Ryan Grove
wonko.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Ryan Grove, a developer and former Yahoo engineer, writes about web development, security, and software licensing.
What HN saysHN links it for his post on JSMin and Google Code's ban over its "Good, not Evil" license, and for his bad Mozy backup experience.
28HN people shared it
13linked it in comments
19stories submitted
372story points
5 years agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil13 people · 34 points · first shared 2010 · 28 comments on HN
- 2There's more to HTML escaping than &, <, >, and "2 people · 140 points · first shared 2011 · 30 comments on HN
- 3Why loading JavaScript over SSL from a third-party CDN is a bad idea2 people · 3 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 4It turns out mozy isnt so hot after all2 people · first shared 2009
- 5What's happening at Yahoo1 people · 87 points · first shared 2010 · 37 comments on HN
- 6Etherpad includes banned (on Google code) software JSMin1 people · 75 points · first shared 2009 · 58 comments on HN
- 7YUI from the outside1 people · 9 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 8On Leaving Yahoo1 people · 8 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 9Privnote's developers are either stupid or malicious1 people · 4 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 10Trogdor: Burninatingly fast search using Yahoo BOSS1 people · 3 points · first shared 2009 · 2 comments on HN
- 11Ruby script to retrieve and display Comcast data usage1 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 12Yahoo Search brings Search Assist, SearchMonkey, and more to the iPhone1 people · 2 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 13Why I believe in YUI1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 14Rawgithub.com1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 15How to succeed at privacy1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
pizzaman · 2010-11-28
crashplan is having a sale until tuesday, after that their regular prices will go up.
http://b4.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl
i chose crashplan over mozy, after reading some bad mozy reviews (http://wonko.com/post/it_turns_out_mozy_isnt_so_hot_after_all for instance) . I have the family plan and uploaded 200gb so far, their upload speeds are pretty good.
The only feature I'm still waiting for, is so you can specify different backup sets to archive to your local HD and to their online sevice, but that feature should be realeased with their next update. Other than that I love crashplan, especially the eature that you cannot disable it for longer than 24 hours.
You can also seed your initial backup, that way you don't have long upload times.
rgrove · 2009-07-20
Be careful with Mozy. If you haven't done a test restore, I strongly recommend you try one now. The Mozy restore process is extremely broken and has been for years.
You can read about my horrible experience with Mozy (and the horrible experiences of hundreds of commenters) here: http://wonko.com/post/it_turns_out_mozy_isnt_so_hot_after_all
protomyth · 2021-11-30
They signed an employee code of conduct which included "Don't Be Evil".
The employee code of conduct, that they were made to sign as a condition of employment has the directive "Don't Be Evil" in it? Did Google legal review that document? Although often made fun of, there is a reason IBM legal required a license change in JSLint to get out of its "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." license clause. Heck, Google Code wouldn't host JSMin-PHP because of that clause ( https://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code ).
dictum · 2017-11-21
It all started when Google banned all software that can not be used for Evil: http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code
evacchi · 2015-03-19
"IBM, its customers, partners, and minions" (which is the most hilarious part)
see e.g.: http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code
anon1385 · 2013-09-16
You could always add a 'don't use this for evil' clause to your licences… http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code
(This is not a serious suggestion)
antimatter15 · 2013-07-31
I wonder how Sencha (http://www.sencha.com/) feels about how the NSA is clearly using their ExtJS framework given the screenshots.
I guess this kind of puts different perspective to the whole debate that came from JSMin's "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause (http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code) given that conceivably your open source framework might be a significant part of something like this.
dredmorbius · 2012-03-12
This would also appear to violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), clause 6, and possibly 5.
http://www.debian.org/social_contract
... and there's a reimplimentation, jsmin.py:
http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code#comment-5681
(Joey Hess is a long-time Debian developer).
dave1010uk · 2012-03-12
JSMin was removed from Google Code because of this licence. Douglas Crockford explains the reasoning behind the license: http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code
geoffhill · 2011-06-27
People always talk about Google's "Do no evil" policy as being more fundamental than their other business concerns, but they've demonstrated in the past that it comes secondary.
http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code
The "Do no evil" policy has no use if they can't accept it into their legalese.
Erwin · 2011-02-19
Apparently this license was so perplexing for IBM laywers, that Douglas had to make a special exemption:
"I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
Previously posted on HN source: http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code
byoung2 · 2010-08-12
http://wonko.com/post/sanitize
Sanitize, a whitelist-based HTML sanitizer written in Ruby. Given a list of acceptable elements and attributes, Sanitize will remove all unacceptable HTML from a string.
rogerbinns · 2013-05-25
That doesn't work at all if it is the actual wording. For point 1 you can find warranty wording in any number of open source or creative commons licenses.
For the second, objectionable requires a definition. For example many would consider the US drone assassination program objectionable, and hence tar US companies and people with the same brush. Does that mean US companies and people can use the software? How many steps do they have to be removed (eg is providing the payroll software to the defense contractor a problem?)
http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCimLnIsDA
Because of copyright laws, people can do virtually nothing with software. If you actually want to give the user freedoms - see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html - then pick a well known free software license since it will have already addressed all these issues.