
JSON.org License Literally Says it "shall be used for Good, not Evil" - friendlytuna
http://java.dzone.com/articles/jsonorg-license-literally-says
======
iloveponies
The JSON spec is no longer exclusively under this license as it's part of both
the ECMA 5 specification and formalised under RFC 4627 so the "do good not
evil" tidbit (which, by the way, SQLite -
<http://www.sqlite.org/different.html> also mentions) to me, doesn't appear to
apply.

Can we get over this and move on? Anyone would think a lot of people were
swindled of something that was clearly not ill-intended.

~~~
warp
jslint (and it's derivatives) are still under this license.

(which is a shame, because this clause makes it incompatible with the GPL
family of licenses).

~~~
kevindication
I happened to come across that clause last week and tracked down some humorous
commentary by jslint's author:

    
    
      Douglas: That's an interesting point. Also about once a year, I get a
      letter from a lawyer, every year a different lawyer, at a company--I don't
      want to embarrass the company by saying their name, so I'll just say their
      initials--IBM...
    
      [laughter]
    
      ...saying that they want to use something I wrote. Because I put this on
      everything I write, now. They want to use something that I wrote in
      something that they wrote, and they were pretty sure they weren't going to
      use it for evil, but they couldn't say for sure about their customers. So
      could I give them a special license for that?
    
      Of course. So I wrote back--this happened literally two weeks ago--"I give
      permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for
      evil."
    

[http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-
legal%40lists.debian.org/...](http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-
legal%40lists.debian.org/msg40723.html)

~~~
tedivm
His javascript minifier 'jsmin' was causing projects to get removed from
Google Code and other places that only host open source code, so I emailed Mr.
Crockford to ask if I could get the same extension he gave to IBM. His
response was less than thrilling-

 _I released to free use for all with the only condition that it not be used
for evil. If that is unacceptable to you, then you may not use it. Your
options are to bend to the pro-evil fanatics, or to find a more reasonable
hosting solution._

Ultimately I wrote my own called JShrink (which I just moved to github this
weekend - <https://github.com/tedivm/JShrink>).

The point being, he's not actually willing to make the change.

~~~
kevindication
Nice work. Google also reimplemented jsmin as jsmin.py here:
<https://github.com/v8/v8/blob/master/tools/jsmin.py>

Now we just need an evil-friendly reimplementation of jslint.

------
dewitt
People may make light of this, but as the dzone.com article points out, it's
what's known as a Field of Use limitation [1], and it's an actual problem.

The "good" vs "evil" thing is perhaps a red herring, but you can imagine the
practical consequences if "free" software developers licensed their work for
all purposes except competitors, etc.

The Free Software Foundation raised this issue in the context of royalty-free
patent licenses years ago [2], and the Open Source Initiative went so far as
to say that if a license allowed for a "Discrimination Against Fields of
Endeavor" then it wasn't an open source license at all [3].

I'm sure D. Crockford didn't do this to be malicious in any way, likely he
even did it just to be cute, (maybe he even meant well by it!), but it's also
a shame that it's persisted this long, as it sets a bad example for others.

    
    
      [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-of-use_limitation
      [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html
      [3] http://www.opensource.org/osd.html

~~~
raganwald
What a rotten shame that an author decided what he did or didn’t want others
to do with the fruit of his labours. As you point out, this sets a _bad
example for others_.

Seriously? He’s an adult, he makes his choices, if it means people prefer
other, fully free software that doesn’t necessitate lawerly wrangling, so
what?

His software isn’t free, and I’m fine with that, he did the work, he decides
what we can or cannot do with it.

<http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-freedom-to-drink-coffee>

~~~
dewitt
Sure, but his making this choice means that his work is incompatible with the
much larger body of already-established work. His decision is his own, but
it's a direction I wouldn't want others to follow, since we all benefit more
from the common adoption of a smaller handful of mutually compatible open
source licenses.

(Being legally allowed to remix code across projects is one of the great
things about the OSI model. There are some silos within open source, such as
copyleft vs permissive licenses, but at least each of those are already big
enough sustain their own ecosystems.)

~~~
DougBTX
Tricky tricky. Is it evil to release software that may not be used for evil?

~~~
Ralith
If so, would that make it illegal to redistribute code with a license like
this?

------
eloisant
I remember a talk of Crockford, where he explained that. He also explained
that it worried IBM lawyers, to the point that he signed them a document
"authorizing IBM to do evil with his software".

~~~
ejfinneran
Here is a clip from that talk where he mentions IBM contacting him. Pretty
funny. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCimLnIsDA>

~~~
anjesh
An hour long video by Douglas Crockford where he explains about the licence
somewhere after 40-45 minutes i think.
<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Heretical-Open-Source>

------
dspillett
> _But, the most important thing I take away from this license is that this
> additional clause adds an unnecessary complication…_

The standard (and correct) response to this is that if you don't like the
license either don't use the code or negotiate (as IBM have done in this
specific case) alternate terms.

> _one that many people don’t even know is lurking in their dependency tree._

That is a due diligence failing on the part of those people, rather than a
problem with this specific license. If you don't know that this clause is
relevant to your dependencies then what else might be hidden in there that you
are unaware of?

