Yes, a million dollars.
We have testimony in this very thread from tedivm who had to rewrite JSMin because of this laugh. That has to have been a multi-thousand-dollar project right there.
Think about the time IBM alone spent on this issue. Developers, managers, lawyers. Five grand? Easily. Maybe more.
Play out this scenario a few hundred times across the globe, and there's your million dollars.
The problem is, when you have a laugh at somebody's expense, it isn't free. It comes at somebody's expense.
And ultimately the laugh wasn't worth a penny, because the license was finally changed to a true open source (public domain) license.
Bullshit. You are not entitled to any particular piece of software, not a single thing is taken from you when you find a software license intolerable. So something isn't licensed how you like... so what? Negotiate new terms, or move on with your life and use something else.
Bitching that something is 'Do no evil' licensed so that you cannot use it is no better than bitching that something is GPLv3'd so you cannot use it, or something is only licensed under proprietary licenses so you cannot use it.
People getting upset over licenses that render software unenjoyable to themselves is the sort of entitled bullshit that makes me want to seek out the most obnoxious license possible. Somebody should make a AGPLv3/Do no Evil hybrid license and write some mildly useful piece of software to use it for, then refuse to duel-license for any earthly fee. That should make some people squirm.
I made a simple economic statement, and I stand by it: The "shall be used for Good, not Evil" episode had a very real cost to it.
People did exactly what you say: negotiated new terms (like IBM) or moved on with their lives and found or wrote something else (like tedivm).
Sure, my million dollar estimate could be way off. But the cost wasn't a small one, and it wasn't just money.
Consider the many developers who saw what looked like an ordinary MIT license and didn't notice the change in the middle or understand the problem with it - maybe thought it was just a cute sentiment. So they made plans and commitments based on being able to use the code. Then their managers made commitments to their bosses and customers. And finally, they all got shot down by Legal and had to scramble to find another solution.
This cost people time and reputation.
GPL and proprietary licenses are different, because they would never be mistaken for the MIT license. A developer could easily find out if they were on the company's approved list or not. And as you know, the GPL itself forbids any changes to its text. So the same problem would be much less likely to happen with those kinds of licenses.
