[imp] Search results of more than 100 messages cause 'error communicating with the server'

[Andy Dorman]

On 08/27/2014 02:09 PM, Michael M Slusarz wrote:
> Quoting Jens Pranaitis <pranaitis at phil.hhu.de>:
>
>>> 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