A bit like the "blue M&Ms" (and other such) found in the riders for
celebrities, they do that as a test to make sure people have bothered to read
the information provided rather than any real need for the specific demand to
be complied with.

------
0x0
I saw this license buried within the iOS "Settings -> General -> About ->
Legal Notices".

So I guess neither Apple nor any iPhone-owning user may use the phone for
evil.

~~~
paraschopra
Well, what if they do? Would they get sued for at least two crimes? How silly.

~~~
bigiain
There's a common mistake - assuming "evil" is a crime. (and it's obvious
counterpart, that "good" can not be a crime)

------
dave1010uk
JSMin was removed from Google Code because of this licence. Douglas Crockford
explains the reasoning behind the license: <http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-
welcome-on-google-code>

~~~
raganwald
Courtesy @llimllib:

    
    
      "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” site:http://code.google.com
      yields 35k results, they’ve got a lot of banning to do

~~~
aliguori
The problem with this license is that this phrase is simply there to be cute.
There is no legal definition of Evil and I don't see how you can come up with
one. It accomplishes nothing other than making the license incompatible with
other licenses and adding uncertainty.

------
vlasta2
I have been using similar license with my freeware apps for some time
<http://www.rw-designer.com/entry/315>

I think when giving something away for free, it does not hurt to try to make
the world a little better...

~~~
davidw
You're not making the world better though. Evil people will ignore your
warning, and, if you're releasing as open source, people who are serious about
licenses can't integrate your code with other stuff because of the "weird"
license that doesn't make sense (who gets to define "evil"?).

------
gmaslov
I've been thinking about this problem with law a bit lately. It seems like our
laywers & politicians want every legal question to be completely decidable,
and this attitude leaks into popular culture too (or is it the other way
around?), hence this article's preoccupation with the fact that good or evil
intent cannot (as far as we know) be identified by any mechanical process.

This type of thing is of course a problem in computer science, but _the law is
not a computer_ , and I wish we could stop treating it like one. With humans
involved, it's quite feasible to make decisions about undecidable things. This
process is called exercising judgement, and we hire judges to do it. Frankly,
I don't see what the problem is with a "don't be evil" clause. Pretty much
everyone understands what it means in most any given circumstance, even if we
can't write down a decision procedure for it.

I understand that part of the motivation here is the urge to CYA and offload
all accountability for bad decisions from people to "the law". Not sure what
to do about that.

Further reading:
[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all)
; appeared on HN yesterday; from paragraph 7, argues that these attitudes are
partly responsible for the current incarceration problem in America.

(I wonder, can we make a proof of the undecidability of the good-vs-evil
problem? I don't think it'll be as easy as for the halting problem; we know
how to make a program halt or not halt, but it's unclear how to make a program
"do something evil" or "do something good".)

~~~
jerf
The law should be predictable. This is obviously also not perfectly
attainable, but we should not deliberately put ambiguities in there.
Unpredictable laws directly lead to rule by men (as opposed to rule by law)
and there's a lot of history and tradition on why that is undesirable.

~~~
gmaslov
Very good point. Thank you.

------
peterwwillis
Well there goes my evil scheme to take over the world with a lightweight,
text-based open standard. CURSE YOU LICENSING AGREEMENT!!!!

~~~
jnbiche
+1000 for Dr. Doofenshmirtz allusion.

------
jay_kyburz
"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."

Surly this is just a statement of fact. That once embedded in your software,
you program will be considered Good.

It doesn't change the line above which grants the user the rights to use the
software "without restriction"

------
dredmorbius
This would also appear to violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG),
clause 6, and possibly 5.

<http://www.debian.org/social_contract>

... and there's a reimplimentation, jsmin.py:

[http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-
code#comm...](http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-
code#comment-5681)

(Joey Hess is a long-time Debian developer).

------
wanderr
I don't understand why this poses a problem, even for lawyers. The clause is
clearly unenforcible so why can't it just be ignored? Is there seriously some
concern that a judge would decide that it is enforcible?

------
spyder
But how can the Javascript Object Notation have a license? It's part of the
Javascript language isn't? So we cannot use javascript objects for evil or?

------
antonyh
Google won't have any problems then.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Iff “don’t be evil” = “don’t do evil”.

~~~
antonyh
Evil is as evil does. Or are you suggesting that it's possible to be evil
without doing evil, or vice versa?

------
throw__
If you do evil despite such a license, and get caught, are you forced to undo
it?

------
Vitaly
isn't it also has an exemption for "IBM and their minions" to do evil with
json?

------
yaix
Good for who?

~~~
solox3
whom _

~~~
yaix
Sorry, English is my 4th foreign language. However, for more than some
decades, both is gramatically correct (unlike in my native language where you
actually have to use declinations).

Anyway, it was a serious question.

~~~
dredmorbius
While we're at it: "both are grammatically correct", would be grammatically
and homographically correct, though counterfactual.

But yes, the license does raise some rather intractable problems.

------
shareme
So the TSA and CIA cannot use it?

------
TiredOfTat
More emo trash on Hacker News. 4chan invasion?

