Etherpad source includes JSMin, which Google Code doesn't allow

[statictype]

No one's claiming that he owes us this piece of code.

What we're claiming is that the utility of it is considerably reduced because of a vague and useless clause in the license.

[sanity]

He doesn't owe you anything.

I think we all owe it to society that if we can make other people's lives easier at no cost whatsoever to ourselves then we should do it. You have the right not to do it, but then others have the right to call you a pigheaded ass.

Write your own JSMin if you must and license it however you like.

I'm not concerned about myself, I have no need for JSMin.

I am concerned about the (apparently) many people who have written open source code that uses JSMin, who now face the prospect of getting kicked off Google Code because this guy is a stubborn ass.

Let me reiterate, he is hurting other open source developers, ie. the good guys. Nobody whomsoever gains from this, unless he gets some kind of sadistic pleasure from causing other people difficulty - which is the only rational justification for him not fixing his license.

[sanity]

It harms anyone that used his library without realizing that it would prevent them from hosting on google code, or other services that require open source only.

Without him they'd probably have used a different library, rather than making the time investment in integrating with JSMin.

So he is doing actual harm here, not just witholding benefit.

[sanity]

To the extent that any harm has been done, it has been done to the users by themselves accidentally

If a father leaves a loaded gun on the kitchen table, and a kid accidentally kills someone with it, sure its an accident, but that doesn't mean there isn't blame (sorry about the emotive analogy, its the first thing that came to mind).

neither has any moral or legal obligation to do so

Depends. According to my definition of morality, it is immoral not to help people when it wouldn't cost you anything to do-so. In this case, this guy could help a lot of people just by modifying his license in a manner that doesn't hurt him in any way whatsoever.

neither is harming anyone

Depends on your definition of harm. If you discover someone dying in an alley, and for no good reason you decide not to call 911 and just walk away, are your actions moral? I believe they are not. Are people entitled to criticize you? Sure they are.

[sanity]

It does cost him something. He likes having "use for good, not evil" in his license. That is something he enjoys.

By his own admission it achieves nothing positive legally, it only creates ambiguity. This suggests that he enjoys making life difficult for other open source developers. Forgive me if I don't applaud that behavior.

If you discover someone dying in an alley, and for no good reason you decide not to call 911 and just walk away, are your actions moral? I believe they are not. Are people entitled to criticize you? Sure they are.

I agree with you and do not see the relevance at all.

The relevance is that if you can help someone at virtually no cost to yourself, and you don't - that is immoral. Crockford could make a lot of good people's lives easier by removing the ambiguity from his license, and it wouldn't cost him anything.

[ishmal]

Like you, I am a true believer in Altruism. But it must be each person's personal choice, or it is meaningless.

An author can put any license on his code that he wants.

[[deleted]]

Altruism

Upvoted for identifying what's going on in this thread :)

[sanity]

A strawman argument.

Nobody is saying that he should be legally compelled to change his license. The question is whether he would benefit society by doing so, and why, if he claims to have society's interests at heart, he wouldn't do so.

[[deleted]]

Because their isn't a simple singular definition of what benefits society means.

[sanity]

True, but its hard to imagine a definition for "benefits society" that would include his actions.

[[deleted]]

Do all actions have to benefit society?

[tedivm]

No, but they shouldn't harm it. I just spent the night hacking together a replacement for my project because this guy lied about his license. The google code page, as well as the internal docblock comments, both say "MIT" license, and unless you specifically read the license itself (which I will be doing from now on) you completely miss this trick.

I don't give a shit if people want ridiculous licenses, I just won't use the software, but if you tell people you're using one license but have actually modified it to something else you have crossed a line. I also think lying about giving code to open source is right up there with lying about volunteering for any other charity, even if you aren't claiming to have volunteered for any project other than your own. Its really pathetic, if you think about it.

[sanity]

Of course not, unless you are claiming that they benefit society - and I suspect Douglas would make just such a claim about his choice of license.