When you know that history, IBM asking for an exemption to the JSLint license becomes less funny.

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hCimLnIsDA (2 minutes) to hear the story from the developer's point of view. Then consider how many totalitarian states today are using IBM computers to track their population.

The developer might not realize it, but IBM lawyers absolutely know that they can be fairly accused of using JSLint for evil.

> Then consider how many totalitarian states today are using IBM computers to track their population

Nah, the CIA, NSA only uses IBM mainframes to administrative tasks like payroll.

For all the tracking and spying their own population stuff they use linux like the rest of us.

Actually the CIA was known to be using NeXT. I believe it was the Intel port. (That said, any large agency probably uses a bit of everything, I know they use Linux now, managed by salt-stack I believe).

I wasn't referring to the CIA and NSA.

A lot of large organizations jumped on mainframes back in the 1960s and 1970s. That included US-friendly governments. Some of whom aren't very nice. Those systems and business relationships tend to survive. IBM is good about keeping it quiet. But occasionally someone notices and there is a scandal. The last major one was in 2019 when people found out that IBM was selling face recognition technology to United Arab Emirates. IBM discontinued that technology in 2020 because of the scandal.

There is a dark side to the wheel, if you use guilt by association. The problem was not one of technology, but one of immoral salesmen.