Given the degree to which bad actors already infringe FOSS copyrights and get away with it, I think we should think a lot about whether ethics clauses would have any impact at all on their use, or just get twisted against good faith users & undermine us with more license incompatibility fights.

I'd agree on the importance of doing this ‘exploration’ if it wasn't for the fact that, anywhere one looks, there are way too many people willing to turn that exploration into an effective instrument of control and exclusion.
Ethics is not indifferent, you’re right & that is the whole issue: I’m old enough to remember as a teen my sexuality was still considered a mental disease (&a crime) and still is in the eyes of many

So, whose ethics would prevail? I’d rather let no one decide for me.

I guess I can only think of all the ways the precedent will be abused for ideological tit-for-tat ("software must not be used to aid abortions, gender reassignment therapy, vaccinations").

This is currently playing out in the US. A similar well-intentioned move a number of years back sought to ban books from school libraries that had racist content (ie. racial slurs in Huck Finn). The current wave of book banning is a direct ideological tit-for-tat response to that move.

Oh, I have an idea! How about fighting evil literally any other way instead of trying to do it through software licenses, an extremely ill-adapted tool for that task, where all the obvious ways of doing it have horrible consequences and downsides?

Every just law that protects human rights today could have been (and in many instances was) called unworkable until it was pushed through by passionate advocates and then became something we can't imagine living without. There's nothing to stop an ethics clause taking the same path.

With such a loaded question? Why the virtue signalling?

I voted yes and I have a question. Do you think the bigots with the narratives of “the left are oppressing the families” would ever see as oppressors? Wouldn’t they twist their project to their broken minds and then use the software anyway?

It seems to me that this may be the wrong question to ask. A better one might be "is the terms of a generic software licence a good and useful place to try to regulate the ethical behaviours of the end user of the licensed software, and is the licensor likely to be the best person to enforce those ethical behaviours?"

You need to do a lot better formulating that because as written it will absolutely be used as "you are infringing by using the software to monitor white supremacism because that's racist against white people".

if it were so simple to draw the line yes, I'd adopt it immediately. But the truth is that it's not.

An example: all ML models are basically trained on a lot of existing data. Training stuff on existing data points, by definition, reinforces existing trends and biases.

Reinforcing existing trends and biases, by definition, reinforces discrimination.

Does it mean that all ML is bad and my software shouldn't be used to train large-scale models?

Ok, but how about Geneva conventions violations? Like a big no-no for discrimination and oppression, but as long as you want to count the PoWs you exterminated, please be my guest?

I will not be happy if my code was used to opress minorities, but:

a) I don't usually write types of software much usable to opress minorities (it's hard to opress someone with VST plugin)
b) I don't think license will stop any type of bad actor
c) I am using mostly MIT license for my open source stuff

every license I use has a clause like this:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

I am giving my work to the World, knowing that the World is full of good and despicable people. I am also saying: "if you decide to use this you are on your own. I have no obligation to help you". And I will not help those who I find despicable.

I’d even go one step further, and explicitly deny use to law enforcement agencies, and the military.

The thing is, other ways to misuse my code that are as bad, would not be there, giving the impression that they don't matter to me. For example I feel as strongly about colonial and unecological uses as discrimination. Which means I'd need my own set of additional clauses.

But even though I've thought about these issues for years, I'm not sure I can explicate the clauses well enough that I wouldn't feel I need to change them a year from now.

Still worth exploring!

I would refer to the declaration of human rights (which has a section on privacy) and it's enough for me.

Rules lawyering on the wording:

Couldn't a dev always claim "the system wasn't DESIGNED to do that... it just happened to do so. So we're compliant with that clause."

(Caveat: I like rules-lawyering :)

Coraline Ada Emkhe's Contributor Covenant does this, and covers more.

I do appreciate the purpose and concerns behind the question, which has been around for years and periodically resurfaces.

But I still fail to see how it could work in practice, and sometimes even if it should.

still seems a bomb that sooner or later comes back to explode in the face of who launched it first, for the reasons I wrote here https://stop.zona-m.net/2020/04/the-culture-war-in-open-source-may-just-be-irrelevant/

and also here https://stop.zona-m.net/2018/08/doubts-on-software-licenses-2018-version/

I do see the value on that reasoning, yet I cannot but feel that ethics is a less universal construct that we think, and in general a license like that could be unwillingly abused to enforce a very specific (ie: a very USA-centric ethics), even if the clause mentions specifically the UDHR, which is technically more values-neutral.

