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Do we need to rethink what free software is?

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Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#61

Post by sebst »

xisukar wrote: post #55
rubbingalcohol wrote: post #19

Whether software is used for ethical or unethical purposes has nothing to do with the license. There is no possible way to bake subjective ethical usage guidelines into a license and still end up with free software. Trying to license "good" and "evil" boils down to the same slippery slope that the TOR Project dealt with when they had to reject requests to add censorship mechanisms. "Can't we just censor hate speech?"…

I couldn't have written it better myself. On a related note, the person behind the Hippocratic License (HL) which they define as "a modified MIT license that specifically prohibits the use of open source software to harm others" was recently asked by OSI [1] to modify the language in the original document since it might've led people to wrongly believe that the aforementioned license was Open Source Software and that…

IANAL, but the HL reads to me as if you'd have to convict some entity of effectively breaking the human rights in order to prevent their use of your software.

This sounds next to impossible, unless the entity is a war criminal,in which case a civil suit would be entirely pointless.

Or do you even think there would - as an example - be a US court prohibit the use of some software for ICE? Such a court ruling would imply the US government acts against UN human rights. Which court would open this box for a software licence?

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#62

Post by lonelappde »

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #48
faissaloo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite agree, the GPL is after all a licence founded on a set of ethics.

The GPL is based around a well-defined set of ethics that centers around giving the user complete freedom to use and modify the software. This is necessary for software to be considered free. It's certainly possible to restrict usage based around a moral code. Look at the JSON License: https://www.json.org/license.html > The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil. So, yes, it would be possible to restrict software…

The JSON license is a joke, like Google's "Don't Be Evil". It's not enforced because it's impossible to enforce, and IBM got an exemption anyway.

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#63

Post by kube-system »

GlitchMr wrote: post #41
kube-system wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful of what you ask for. IP laws are the foundation of what makes the GPL enforceable.

Yes, however if copyright did not exist, GPL would be unnecessary, all software would be free software. Sure, the source code sometimes wouldn't be available, but there would be nothing legally preventing decompilation. Sure, GPL software couldn't enforce releasing the source code, but for that matter, this is how it already works in European Union (as in EU, linking for purposes of interoperability is explicitly all…

Unfortunately, in a world without GPL, you might not have easy access to that binary. It could be installed on a piece of multi-million dollar enterprise hardware that you'd have to purchase to get one.

That's probably exactly what companies like IBM would would do, if they weren't required to push their changes by GPL.

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#64

Post by lonelappde »

rmilejczz wrote: post #60
rubbingalcohol wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL is based around a well-defined set of ethics that centers around giving the user complete freedom to use and modify the software. This is necessary for software to be considered free. It's certainly possible to restrict usage based around a moral code. Look at the JSON License: https://www.json.org/license.html > The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil. So, yes, it would be possible to restrict software…

>The GPL is based around a well-defined set of ethics that centers around giving the user complete freedom to use and modify the software I take issue with this. First of all, this “well-defined” qualifier is ironically poorly defined. What does that mean? It either is or is not derived from some principle or set of principles; it is ultimately an example of ethics being imposed as a restriction. Secondly, you don’t…

"complete freedom" does not exist even in theory due to basic information theoretic arguments.

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#65

Post by [deleted] »

xisukar wrote: post #55
rubbingalcohol wrote: post #19

Whether software is used for ethical or unethical purposes has nothing to do with the license. There is no possible way to bake subjective ethical usage guidelines into a license and still end up with free software. Trying to license "good" and "evil" boils down to the same slippery slope that the TOR Project dealt with when they had to reject requests to add censorship mechanisms. "Can't we just censor hate speech?"…

I couldn't have written it better myself. On a related note, the person behind the Hippocratic License (HL) which they define as "a modified MIT license that specifically prohibits the use of open source software to harm others" was recently asked by OSI [1] to modify the language in the original document since it might've led people to wrongly believe that the aforementioned license was Open Source Software and that…

[deleted]

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#66

Post by geofft »

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #34
atoav wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure about that. Of course enforcing your usage ideas will be next to impossible, but mentioning sth. can serve other purposes too (e.g. making a set of shared values visible to other developers). So if you for example say that everybody except military, secret services and weapons manufacturers are allowed to use your software, that might not stop them from using it, but it makes other devs consider similar…

Anyone can add ethical stipulations to the license of their choice but the result is no longer a free software license. A license requiring a user to adhere to the software developers' moral code is the opposite of a free software license. In your example regarding "weapons manufacturers;" in the United States the right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution and interpreted by the courts as an inalien…

> Anyone can add ethical stipulations to the license of their choice but the result is no longer a free software license.

Yes, of course.

The question is whether we want to change that. Of course our current understanding of Free Software makes such a license outside its bounds. Of course the Four Freedoms and the OSD both prevent restrictions on use. But do the Four Freedoms and the OSD accurately capture what we really want out of free software?

To be clear, I personally lean towards "yes, they still do," but I think it's absolutely healthy and important to talk about why they do. The OSD wasn't handed down by the gods on a mountaintop; it's a set of rules that we believe facilitate a broader social purpose, and we should be always willing to ask whether we still agree with that social purpose and whether we still think the rules get us there.

(Also, it's true that "free software" might end up being the wrong term for a changed definition, but it still seems important that the free software community, including the FSF, participate in these discussions.)

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#67

Post by breck »

kube-system wrote: post #16
breck wrote: post #4

The solution here is simple: abandon intellectual slavery laws. They don’t do anyone any good except the 1%. Look at the richest amongst us, a sizable majority are rich because of IS laws. Forcing poor people the world over to pay artificially high prices for intellectual goods, by threat of force, is a form of slavery, poor and simple. Anyone who says they will stop making new ideas if they don’t get artificially in…

Be careful of what you ask for. IP laws are the foundation of what makes the GPL enforceable.

GPL and copyleft are a clever hack to weaponize Intellectual Slavery laws against themselves, but a much simpler and better solution is just to work through Congress to repeal Intellectual Slavery laws of copyright and patents.

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#68

Post by rmilejczz »

lonelappde wrote: post #64
rmilejczz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The GPL is based around a well-defined set of ethics that centers around giving the user complete freedom to use and modify the software I take issue with this. First of all, this “well-defined” qualifier is ironically poorly defined. What does that mean? It either is or is not derived from some principle or set of principles; it is ultimately an example of ethics being imposed as a restriction. Secondly, you don’t…

"complete freedom" does not exist even in theory due to basic information theoretic arguments.

In this context I read “complete freedom” as “use without restriction”, and that doesn’t seem to be the case with less permissive licenses. Not sure I completely understand what your comment implies but I’d love to better understand what you mean if you care to expand on that idea!

Re: Do we need to rethink what free software is?

#69

Post by xisukar »

lacker wrote: post #50

Free software means that anybody can use it. Even people you don’t like, whether that is Amazon or the US military. You can add whatever restrictions you want to your own software, but it doesn’t seem “free” if it restricts what I can do with it.

I think this is the issue. They want to create these licenses that restrict people's use, whether be it "good" or "evil", of software and yet still brand them as "free software" licenses which couldn't be further from the truth. In the end , this only brews confusion and misunderstanding. My belief is that if you want to create an "ethical" license, whatever that might mean at a point in time, then do it and brand it as such but then don't come and try to pass it as "free" when clearly it's not. This way people who want to use free software (or license as such) and people who want to use "ethical" software will know where to look respectively.
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