question about Good/Evil in a license

[Antonio Radici]

Hi all,
the following is a license of a file called tools/jsmin.py included in
the version of libv8 distributed by Google, the notice that "the
software shall be used for Good, not Evil" tells me that this is a
non-free license, can you confirm this?
The license follows:

# This code is original from jsmin by Douglas Crockford, it was translated to
# Python by Baruch Even. The original code had the following copyright and
# license.
#
# /* jsmin.c
#    2007-05-22
#
# Copyright (c) 2002 Douglas Crockford  (www.crockford.com)
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
# this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
# the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
# use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
# of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
# so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
# copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
# SOFTWARE.
# */


Cheers
Antonio


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[Paul Wise-3]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 12:27 AM, Antonio Radici <antonio@...> wrote:

> the following is a license of a file called tools/jsmin.py included in
> the version of libv8 distributed by Google, the notice that "the
> software shall be used for Good, not Evil" tells me that this is a
> non-free license, can you confirm this?

Trivially non-free (DFSG #6). Also, the word "evil" is far too
subjective to be meaningful in a license.

That said, there are many mentions of this phrase in the archive already:

http://walrus.rave.org/source/search?q=%22shall+be+used+for+Good%2C+not+Evil%22&defs=&refs=&path=&hist=

Perhaps you could ask the ftpmasters about this and file RC bugs if appropriate?

There are some replacements for jsmin:

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/compressor/
http://dean.edwards.name/download/#packer

--
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Sonntag, den 20.09.2009, 01:10 +0800 schrieb Paul Wise:
> Trivially non-free (DFSG #6). Also, the word "evil" is far too
> subjective to be meaningful in a license.

how about trivially free, since the sentence, as you say, is not
meaningful in a license and thus has no effect? :-)

Greetings,
Joachim

--
Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
Debian Developer
  nomeata@... | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Keyid: 4743206C
  JID: nomeata@... | http://people.debian.org/~nomeata

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:34:01PM +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote:

> Am Sonntag, den 20.09.2009, 01:10 +0800 schrieb Paul Wise:
> > Trivially non-free (DFSG #6). Also, the word "evil" is far too
> > subjective to be meaningful in a license.

> how about trivially free, since the sentence, as you say, is not
> meaningful in a license and thus has no effect? :-)

That only means that it's exceedingly difficult to *comply* with the
license, not that the requirement is not part of the license.

--
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@...                                     vorlon@...

[Gunnar Wolf]

Joachim Breitner dijo [Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:34:01PM +0200]:
> > Trivially non-free (DFSG #6). Also, the word "evil" is far too
> > subjective to be meaningful in a license.
>
> how about trivially free, since the sentence, as you say, is not
> meaningful in a license and thus has no effect? :-)

If the program in question is terrible, as bad as it can be to solve
any given program, and I malliciously recommend it to you (to make you
waste your valuable time - Just to put an example, as you recently
tempted me to lose time using an experimental feature in pidgin some
days ago ;-) ), I would be in breach of the license. I do not think
that complies with DFSG#6.

In a more serious tone: «Evil» and «good» are two of the most
problematic words ever. They can mean opposite things to different
people (see all kind of religious or anti-clerical fanaticals). Legal
documents must be as unambiguous as possible. Forbiding somebody to be
"evil" equals putting everybody in a single moral schema. And that is
evil.

(Hence the license forbids the author form redistributing his own
software under said license? Hmm... Shutup! I said this would be in a
more serious tone!)

--
Gunnar Wolf • gwolf@... • ([phone] / 1451-2244


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