The problem here is simple: there is no legal definition of good and evil, which means that the final decision on whether or not you can use the software belongs to Douglas Crockford, the maintainer. If one person can arbitrarily decide whether or not you can use a piece of software, it's not Open Source.
I'm not sure that's how the license would be enforced, in practice. There's no automatic right for any party to dictate the meaning of undefined or unclear terms.
Yes, perhaps it's up to a judge to decide what "good"/"evil" means, however that still means there's 1 person who gets to decide whether or not you can use the software, ergo, not open source.
RedHat Legal was quoted; they mention that Good Guys won't use it for Evil, and Bad Guys will ignore the license; so it ends up perfectly unambiguous and enforceable. No issue.
"... When I put the reference implementation onto the website, I needed to put a software license on it. I looked up all the licenses that are available, and there were a lot of them. I decided the one I liked the best was the MIT license, which was a notice that you would put on your source, and it would say: "you're allowed to use this for any purpose you want, just leave the notice in the source, and don't sue me." I love that license, it's really good.
... So I added one more line to my license, which was: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." ..."
I was using JSMin (py) today ~ http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html wondering why there was no installer and poking around I found this article. Seems the addition of additional line in the MIT license gives lawyers headaches.
Not just lawyers - anyone sensible. It's not open source any more - you can't restrict what open source is used for - and extremely vague.
DIY licenses are a bad idea. In this day and age you should probably pick between MIT, Apache, LGPL and GPL, and maybe something like the Affero GPL for open source, in order of how much they limit people using your code.
At least that is specific. I've also used several pieces of (European) software which forbid themselves from being used for the creation of nuclear weapons.
iTunes EULA has a clause stating that you're not allowed to use it for “development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.”
The last thing free software needs is yet another dogmatic argument. Being cute in your licensing damages the perception of free software because you're essentially broadcasting the fact that you don't care how the rest of the world works.
Hm. So the existing licenses are the Holy Scripture, and we should all bow down to them? Write any software you like, but it has to have the Blessing from Stallman?
No, not at all. Licenses change all the time, both for the better and for the worse. It isn't change that I'm challenging, but rather this particular change.
I challenge anyone to defend the language that is the subject of this news item, using clear, concise, and unambiguous language defending the terms "good" and "evil" without offering your own definition. It cannot be done because it requires a value judgment on the part of the reader, and not all readers will share the same value judgment.
Simply put, "good" and "evil" mean different things to different people. Therefore, they cannot be used as terms in a legal agreement without clear definitions as to their meaning. Google has chosen, rightfully so, to simply prohibit the language rather than debate their meaning.
The other terms in the license have the benefit of long-standing, generally accepted legal definitions. I don't think you're going to find definitions for "good" or "evil" in Black's.
I'm not sure complete humorlessness is actually necessary to be an advocate of Free Software(or whatever the trendy term is these days), but there certainly seems to be a high degree of correlation.
I don't see how the license is not free. The loophole is it does not state who's definition of evil applies. Therefore you can state that your software is not evil and be done with it. If Mr Crockford decides to sue you you will have a very easy defense.
The difference being that judges are entirely happy to make precedent-setting rulings on what "use, copy, modify" et cetera mean. I don't think any judge would be willing to rule on whether a particular use of the software counts as "evil".
Even if they're presented with a case where someone is using the software in an unambiguously evil way (like, I dunno, kidnapping small children to use as sex slaves) then they probably still won't rule on that, because that creates a precedent that a judge can rule on whether something is good or evil, creating difficult situations for future judges.
A policy against vague restrictions in an open-source license seems sensible to me. I appreciate Crockford's humor, and also that he freely offers exceptions to the clause, since in end, it's silliness.