I would hate any 'product' of mine to be abused that way. Predictably, I can't prevent that from happening but a clause like that would allow me to react.

Take a look at the Hippocratic License and its modular clause addons/builder:

https://firstdonoharm.dev/

What if I want to build an gay dating app? Would that constitute discrimination against straights? What if I want to setup a Mastodon server for a leftist community? Would I then discriminate against neo-liberals based on their political views?
Philosophy is one of the older academic disciplines and still hasn't come up with a complete rule set for moral behaviour.

i've been using the NPL for a while now https://git.pixie.town/thufie/npl-builder

Then it's not free software anymore. And who should judge on ethics? It's a somewhat subjective matter.

1.- you want licenses that sound nice but are unethical at heart.
2.- you want licenses that only seem unethical to you but that offer you real freedom and not idealizations.

• 1.- Open Source Alianse (0 votes)
• 2.- Free Software Licence (0 votes)

Koniec ankiety: 2 lata temu

Let me adapt this (would be nice it you could boost, and yes, I’m trying to make a point):

Quick poll for all the developers out there:

Say there’s a new free and open source license (not approved by the FSF) that is essentially AGPL version 3 but with one additional clause:

“You must not use this code as part of any system designed to support any war of aggression.”

Would you consider adopting it?

• No, you can use my code to help war of aggression (25%, 1 vote)
• Yes, don’t use my code to start a war (75%, 3 votes)

4 voters. Poll end: 2 lata temu

It would have no real value, unfortunately. Who is going to 'sue' a dictatorship for an Open Source license violation?

We already have data on that in the (lack of) adoption of the Hippocratic License (https://firstdonoharm.dev/), which is (basically) MIT with such a clause.

I dislike those licenses, because it suggests that someone willing to engage in ethnic cleansing is going to hesitate at committing copyright infringement, especially with government backing.

What I want, personally, is stronger copyleft: If you use my code, you need to give me a copy of the project, so that I can publicly shame you...

probably most software wouldn’t even be affected by this. I might consider adding „intentionally designed to“. But I guess that‘s the legal details that have to be figured out and reviewed.

why did you write the poll choices in such a loaded fashion? The question is "would you consider adopting it" but the answers are "use / don't use my code for hate". That's not the same thing.

I voted no, because

1) "Discrimination" is a broad word, and I expect people DMCAing FLOSS contributors for things like "supporting affirmative action";
2) UDHR is a document made for the governments, and therefore contains things we might not want in civil contract context (such as free speech absolutism);
3) The license might become vague and unenforceable;
4) We shouldn't use a bad system to fix another problem

don't write the code that could be used to opress minorities. For sure - don't write it in closed source manner for selling it!!

if something could be used wrongly with more profits, it will be used this way.

I'd say FSF/OSI should approve this one, and I'd of course support/use it. It might on a first glance look like not fully fitting the 4 freedoms – but IMHO that's just the same paradox as the Paradox of tolerance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). It's not freedom if it violates the freedom of other people (here: the oppressed people). So to me it sounds perfectly fine – and is a great idea to put into practice.

AGPLv3 doesn't permit additional restrictions. You can write a new license that is not called AGPLv3 (like SSPLv1 was based on a GPL license).

But, put that legal technicality aside for a moment. I find your poll wording to employ a fallacy that makes rejecting your license appear to be an endorsement of unethical behavior.

Define “oppressive” in a general and interoperable way, then sure, else it’s just pretty words that open up to even more unclarity in regards to license compliance than eg the AGPL already do.

Also: Remember that you have to go to court to actually enforce a license, but very few people will actually be able to sue, which begs the question:

How is it even going to be enforced?

Do you plan to take companies to court and have the court rule that the companies are being “oppressive”?

"but who will bell the cat?"
One advantage of e.g "FSF-backed" licenses is that they have an interest in enforcing them, and lawyers. Even if I might prefer assholes to not use my softwares, I am also not interested in suing assholes...

