It's a blessing, not an obligation or a demand or a condition of use.

Unlike the JSON license clause "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil", the SQLite blessing doesn't put any restriction on your "freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)" or on any of the other freedoms listed by the FSF.

It's no different from putting this in a library:

# This work is dedicated to the public domain.

# I hope you enjoy using it!

No one could argue that if you didn't enjoy using the library (maybe the API is a confusing mess) you would somehow be in violation of the license.

p.s. I upvoted your comment because I think you raised an interesting point!

> It's a blessing, not an obligation or a demand or a condition of use.

That's how we interpret it. The problem is that we don't know what the rights-holder has in mind, and what that entity's willing to sue over.

Lawyers can be comically risk-averse. Comical, that is, until you see the kinds of things people actually sue over.

Don't overthink it:

https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

The quote explicitly "disclaims copyright" and includes the blessing "in place of a legal notice". It would be truly absurd even for a lawyer to believe that the blessing constitutes a copyright license anyway.

See this 3 minute presentation fragment about the "Do not use JSLint for Evil" license clause: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCimLnIsDA

It's so idiotic. Who of those who do evil in my view, do agree that what they are doing is evil?

> That's how we interpret it.

No. That follows from the fact that the author gives up copyright. No copyright -> no license terms.

Fortunately we have the freedom to not care about what FSF thinks.

Fine, but the FSF doesn’t think that SQLite is non-free software http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/SQLite#tab=Overview

SQLite doesn't _mandate_ "do no evil".

Interesting, although the FSF example uses "shall", not "may". A lawyer might argue that only the prior is binding.

The FSF has a very narrow definition of freedom.

I wouldn't call this license free either. In many jurisdictions there is no concept of "public domain", in some you cannot even disclaim copyright at all. In those cases the work would be under copyright still, and in absence of a license permitting you to copy and change and distribute it, you can't (theoretically. no one's going to sue you).

The copyright page mentions that they will provide a commercial license through their employer if requested.

I'm not calling this license free. I'm just pointing out that the FSF's definition of free is a very specific one of many.