Douglas Crockford is an American computer programmer who is involved in the development of the JavaScript language. They[a] specified the data format JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), and have developed various JavaScript related tools such as the static code analyzer JSLint and minifier JSMin.[2] They wrote the book JavaScript: The Good Parts, published in 2008, followed by How JavaScript Works in 2018. They were a senior JavaScript architect at PayPal until 2019, and are also a writer and speaker on JavaScript, JSON, and related web technologies.
Crockford earned a degree in Radio and Television from San Francisco State University[3] in 1975. They took classes in FORTRAN and worked with a university lab's computer.[4]
After Warner Communications sold the company, they joined National Semiconductor. In 1984 Crockford joined Lucasfilm,[4] and later Paramount Pictures. They became known on video game oriented listservs in the early 1990s after they posted their memoir "The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion" to a video gaming bulletin board. The memoir documented their efforts to censor the computer game Maniac Mansion to Nintendo's satisfaction so that Nintendo could release it as a cartridge, and Crockford's mounting frustrations as Nintendo's demands became more obscure and confusing.[8]
Together with Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar, Crockford founded Electric Communities and was its CEO from 1994 to 1995. Crockford was involved[clarification needed] in the development of the programming language E.[9] Crockford was the founder of State Software (also known as Veil Networks) and its CTO from 2001 to 2002.[10] During their time at State Software, Crockford popularized the JSON data format, based upon existing JavaScript language constructs, as a lightweight alternative to XML. They obtained the domain name json.org in 2002, and put up their description of the format there.[11] In July 2006, they specified the format officially, as RFC 4627.[12]
In 2008 Crockford published a book announcing their discovery that JavaScript, contrary to prevailing opinion, has good parts. They describe this as "heresy", and as "maybe the first important discovery of the 21st century", noting that it came as a "big surprise to the JavaScript community, and the world at large."[13] They attribute the discovery to their having read the ECMAScript Standard, which they say "literally changed my life."[14] They also note that the specification document is of "extremely poor quality", "hard to read", "hard to understand", and say that the ECMA and the TC39 committee "should be deeply embarrassed".[15]
In 2002, in reference to President George Bush's war on "evildoers", Crockford started releasing their JSMin software under a customized open source MIT License, with the added requirement that "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil". This clause was carried over to JSMin-PHP, a variation of JSMin by Ryan Grove. This software was hosted on Google Code until December 2009 when, due to the additional clause, Google determined that the license was not compliant with the definition of free and open source software, which does not permit any restriction on how software may be used.[16][17] JSMin-PHP was forced to migrate to a new hosting provider.[18][19] According to the GNU project, the licence conflicts with Freedom 0 of the Free Software definition, and although "it may be unenforceable, we cannot presume that", therefore non-free.[20]
Crockford's license has caused problems for some open source projects who mistook the license for an open source variant of the MIT license. Affected open source developers have asked Crockford to change the license, but they have continued to use it.[21][22][23] In 2022, Crockford changed the license in the JSON Java implementation to Public Domain.[24]
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