Although it has a corporate motto “don't be evil" Google is rejecting an open-source license variation that stops the use of software for evil purposes.

Google only permits software governed by a limited list of widely used open-source licenses to be hosted at Google Code. Google Code is the place where Open Source projects being developed by the search outfit are stored.

Douglas Crockford picked a variation of the MIT license for his JSMinprogram to shrink JavaScript programs so that Web browsers can download them faster, and Ryan Grove carried that license over for his variation called JSMin-PHP rewritten in the PHP language. JSMin-PHP was hosted at Google Code until it was spotted by Chris DiBona, from Google who noticed that Crockford's licence had a requirement added to the regular MIT License:

The licence reads: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."

One would think that Google would like that sort of thing, but DiBona thought not. Writing in his blog Grove complained that as Google interpret it, this additional requirement constitutes a vague use restriction and thus makes the license non-free. DiBona told him that if he removed that line from the license and 'return to a proper open source license that we support,' then jsmin-php could stay on Google Code. Grove said that he could not change the license, because it's not his and moved JSMin-PHP to the GitHub collaborative programming site.

According to Crockford the license is an artifact of the George Bush administration's war on "evildoers." "In 2002, we'd just started the war on terror, and we were going after the evildoers with the president and the vice president, and I felt like I need to do my part," he joked.

Crockford said that once a year he got a letter from a crank who says, "I should have a right to use it for evil! I'm not going to use it until you change your license." He thinks his license works as he is stopping the evildoers.

Once he got a request from IBM to ask him to relax the licence. They said they didn't intend to use the code for evil but they could not be sure about their customers. In the end he did allow them to change the licence. The IBM variant says “I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.'"