Tobie One day my grandchild will ask me "what did you do to fight genocide in your day?" I hope to be able to give a better answer than "I helped make sure to put an anti-genocide clause in my source code licenses."
She'll ask "that's all you did?" and I'll say "no, dear, I made sure that the license was still OSI-approved." I think part of the issue here is that in the face of real human issues, this seems like a misuse of energy. Licenses manage the use of copyright rights. We fight genocide with laws, with armies, maybe a good protest or two? Gil Yehuda: I help with external technology engagement On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 6:44 PM Tobie Langel <to...@unlockopen.com> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 22:45 McCoy Smith <mc...@lexpan.law> wrote: > >> *On Behalf Of *Tobie Langel >> *Sent:* Friday, March 20, 2020 9:55 AM >> >> I agree. Currently section 5 and 6 are vague (in particular the term >> "field of endeavor") and imho an ethical licenses could be written that >> complied with the OSD. >> Field of Endeavor is a pretty well established term in the law. See, >> inter alia, In Re Richard M. Deminski, 796 F.2d 436 (Fed. Cir. 1986). >> > > Is the OSD a legal document rooted in American law, though? The OSD uses > “genetic research” or “being used in a business” as examples of fields of > endeavor. The annotated version is even more explicit about section 6’s > role. > >> If there’s an ethical license that satisfies the OSD (particularly 5 & >> 6), I have yet to see one. >> > Regardless of how useless such a license would be, wouldn’t a simple MIT > license with the additional clause “Must not be use to commit genocide” > actually satisfy all OSD criteria? Note I’m absolutely not claiming it > would be certified by the OS. It also violates freedom 0, but the four > freedoms aren’t part of the OSD > > Committing genocide is clearly not a field of endeavor as defined by > section 6 of the OSD, and people who commit genocide aren’t a protected > class that would warrant protection of section 5 (and even if that argument > was made, people who commit genocide could still use the software, just not > to commit genocide). > > Am I missing anything beyond the fact that this is a contrived example? > > —tobie > > > _______________________________________________ > The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not > necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements by the > Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address. > > License-discuss mailing list > License-discuss@lists.opensource.org > > http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org >
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