[Fedora-legal-list] License question

[Tom Callaway]

On 08/08/2012 08:22 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-08-07 at 12:43 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> Following up on this further, I just discovered that the package
> python-webassets is bundling jsmin (complete with unacceptable license)
> in Fedora.
> See /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/webassets/filter/jsmin/jsmin.py in
> python-webassets-0.7-1.fc17.noarch
> 
> I assume this is cause for alarm.

Yep. Please open a bug and block FE-Legal.

~tom

==
Fedora Project