Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 3:35 UTC (Thu) by elw (subscriber, #86388)
In reply to: Apache and the JSON license by josh
Parent article: Apache and the JSON license

While I appreciate and respect Crockford's position on "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil", such ambiguous language has no place in a software license, or any license for that matter. Good and Evil are inherently subjective words. Employees at NSA would tell you that what they were doing by spying on American citizens was good. Their intentions were good. They watched over the citizenry. They investigated illegal activity by monitoring computer networks. They strategically withheld security vulnerabilities to aid in fighting the enemy. Many people, however, consider their actions evil. They spied on U.S. citizens. They hacked personal and corporate computer systems. They withheld 0day exploits for offensive purposes instead of disclosing them responsibly.

There are always at least two sides to everything. What is good and what is evil is simply a matter of perspective. The JSON license fails to acknowledge reality preferring, naively, to believe that everything is black or white, good or evil.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 8:27 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (5 responses)

> What is good and what is evil is simply a matter of perspective.

Yeah, everything's relative. For instance rape feels good to rapists whereas saving lives feels evil to... sorry; I forgot to whom exactly.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 9:42 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Intent matters - saving an unrepentant murderer's (e.g. a professional hitman for the KKK) life specifically so that they can kill again is "saving lives", but could be considered evil.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 11:23 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (3 responses)

saving lives feels evil to... sorry; I forgot to whom exactly

My guess is millions of people. Not just those who refuse possibly life saving medical intervention due to religious reasons (i.e. saving life is evil), but those who think saving refugees from drowning is a bad idea.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 18:18 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

Wow, serious efforts to miss the point. Let me try again: how many people find it evil to catch and rescue someone accidentally falling off a cliff?

The point is: yes of course the concepts of Good and Evil aren't identical for everyone. This doesn't mean the concepts are completely void and useless; they do have a lot of universality. Pretending the concepts of Good and Evil are meaningless is just as extreme and stupid than pretending they mean the exact same for everyone. The real world is complex but that doesn't mean we can't say anything about it.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 18:34 UTC (Thu) by tartley (subscriber, #96301) [Link] (1 responses)

Hey marcH. It is true that some (not most) actions can be universally classified as either good or evil. But that's not remotely sufficient. It is necessary that *all* (or the vast majority) of actions can be so classified, unambiguously and trivially, before the action is taken. Otherwise, any one abiding by the terms doesn't know which actions they can or cannot take. If they make a classification error even once, in any of the hundreds of actions they might perform every day, then they are wide open to anybody with a different classification accusing them of breaching the terms.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 21:31 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

I totally agree that such a clause has absolutely nothing to do in a software licence. Sorry for straying off the licence discussion.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 10:39 UTC (Thu) by stevan (guest, #4342) [Link] (2 responses)

> version derived from one that includes an exception to the clause

It seems a pity that this discussion seems limited to legal issues rather than what would seem on the face of it to be the intent behind the smiling face of the clause, which is to bear in mind an ethical aspect to software and its use. One can understand why the issue is reduced to a legal one above others, but as in other areas of life, surely software development can bear a bit of ethical self-scrutiny without it becoming a binary legal outcome.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 19:38 UTC (Thu) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (1 responses)

A license is a legal document that determines what you're allowed to do or not do. Grossly ambiguous text like this has no place in a legal document. It's unethical - and possibly evil - to release such grossly ambiguous text in a license.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 1, 2016 23:52 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

But as the copyright owner, the license doesn't apply to the person who releases such a text in a license, so that being evil is not an issue… ;-)

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 2, 2016 6:23 UTC (Fri) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (2 responses)

such ambiguous language has no place in a software license, or any license for that matter

I can't agree. It's Douglas's code. He can license it how he sees fit. There's no obligation on him that a license be convenient for lawyers or that a license be a free software license. The license isn't pretending to be something it isn't, so there's no misrepresentation. If clarity is your requirement then no one forces use of this code.

I'm not even convinced that this is poor legal procedure. For example, summary judgment against this license seems unlikely, since the nature of evil and a licensee's compliance with non-evil are matters of fact.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 2, 2016 18:20 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

> It's Douglas's code. He can license it how he sees fit.

Allow me to rephrase. While the law does indeed say that it is Douglas's code and he can license it however he sees fit, such ambiguous language has no place in a license for software you actually want other people to *use*. Perhaps Douglas does not intend for the code to be used by anyone other than himself, and that is perfectly fine. However, the ambiguous license language makes the software toxic to anyone else, legally speaking: it is impossible to know whether one will later be found to have complied with the license or held liable for copyright infringement. If he wants the software to be adopted by others (and why else would he release it with an almost-open license?) then his purpose would be best served by leaving out the ambiguous language.

Apache and the JSON license

Posted Dec 2, 2016 21:26 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Well, it's not toxic to evildoers. They don't care about licenses -- they'll use whatever they want.

It's only toxic to the good guys.