For context, after Mr. Crockford gave IBM permission to use the license without the clause a few open source projects (mine included), also asked, and Mr. Crockford's response was a bit over the top-

> 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.

It's nice to see he's become a bit more reasonable.

That last bit is the tough one. Some people define homosexuality as evil, others define it with things like women going to school. DC obviously isn't that extreme, but he's using a term in a legal setting that can be defined by different people in completely different ways. This makes it so no business can use this code, and even things like open source projects should be extremely weary.

What this essentially did was allow Douglas Crockford to claim that he open sourced his code while actually keeping it closed and forcing people to go through him if they actually wanted to legally use it. While I'm sure plenty of people use it regardless, there's nothing preventing DC from simply stepping in and forcing them to stop. If he had used a real open source license that would be impossible, but as it stands all he has to do is walk over and say "I consider that evil" and you need to rip his library out.

This isn't just hypothetical. I had to remove code from an open source project because of this. It's why I wrote JShrink, as an open source replacement for the JSMin libary. https://github.com/tedivm/JShrink

I pay US taxes and the US government kills people around the world. They also subsidise farmers which puts others around the world at a disadvantage contributing to poorer economic circumstances for them. The US incarcerates a large number of people. If the project benefited me or anyone else paying US taxes, then hasn't it benefited the US government, and hence evil?

Vote with your tax dollars.

As others have pointed out, this is just the license on one implementation, not the spec, so it's not really as big a deal.

Consider it an "anti-'people who take licensing seriously' license".

Yes, a million dollars.

We have testimony in this very thread from tedivm who had to rewrite JSMin because of this laugh. That has to have been a multi-thousand-dollar project right there.

Think about the time IBM alone spent on this issue. Developers, managers, lawyers. Five grand? Easily. Maybe more.

Play out this scenario a few hundred times across the globe, and there's your million dollars.

The problem is, when you have a laugh at somebody's expense, it isn't free. It comes at somebody's expense.

And ultimately the laugh wasn't worth a penny, because the license was finally changed to a true open source (public domain) license.

Bullshit. You are not entitled to any particular piece of software, not a single thing is taken from you when you find a software license intolerable. So something isn't licensed how you like... so what? Negotiate new terms, or move on with your life and use something else.

Bitching that something is 'Do no evil' licensed so that you cannot use it is no better than bitching that something is GPLv3'd so you cannot use it, or something is only licensed under proprietary licenses so you cannot use it.

People getting upset over licenses that render software unenjoyable to themselves is the sort of entitled bullshit that makes me want to seek out the most obnoxious license possible. Somebody should make a AGPLv3/Do no Evil hybrid license and write some mildly useful piece of software to use it for, then refuse to duel-license for any earthly fee. That should make some people squirm.

I made a simple economic statement, and I stand by it: The "shall be used for Good, not Evil" episode had a very real cost to it.

People did exactly what you say: negotiated new terms (like IBM) or moved on with their lives and found or wrote something else (like tedivm).

Sure, my million dollar estimate could be way off. But the cost wasn't a small one, and it wasn't just money.

Consider the many developers who saw what looked like an ordinary MIT license and didn't notice the change in the middle or understand the problem with it - maybe thought it was just a cute sentiment. So they made plans and commitments based on being able to use the code. Then their managers made commitments to their bosses and customers. And finally, they all got shot down by Legal and had to scramble to find another solution.

This cost people time and reputation.

GPL and proprietary licenses are different, because they would never be mistaken for the MIT license. A developer could easily find out if they were on the company's approved list or not. And as you know, the GPL itself forbids any changes to its text. So the same problem would be much less likely to happen with those kinds of licenses.

Some developer that cannot be bothered to read and understand a license does not somehow mean that Crockford is "costing" them anything. These hypothetical people fucked up, and they should fucking responsibility for themselves for god's sake. What a pathetic dodge.

Do you also think that NASA has "cost" the North Korean space program anything by not freely giving away rocket designs? Entitled to the absurd.

In return, you have sworn at me, called my argument "a pathetic dodge" and "entitled to the absurd," and came very close to putting words in my mouth with the North Korean strawman.

That makes it difficult to have a polite discussion, but I do want to clarify one thing.

I didn't say that Crockford was responsible for the economic cost of the old json.js license. Of course he had every right to release his code under any license he chose.

I'm simply saying that there was a cost, compared with the situation that would have existed had the code been originally released with a standard MIT license. People spent time and money that they wouldn't have if that had been the case.

Since "cost" seems to be a loaded word here, let me put it another way. It should be clear that there would have been a benefit to the world if the original json.js, JSMin, etc. had used a standard MIT license, because many more people could have used the code. That benefit was lost because of the "Evil" clause.

And, to his credit, I think Crockford eventually realized this when he re-released the code with a pure public domain dedication.

The NSA breathes a sigh of relief.