Re: [hrpc] Hippocratic License 3.0 - open source license

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 22/10/2021 17:58 Eliot Lear <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
>  
> All technology is dual use.  What's interesting about this license, at 
> least in concept, is that it shifts the burden of that dual use onto the 
> user, and makes someone accountable for that use.  

People are already accountable for what they do. If they use a piece of software to commit crimes, they will be prosecuted for those crimes.

On the other hand, this license attempts to make people accountable for what they do *to the author of the software they use*. This is IMHO not the role of a software developer. 

As a developer, I understand the desire to make sure that the effort you put in writing code won't be exploited to do bad, but then, if that's what guides you, you do not really share the philosophy behind free software. Open source is about technical cooperation in social diversity, not about sharing causes and world views. Free software is about freedom, which necessarily includes freedom to do evil (and suffer consequences for that).

Also, the success and value of open source depends on the predictability of its legal conditions. Efforts have been made for over twenty years to reduce variations and standardize clauses so that in the end you mostly need to cope with three different flavours (permissive, copyleft and weak copyleft) and you are allowed to combine codebases from hundreds of sources as long as the flavours match. Just imagine a world in which each author of a library starts adding exclusionary clauses (called "modules" in this license) as they like - one against anyone using coal for heating, another against Israel, a third one against those who cultivate palm oil and so on. It would be impossible to combine codebases for general usage in mass products and services, as you'll never know whether a customer of your customer will use your code that includes that library in one of those contexts.

By the way, it is also unclear whether and how this approach could practically advance any of those causes or human rights in general.

-- 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[e-mail] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy