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