PHP5 JSON Still In A Licensing Mess

[duby229]

This isn't a "trivial" deal, telling people they can't use software inherently makes it nonfree. It also leaves 'good' and 'evil' undefined and up to the interpretation of a court of law... which can be ridiculous.

Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong, good and evil, what's the difference? I'm convinced that good and evil is inherently defined.

[peppercats]

Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong, good and evil, what's the difference? I'm convinced that good and evil is inherently defined.

No it's not, good and evil is entirely point of view.
Based on this, you can assume the license assumes that you can't use the software for anything the author deems "evil", which may be anything he decides he doesn't like.

[doom_Oo7]

Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong, good and evil, what's the difference? I'm convinced that good and evil is inherently defined.

Okay, what do you think of cannibalistic tribes in Amazonia ? I am pretty sure they are convinced to be right. What do you think of japanese Kamikaze during WWII ? they were convinced to be right, too... Etc...

[duby229]

Okay, what do you think of cannibalistic tribes in Amazonia ? I am pretty sure they are convinced to be right. What do you think of japanese Kamikaze during WWII ? they were convinced to be right, too... Etc...

Whats the greater evil? Eating a person or upsetting your deity? Sacrificing yourself or losing a war to your enemy?

It's not balck and white. It's not binary. I guess you do make a good point though, sometimes you just have to choose the lesser of two evils. Sometimes the only options you have arent right.

[dee.]

I really don't care what Stallman and the FSF says, they are wrong. Read the the GPL and it clearly isnt free. There are some pretty expensive terms used, the most expensive being the copyleft.

Of course it's free. It's Free Software. It's guaranteed to also stay free because of the copyleft. And if you don't care what the FSF says, too bad, so sad - the rest of the world agrees with their definition of "Free Software", not yours - seeing as it's a term they invented and defined.

You see, language is a contract based on consensus. Words don't have any inherent meaning, their meaning is just what people decide it is. So if most people agree what Free Software means, and you disagree and think it means something else, no one will care what you think because most people will still use the commonly accepted meaning. In this case, the commonly accepted meaning of Free Software is what FSF says it is. Good luck convincing everyone that their definition is wrong and yours is right.

You can go around telling everyone how you think "cheeseburger" doesn't actually mean a cheeseburger, but everyone else will still call a cheeseburger "cheeseburger", and if you want to make yourself understood, you will have to conform to that practice. Because if you say "tuna sandwich" when you actually mean "cheeseburger", everyone will just think you're crazy. And they'll probably be right.

[duby229]

Of course it's free. It's Free Software. It's guaranteed to also stay free because of the copyleft. And if you don't care what the FSF says, too bad, so sad - the rest of the world agrees with their definition of "Free Software", not yours - seeing as it's a term they invented and defined.

You see, language is a contract based on consensus. Words don't have any inherent meaning, their meaning is just what people decide it is. So if most people agree what Free Software means, and you disagree and think it means something else, no one will care what you think because most people will still use the commonly accepted meaning. In this case, the commonly accepted meaning of Free Software is what FSF says it is. Good luck convincing everyone that their definition is wrong and yours is right.

You can go around telling everyone how you think "cheeseburger" doesn't actually mean a cheeseburger, but everyone else will still call a cheeseburger "cheeseburger", and if you want to make yourself understood, you will have to conform to that practice. Because if you say "tuna sandwich" when you actually mean "cheeseburger", everyone will just think you're crazy. And they'll probably be right.

I didn't say anything at all about cheeseburgers, so you can please stop trying to change what we are talking about. And I couldnt care any less whether people agreed with me or not. The first statement I made was that it was just my opinion. You are free to disagree with me if you want.... But you see theres that word free..... In all commonly accepted usages of that word it means something different than what Stallman tries to impose on it....

Any word can be defined by its context. The context that Stallman imposes is definitely not the common context.

EDIT: Is the GPL open source? Definitely yes and permanently. Is it free? Definitely no. It's the copyleft that makes it so. It makes it permanently open source, but also makes it so I'm not free to do a lot of things.

[dee.]

Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong, good and evil, what's the difference? I'm convinced that good and evil is inherently defined.

Almost everyone knows the difference between right and wrong (apart from: small children, certain mentally ill or brain damaged people) - however, there's a catch: almost no one agrees on the definitions of "right" and "wrong". Whose authority is used to decide what is "right" and what is "wrong", especially since the license in question doesn't define it?

