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?
Ok let’s get rid of all forms of licenses then. Bye bye GPL
Why?
Well apparently none of these licenses are enforceable so what’s the point of having them? Isn’t that your argument?
No, that’s not my argument. Plenty of those licenses are enforceable and sometimes enforced - even if they’re not enforced perfectly.
My argument is that OP’s license is mostly targeting situations which, I believe, are unenforceable. I know this following example is ridiculous, but it’s a bit like saying “we should ban drunk driving in other countries”. Drunk driving laws are useful, they’re enforceable even if not perfect, but there’s no point in trying to enforce them in other countries who won’t respect our laws.