All,
I continue to noodle with the problem of people increasingly aware of
harm happening around them[1] seeking to add use-limits to open source
licenses:
* Ignoring this shift seems undesirable.
* Tacking on use limits seems incompatible with what OSI is about.
An approach came to mind while commenting on a recent proposal to
license-review and I'd be interested in views on whether this was
workable: would/should it be an acceptable condition in an OSI-approved
license that an unmodified project manifesto be included in any copy of
the software? This potentially improves both:
* the legal ambiguity problem: a separate manifesto need not create
legal obligations (wording in the license to make this clear seems
workable); and
* the license reuse problem, because different projects will have
different values, beliefs, and missions.
There is a real problem with updating the manifesto, but I'd like to
explore whether there's any upside at all, before heading too far down
that particular rabbit hole.
I am particularly interested in the abuse potential. E.g. an activist
organisation gets their software into use in a target's systems. Assume
that the above successfully excludes the use of copyright law to
invalidate the license on a use-limitation basis, but has OSI-approval
facilitated the creation of a tool for outrage-industrial complex abuse?
(Joe's Puppy Restaurant uses software created by an animal rights
organisation to advance the welfare of animals in optimising its supply
lines for arguably the opposite outcome.) Does it matter?
- Roland
1: "woke" in contemporary usage, although that term it not particularly
neutral; it is frequently used in both approving and pejorative contexts.
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