it up and found this interesting read: https://jshint.com/relicensing-2020/ https://jshint.com/relicensing-2020/
    - gabagool 5y ago
      I read this and it is interesting. I get why asking JS Hint contributors to re-submit/approve their changes is clear of the Do No Evil clause. But, I don't understand why all changes before that (from JS Lint Day 1 until it was forked into JS Hint) aren't subject to that same clause. Why is the Eclipse Foundation not subject to it?
      - azornathogron 5y ago
        The Eclipse Foundation received their copy of JSLint under the MIT Expat license, not the default no-evil license. > Meanwhile, the author of JSLint permitted the Eclipse Foundation to relicense a version of JSLint using the MIT Expat license so that it could be included in their project named Orion
  - Uehreka 5y ago
    I guess some people might find it cheeky or funny to build an entire software product that does something people want, and then make it impossible for most people to use by adding a silly licensing clause. I’d consider it a huge waste of time, but hey, it’s not my project.
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      Right. It's probably the second worse place to put jokes, next to an employment contract.
- doliveira 5y ago
  Pretty sure it is human judges that enforce the licenses, not computers.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    This is a pretty moot point - judges do go by license intent rather than literal license text whenever possible but putting abstract statements in licenses without severability clauses is a great way to make those licenses unenforceable. A license that includes the statement "This may not be used to further the end of mankind in any way" for instance - is completely null and void, the intent is clear but the set of actions that can be argued to fit that are... everything. Also, that original intent can be lost to time (in three hundred years a judge might rule that they can't properly evaluated what we today consider good and evil since this was before we acknowledged residents of Alpha Centauri as intelligent beings and thus our moral code is incomprehensible) and in that case judges will take a literal reading of the text which can lead to issues like ambiguous comma styling[1]. 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matter-omitting-one-cost-maine-dairy-n847151 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matt...
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  What effect do purely normative statements have on licenses? Because the original only says you should use it for Good, not that you must use it for Good.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Legal teams evaluate licenses and then ban the usage of your software because your attempts to be cute with license clauses pose an unacceptable business risk compared to the value you provide. If you want your software to be usable, choose standard licenses and don’t modify them. Unless you find value entirely in creating something and not in being useful to others, be extremely careful with creative licensing.
    - im3w1l 5y ago
      It will not deter everyone from using it. Who will it deter and who will it not? Maybe that split is intentional.
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        It will deter people who are accidentally telling on themselves.
        im3w1l 5y ago
        It will deter orgs large enough to be worth suing. It will not deter individuals who click ok on everything without reading nor startups that play fast and loose.
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      What is the business risk about disregarding a clause that says you merely should do something, with no carrot or stick if you do or don't?
      - colechristensen 5y ago
- michaelt 5y ago
  Who are all these people going to court and getting their software licenses enforced?
  - smegger001 5y ago
    oracle, but i am fairly sure they are the sort of evil the licensor is thinking of
  - pabs3 5y ago
    If the Software Freedom Conservancy vs Vizio lawsuit is won, then anyone who is the recipient of copylefted software (GPL etc) will be able to go to court for compliance. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
- Thiez 5y ago
  The default for copyright is 'all rights reserved' though, so it would seem to me that it's in the software users best interest to hope it's enforceable, otherwise they can't use the software at all.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
altgoogler 5y ago
Here's the source talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s
- demetrius 5y ago
  > I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil. I thought this was a funny joke. Then I read “IBM and the Holocaust”.
ajkjk 5y ago
One of the weirder things I have done in my life is contributing some code to JSHint (a derivative of JSLint) so that it can finally be used for evil. The lead maintainer has a series of blogposts on the subject that are an interesting read: http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-for-evil http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-...
georgia_peach 5y ago
Doug Crockford is a ray of sunshine.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  When I discovered Crockford, JavaScript was a joke language. You'd have been laughed out of the room if you suggested doing any kind of major project with it. It was something you used to validate a field, triggered on the "blur" event or something like that. Crockford helped me see that there was more to JavaScript than it was being used for.
  - no-s 5y ago
    > Crockford helped me see that there was more to JavaScript than it was being used for. I read Crockford’s “JavaScript: The Good Parts” and had a similar experience, though it was more like an epiphany. I thought back to all the other disdainful language criticisms I’d embraced over the previous 30 years and realized I’d been a fool all along about a lot of things… Later I met Crockford after a JSON talk and we had an excellent discussion. But - he autographed my friend’s book with a personalized admonition to do no evil..

