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?
You’re right. We should just try nothing. Let’s get rid of GPL while we’re at it since it’s often disrespected too.
I don’t think it’s useful to directly compare the GPL. It’s often disrespected, yes, but it’s also often enforceable. If you violate the GPL in a for-profit product, you might be someone the courts have jurisdiction over and the license is enforceable. It is sometimes enforceable and therefore useful. In OP’s proposal, the only target of it I see as viable is the “radical parties”. All those other targets are pretty out-of-reach.
As a side point, GPL, along with MIT, CC0, WTFPL, etc., would still be somewhat useful regardless because they forfeit rights. I can modify and republish the software publicly because I’m confident I can’t legally be sued for it.
But that is my entire point. The reason we aren’t enforcing what OP is proposing is because it doesn’t exist, so no enforcement apparatus exists. Why would it?
Presumably we would do what we always do: make a rule, then create an enforcement mechanism.
Our legal systems already recognize and have some mechanisms to enforce contracts and licenses. We don’t need to build a whole new one for each license. But our existing copyright system already fails to enforce itself in certain countries and with certain entities (e.g. military) and I just can’t see that changing.
Then what are we debating? You’re saying we don’t have a way to enforce it, then when I say let’s make one, you say we do have one. Which one is it?
It’s been tried before, usually as a joke. Kids magazines that say “not for sale to adults”. Gaming mods that make you pledge your first born to the developer. To work, the laws of the country the user is in will apply, and will have to be enforced.