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I vaguely recall license terms which disallow anyone from using the code for military purposes - maybe it's time to adopt stuff like GPL/CC by extending them with an (optional) "do not use this software in machines/systems which have the power to kill/hurt people, or enable people to do so"
Right... what happened to just saying 'hundreds/thousands of times better off#' in hyperbolic sentences? Too pedestrian?
#Of course you can replace 'better' with any fitting adjective.
Nathaniel Borenstein
That sums it up for me.
The fact of the matter is that war is a basic function of human societies, as much as food production or waste disposal. Unsurprisingly, it thus taps the ingenuities of the society in the same way as those other areas. It both benefits from ingenuities intended for other purposes, and results in inventions itself that can be used for other purposes. And for better or worse, war is a great way to get the public to sup…
That makes me sad. Does anyone on HN(besides me) believe that one day humans will be able to rid themselves of war? That one day we'd find a solution to these issues that don't involve sending a group of armed people to kill?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of people refuse to pay taxes for precisely this reason, or deliberately seek lower salaries that do not pay federal taxes. They believe, correctly, that macro-events are the culmination of micro-events, and that change begins on the personal level. It takes just a handful of dedicated people to start revolutions. Startups should know that.
Such people are hypocrites at best. Don't they use roads for their commute. Dont' their kids go to public schools. Don't they visit national parks etc. If they do all these things, aren't they ashamed of living off the money of the rest of the society that diligently pays taxes, and not contributing/pitching their share towards these common societal support structures?
This is a phrase that should only ever be used ironically. :/
The fact of the matter is that war is a basic function of human societies, as much as food production or waste disposal. Unsurprisingly, it thus taps the ingenuities of the society in the same way as those other areas. It both benefits from ingenuities intended for other purposes, and results in inventions itself that can be used for other purposes. And for better or worse, war is a great way to get the public to sup…
> The fact of the matter is that war is a basic function of human societies, as much as food production or waste disposal. That makes me sad. Does anyone on HN(besides me) believe that one day humans will be able to rid themselves of war? That one day we'd find a solution to these issues that don't involve sending a group of armed people to kill?
Indeed, US hegemony is good for peace. You can eliminate the rational self interest in going to war by imposing an external cost to going to war (like any negative externality). That's the role the US serves. Its military machine implicitly backs things like international sanctions that are punishment for anti-social behavior.
I wrote, but never published [1], a variation on the MIT license that has specific clauses stating that the software can only be used by parties who dont own/manufacture/trade firearms or ballistics. I never published it because I am not a lawyer, and it probably would have come across as an elaborate troll. If anyone is interested, I'll release it. [1] https://github.com/binarymax/Non-violent-License
Even if you could somehow iron out the kinks, the end result of your sort of action is a host of additional licenses that bar the various bête noires of their various authors, eventually leading to code that simply can't be used together because of conflicting moral obligations. I really don't want to have to run a program just to sort out the ethical dependencies of the stuff in my Gemfile.
I wrote, but never published [1], a variation on the MIT license that has specific clauses stating that the software can only be used by parties who dont own/manufacture/trade firearms or ballistics. I never published it because I am not a lawyer, and it probably would have come across as an elaborate troll. If anyone is interested, I'll release it. [1] https://github.com/binarymax/Non-violent-License
Check out Stanford's Encylopedia of Philosophy entry on double-effect: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/ . Essentially, double-effect means that your good actions can have unintended yet foreseen evil consequences. If you make a hunting rifle, and someone uses that to shoot children at a school, are you responsible? Not an easy question to answer.
Guns are an interesting case. Thee are many tools (eg computers, knives, hammers) that can be used to kill someone, but most of the uses of them are not killing people (more tomatoes are cut with knives than people killed). I'm not so sure about guns. Are most of the instances of guns being fired being used to kill/hurt someone (or practice to kill/hurt someone)? Perhaps it's the European in me that can't wrap my hea…
Personally I think that although this idea makes sense for knives, guns cannot be justified because they have no purpose other than killing (hunting is still killing).