132 points by erenon 5y ago

Don't put clauses that rely on subjective concepts (like "good" and "evil") in your software licenses, because they can render the license impossible to enforce.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amp108 5y ago
Pretty sure most licenses have a clause stating that, if one clause is deemed invalid, that fact doesn't render the entire thing null and void. Check with your lawyer when in doubt.
- TheDong 5y ago
  If you're curious about the specific license being referenced, it didn't have any clause like that: https://github.com/kaizhu256/jslint/blob/e188c37059ec66aedf929da98d93b706b207811b/jslint.mjs#L3-L23 https://github.com/kaizhu256/jslint/blob/e188c37059ec66aedf9...
  - bromuro 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing! It’s always nice listening to Douglas Crockford! What an interesting story about XML too :)
- user3939382 5y ago
  It's called a severability clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability
tbranyen 5y ago
Do you think Douglass Crockford didn't know that? He was being cheeky and doesn't care. This was also a huge pain point for JSHint and a lot of work went into undoing that by finding a single commit that didn't have the clause iirc.
- msdrigg 5y ago
  I looked it up and found this interesting read: https://jshint.com/relicensing-2020/ https://jshint.com/relicensing-2020/
  - gabagool 5y ago
    I read this and it is interesting. I get why asking JS Hint contributors to re-submit/approve their changes is clear of the Do No Evil clause. But, I don't understand why all changes before that (from JS Lint Day 1 until it was forked into JS Hint) aren't subject to that same clause. Why is the Eclipse Foundation not subject to it?
    - azornathogron 5y ago
      The Eclipse Foundation received their copy of JSLint under the MIT Expat license, not the default no-evil license. > Meanwhile, the author of JSLint permitted the Eclipse Foundation to relicense a version of JSLint using the MIT Expat license so that it could be included in their project named Orion
- Uehreka 5y ago
  I guess some people might find it cheeky or funny to build an entire software product that does something people want, and then make it impossible for most people to use by adding a silly licensing clause. I’d consider it a huge waste of time, but hey, it’s not my project.
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    Right. It's probably the second worse place to put jokes, next to an employment contract.
doliveira 5y ago
Pretty sure it is human judges that enforce the licenses, not computers.
- munk-a 5y ago
  This is a pretty moot point - judges do go by license intent rather than literal license text whenever possible but putting abstract statements in licenses without severability clauses is a great way to make those licenses unenforceable. A license that includes the statement "This may not be used to further the end of mankind in any way" for instance - is completely null and void, the intent is clear but the set of actions that can be argued to fit that are... everything. Also, that original intent can be lost to time (in three hundred years a judge might rule that they can't properly evaluated what we today consider good and evil since this was before we acknowledged residents of Alpha Centauri as intelligent beings and thus our moral code is incomprehensible) and in that case judges will take a literal reading of the text which can lead to issues like ambiguous comma styling[1]. 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matter-omitting-one-cost-maine-dairy-n847151 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matt...
oh_sigh 5y ago
What effect do purely normative statements have on licenses? Because the original only says you should use it for Good, not that you must use it for Good.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Legal teams evaluate licenses and then ban the usage of your software because your attempts to be cute with license clauses pose an unacceptable business risk compared to the value you provide. If you want your software to be usable, choose standard licenses and don’t modify them. Unless you find value entirely in creating something and not in being useful to others, be extremely careful with creative licensing.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    It will not deter everyone from using it. Who will it deter and who will it not? Maybe that split is intentional.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      It will deter people who are accidentally telling on themselves.
      - im3w1l 5y ago
        It will deter orgs large enough to be worth suing. It will not deter individuals who click ok on everything without reading nor startups that play fast and loose.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    What is the business risk about disregarding a clause that says you merely should do something, with no carrot or stick if you do or don't?
    - colechristensen 5y ago
michaelt 5y ago
Who are all these people going to court and getting their software licenses enforced?
- smegger001 5y ago
  oracle, but i am fairly sure they are the sort of evil the licensor is thinking of
- pabs3 5y ago
  If the Software Freedom Conservancy vs Vizio lawsuit is won, then anyone who is the recipient of copylefted software (GPL etc) will be able to go to court for compliance. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
Thiez 5y ago
The default for copyright is 'all rights reserved' though, so it would seem to me that it's in the software users best interest to hope it's enforceable, otherwise they can't use the software at all.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

altgoogler 5y ago

Here's the source talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-JoyNuQJs#t=2480s

demetrius 5y ago
> I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil. I thought this was a funny joke. Then I read “IBM and the Holocaust”.

ajkjk 5y ago

One of the weirder things I have done in my life is contributing some code to JSHint (a derivative of JSLint) so that it can finally be used for evil. The lead maintainer has a series of blogposts on the subject that are an interesting read: http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-for-evil http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-...

georgia_peach 5y ago

Doug Crockford is a ray of sunshine.

throwawayboise 5y ago
When I discovered Crockford, JavaScript was a joke language. You'd have been laughed out of the room if you suggested doing any kind of major project with it. It was something you used to validate a field, triggered on the "blur" event or something like that. Crockford helped me see that there was more to JavaScript than it was being used for.
- no-s 5y ago
  > Crockford helped me see that there was more to JavaScript than it was being used for. I read Crockford’s “JavaScript: The Good Parts” and had a similar experience, though it was more like an epiphany. I thought back to all the other disdainful language criticisms I’d embraced over the previous 30 years and realized I’d been a fool all along about a lot of things… Later I met Crockford after a JSON talk and we had an excellent discussion. But - he autographed my friend’s book with a personalized admonition to do no evil..