On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 05:04:30PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: > I also recall licenses that prohibited use in various types of weapons. > For that matter, there is also the "Hacktivismo Enhanced-Source > Software License Agreement" (HESSLA), as described by the GNU project on > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.html (although the original project > seems to be defunct at the moment). It prohibits use in spyware and by > governments that violate human rights. As ridiculous as it sounds, that > is actually a form of discrimination and use restriction, which makes > the license not DFSG-free.
Why is that ridiculous? It *is* a usage restriction. We're doing Free Software here, not Free-For-People-Who-I-Like-What-They-Do Software. In the two cases mentioned, the definitions can be fairly broad, too -- there are plenty of different ideas about what spyware actually is (kind of like computer viruses in that respect), and there aren't too many governments who don't violate some human rights now and then (or at the very least are complicit in same). I don't like those things any more than you or the authors of the HESSLA appear to, but restricting freedom for some tends to end up as restrictions for all if not addressed. - Matt