No. It's no longer Free Software at that point. Furthermore, I *do* want to discriminate against specific minorities, like using Mastodon to tell the alt-right that they can go suck eggs.

The trouble with this is, and I've seen this many times, is the sort of "majority of minorities" (think "cool form of uncool"). Where, every single minority must prove it's'elf to the "in" minorities. For example, My sister (who is asexual) talks about all the trouble asexuals had/have being accepted by other queers. Anyone, minority or majority, can simply justify anyone else as "not a thing". Unless there is some standard body of who is and isn't a minority. But this is arguably worse, as such groups have a tendency to be, well, wrong. As at best, each minority must fight tooth and nail to become an "official" minority.

You run into the age old problem where, with small separate groups, any group can be good or bad, unchecked. But with one large controlling body, common sense doesn't scale, and absolute power corrupts absolutely

The only way for everyone to be treated properly, is for everyone on earth to spontaneously and independently know and decide to do the right thing

we all want this but it’s been tried. It’s impossible to enforce.

I certainly don't object to pursing this idea. But, I would not use the license in your example, because I don't think it's workable - and I don't want to commit huge chunks of time writing software, that people are going to be afraid to use, because the license is to vague.

The framing of your poll question is why I think social media polls are dangerous.

Sure, let's talk about ethical licenses, but your poll question discourages me from taking the topic too seriously.

Any pretense that this was meant to be a serious discussion was lost with a poll that asks.

A) Do you disagree with my statement BECAUSE you want your work to be used to kill puppies and destroy lives.

or

B) Or are you a good person who obviously agrees with me.

No other otptions are possible.

i write some stuff about this a few years ago. We should talk: https://mor10.com/ethics-open-source/

also, the larger issue here isn't the FSF, it's the OSI. They're the ones overseeing the open source definition and what constitutes "open source," and they're the ones who have said all licenses with a moral clause are by definition not open source.

Yes.

Yes, I could see myself using that with a new GPL version...not sure though.

I'd want to know why FSF is not approving it. Also, and I say this as a minority, your poll is very skewed towards a choice.

In any jurisdiction where people adhere to copyright licence terms all the things in your additional clause are already illegal, and those laws have much stiffer penalties than copyright licence infringement does.

I would probably end the license text immediately after the word "people."

reading a lot of comments about your proposition I think still there is a lot of people who choose to be *free* of don't care about the unexpected consecuences of its own acts. That's the main problem with free licenses: free as in freedom is not the same as free as in emancipation.

there's an awful lot of commenters sharing three bad takes:

1. agpl is bad, i like to help corporations do whatever they please with mit
2. 😭 don't mix code and politics
3. 😭 your poll wasn't fair and balanced

all of which are full of shit

i thought the reason copyleft fans avoid "agplv3 plus ethical use only" is because there's no "hook" in copyright law that could make such terms enforceable

i don't know how apple gets away with their restrictions though, that's a good point

@anarchotaoist > “Free Software is NOT Ethical Software!”

That’s a bit sad for free software, no? I mean, being proudly unethical? Some folks may disagree with that label. In fact, I’m pretty sure a lot of free software folks would argue that free software is ethical… But perhaps only in some ways. Perhaps there’s a place where we draw the line on ethics. And maybe there’s value in having an ongoing discussion on where that line should be drawn instead of leaving it where it was 40 years ago.

"Free" Software is 'free' as in libre/liberty - that is, 'free from'. In this case free from restrictions.
Proprietary software is defined by artificially imposed restrictions. Adding ethical restrictions to FOSS would bring it more in alignment with Proprietary software. Free Software is ethical only in that it does not impose beliefs/conditions upon others. It is about 'Negative Rights' not 'Positive Rights'.
It is not about 'being proudly unethical" but being proudly nondiscriminatory

@mhp Indeed. We mustn’t discount the power of social pressure. Legal enforcement isn’t the only success mode of such an effort.

@wromey https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/109788589468846064

@Atomicbutterfly But is it ethical to do so? Sounds more like PR to me.

@whvholst @Atomicbutterfly Unless I’m mistaken, that was Moodthy’s point also – as well as my original one. (That corporations can and do dictate restrictions that benefit only themselves. Of course it’s PR/marketing/product placement.)

@Atomicbutterfly That wasn’t obvious from the boosted post.