Douglas Crockford gave a really nice presentation at Strange Loop. I encourage you to check it out. He talks about the history of HTML, XML and JSON, and finally the legacy of (Admiral) Grace Murray Hopper, developer of the first compiler. However, in the middle he goes on a humorous and bizarre tangent regarding a clause he added to his JSON license, “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.”, and in the process takes a swipe at the OSI, Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman (and Google for that matter). Now, while he certainly makes light of this clause, Crockford claims he is “serious” about it, while admitting it is “intentionally vague and unenforceable”. Well, the funny thing about legal documents is that most people really like them to be not-vague and enforceable. Ultimately I think his goals with his license were no different from those of free software enthusiasts - the right to dictate his (the author’s) particular terms of use. The only difference is that the FSF decides to use specific and enforceable legal language, instead of facetious sarcasm. It is true that software licenses and licensing are sometimes dreadfully tedious topics, and if you wish to avoid it all with a simple and liberal license, all the more power to you. I just find slamming free software a little tired.

Then again, he is a heretic.