It's all fine for the developer to laugh and think of the whole thing as a big joke, "hur hur I put a silly text on mah licenz and now IBM sends silly email to me lulz"... which kind of makes me think, some idiot has come up with a new way to annoy people: License trolling. I mean, it's kind of clever in a really stupid way: the text is simplistic, na?ve, with a 3rd-grader-level view of the world - and when people disagree with the clause, it's easy to troll them with "what, you want to be evil? no one should do evil! Why do you want to do evil?" And then it's easy to get all the simple folks roused up to blame the humorless "GPL-purists" for not getting the joke, or being too anal about licenses, what's the harm with a bit of fun in a license...

But, that's the thing - it's easy to claim "hey, it just forbids you from doing evil, of course you agree with that, you're not evil are you?" But when you look at it in legal terms - which is the only way a license should be looked at - legally, it's a loophole. It gives the developer free hands to later on say "I disagree with what you're doing and think it is evil, so therefore you have to stop". It's a trap! And if you ask for a special license to ignore the clause, you set yourself and your company up for bad PR because people can instantly take pot shots at you for "wanting to do evil".

100 years ago, interracial marriage was largely considered evil. Homosexuality was considered evil. Some people consider abortion evil even today. Slavery was once considered totally fine, as long as it was only done to people who look different. In fact it was "evil" to free someone else's slave without their permission. It would have been seen as theft. Which the bible says is evil - and don't even get me started on the bible...

The point is, no one can say what is good or evil, because of moral relativity - there's no ultimate source of moral authority, laws and morals change with time. Morals aren't absolute. So when someone forbids us from doing "evil", how can we trust that their definition of "evil" is in any way reasonable? We have no guarantees, no definitions of what they consider "evil" - for all we know, they may consider it "evil" to use their software without giving them constant blowjobs. And we're not made of blowjobs, now are we?

[johnc]

Almost everyone knows the difference between right and wrong (apart from: small children, certain mentally ill or brain damaged people) - however, there's a catch: almost no one agrees on the definitions of "right" and "wrong". Whose authority is used to decide what is "right" and what is "wrong", especially since the license in question doesn't define it?

It's all fine for the developer to laugh and think of the whole thing as a big joke, "hur hur I put a silly text on mah licenz and now IBM sends silly email to me lulz"... which kind of makes me think, some idiot has come up with a new way to annoy people: License trolling. I mean, it's kind of clever in a really stupid way: the text is simplistic, na?ve, with a 3rd-grader-level view of the world - and when people disagree with the clause, it's easy to troll them with "what, you want to be evil? no one should do evil! Why do you want to do evil?" And then it's easy to get all the simple folks roused up to blame the humorless "GPL-purists" for not getting the joke, or being too anal about licenses, what's the harm with a bit of fun in a license...

But, that's the thing - it's easy to claim "hey, it just forbids you from doing evil, of course you agree with that, you're not evil are you?" But when you look at it in legal terms - which is the only way a license should be looked at - legally, it's a loophole. It gives the developer free hands to later on say "I disagree with what you're doing and think it is evil, so therefore you have to stop". It's a trap! And if you ask for a special license to ignore the clause, you set yourself and your company up for bad PR because people can instantly take pot shots at you for "wanting to do evil".

100 years ago, interracial marriage was largely considered evil. Homosexuality was considered evil. Some people consider abortion evil even today. Slavery was once considered totally fine, as long as it was only done to people who look different. In fact it was "evil" to free someone else's slave without their permission. It would have been seen as theft. Which the bible says is evil - and don't even get me started on the bible...

The point is, no one can say what is good or evil, because of moral relativity - there's no ultimate source of moral authority, laws and morals change with time. Morals aren't absolute. So when someone forbids us from doing "evil", how can we trust that their definition of "evil" is in any way reasonable? We have no guarantees, no definitions of what they consider "evil" - for all we know, they may consider it "evil" to use their software without giving them constant blowjobs. And we're not made of blowjobs, now are we?

In this case the standard of good and evil would be set by the licensor. This is pretty basic stuff here.

It's also why the clause is completely impractical.

[Qaz`]

It has a value in it self to keep these things in order. You may think what you want about gpl, but at least that is a well known license. If you say that a codebase i gpl2 or gpl2 compatible you know what that means. If the codebase is mix of slightly different licenses you don't actually know anything for sure about how you may use it (change it, distribute it etc) (like one of those click-through eulas no one reads). Not without going through and analyzing each of them, and I'm not a lawyer.

Gpl is benchmark, "not more than these restriction". If you don't like the price you may shop elsewhere, but at least it's a known price.

It might be a funny easter egg, but when it's found, the only reasonable thing to do is get a copy with a new license or throw the code out.

[peppercats]

I hope Microsoft sues everyone who uses this license because they see any software that competes with their own as evil, and to them, the software is evil and unlawful.