On 08/27/2014 02:09 PM, Michael M Slusarz wrote:
Quoting Jens Pranaitis <[email protected]>:
FYI to others: this turned out to be a bug with Debian (and Ubuntu's)
PHP package. Namely, the JSON-C package is broken. Very frustrating
since there is nothing wrong with *PHP's* JSON decoding code.
Could you elaborate on this? Is this
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=687269 ? I think I'm
seeing the same issue with some users loading messages from search
results.
Debian has an issue with the line "Use this software for good, not evil"
in the source code for the PHP JSON code. (This is real. I am not
making this up.) So they replaced this stable code that works perfectly
fine with a replacement that is broken in several areas - mainly dealing
with null characters. We use null characters a bunch in IMP data for
technical reasons I won't go into here. So Debian ships with broken
JSON code with known bugs (which, I should mention, have been known for
a year and *still* aren't fixed).
Well the issue is not quite that simple and Debian isn't the only distro
that has a problem with a "morality" clause in software.
From the discussion at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=63520
-----
*The morality clause "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."
violates software freedom 0 and point 6 of the open source definition
and the license will therefore _never_ be free or open source by
definition. This is not a license "some fanatics don't like", it is a
manifestly proprietary license.
*The original author of the license has purposely chosen this form of
license to trick open source projects into mistaking it as an open
source license. He did this to prove the point that "those open source
guys are entitled kids" and plays the issue for amusement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCimLnIsDA
-----
Unfortunately the simplest solution, removing the morality clause was
turned down by the license author Douglas Crockford with the reply "The
license looks fine to me." He either has no idea of the problems his
"cute prank" has caused or just doesn't care of the people and companies
it hurts.
The real twist is Mr Crawford granted IBM an exception, as a joke. Too
bad he won't do the same for the open source community.
--
Andy Dorman
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