[Fedora-legal-list] License question

[Tom Callaway]

On 08/07/2012 11:16 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-08-07 at 10:44 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote:
>> On 08/07/2012 07:38 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
>>> I don't recognize the text of this license in a piece of software I need
>>> to package as a dependency. The license listed on PyPi is "Freeware"
>>> which doesn't seem right (and isn't a valid option anyway) but the
>>> actual license text looks more permissive, except for the bit about "The
>>> Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." That clause looks like it
>>> might cause us some trouble...
>>>
>>> Can I get a legal opinion? (The complete sources of the utility are
>>> attached, including the license text in question).
>>>
>>> I'm also going to contact upstream to see if I can get a license
>>> clarification.
>>
>> As several other people have noted, this is the infamous jsmin license.
>> The upstream jsmin author takes a perverse pleasure in people ramming
>> headfirst into this nonsensical clause, and has repeatedly stated that
>> he will not remove it or reword it in such a way to resolve the issues
>> it causes.
>>
>> http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code has some of the
>> backstory.
> 
> 
> Thanks, this is useful to hear. It was exactly the JSMin package I was
> trying to deal with. That's most unfortunate. I'll contact the Review
> Board upstream and let them know that their dependency on this package
> will get them into trouble.

I believe that v8 has a re-implementation of jsmin from scratch to work
around this issue, it may be useful as a replacement.

~tom

==
Fedora Project