Hi all,
Before write what I am about to write, I would like to be clear that this is a very controversial topic and, for the eyes of many of you, this will be even silly.
I also know that open source means “open for everyone”, and any conditional to that automatically makes a piece of software non-open source.
I really feel pissed off to see such effort for brilliant people from open source community being used for terrible things. So I started to nurture the idea of a license that would forbid the usage of a project by totalitarian governments, including its department and contractors, military forces of any country, certain entities like radical political parties, etc. Basically limiting the usage of those projects to any activity promoting human suffering.
Do you guys think that this is utopic? Does it really hurt the essence of open source? Do you think in the same way about this, and if yes, how do you cope with that?
I don’t want to discourage you, so go for it, it may be fun and you may learn some things or at least think on difficult topics like:
How do you measure human suffering?
How do you deal with extremists that truly believe their cause?
And maybe most interesting what if the radicals are not wrong? (Talking about topics like climate change or overthrowing oppressive regimes)
If this can give you hope I cope by knowing that open source at least sometimes levels the field for the disadvantaged. Like the situation with Deepseek and openAI
Good points. In fact, many of the normalized things we take for granted today (like the eight-hour day, liberations of many colonies) were gained through the efforts of radical parties and radical, including violent, actions.
The status quo causes immense suffering. There’s a trolley problem at play - to do nothing is to be complicit in suffering. Radical opinions are needed to break with the status quo to reduce suffering, even if it involves direct action against the people running the system.
Overall agree, but I would like to add that radical parties and violent action IMO will not solve any problem alone, there is also please for peaceful protests, for writing manifestos, for writing license agreements and of course for writing open source code.
I absolutely agree. Violent direct actions are rarely the preferred route even of notorious groups like antifascists. Even (left) radical groups usually understand and teach that mass movements are safer and more powerful, the best way to win a battle is without firing a shot. And the failure of the late 1800s/early1900s anarchist propaganda of the deed assassinations proves your point that violence alone won’t solve problems. My caveat is that when violence becomes tactically appropriate, we shouldn’t assume it’s inherently wrong.
Amnesty International is a good start point to evaluate if a government is violent, authoritarian or perpetrating crimes against human rights.
You don’t deal with extremists. Dialog only works with who is willing to dialog.
Radicals maybe not wrong about their claimings but are wrong about heir methods.
I replied another comment about enforcing the licenses is not the only thing to consider. Secondary effects like making impossible to sell product to other countries that do respect the license, make it difficult to distribut the software to de “sanctioned” countries and even stop to offer support are some consequences that the community can impose.
I would love to live in a world where you can afford to just not deal with extremists.