[License-discuss] Ethical open source licensing - Dual Licensing for Justice

[Florian Weimer]

* Jim Jagielski:

> Just say that, for example, we were having this discussion 10 years
> ago, and that the elephant in the room, as persona-non-grata was
> Microsoft. And say that there was s/w that was under such an ethical
> license that prevented or severely restricted Microsoft from using
> it (or leveraging it), either from a legal or a social
> standpoint... My conclusion is that we would not today be seeing
> Microsoft and being as much in the FOSS camp as they are now. In
> effect, we would have actively prevented a persona-non-grata from
> becoming a persona-grata (is that even a thing?).

Well, if we want to talk concrete examples: Microsoft had a
subsidiary, Microsoft Open Technologies, to keep some distance from
licenses they deemed problematic at the time.  Presumably, as a
corporation, they could have used a similar construct to avoid any
public shaming requirement in software licenses.  Non-commercial,
non-legal entities would have it much harder.

I do think we still have an amazing level of horizontal hostility
among open-source communities.  Licensing has always been a tool in
these conflicts.  Persona-non-granta licenses, if widely accepted,
would allow to escalate conflicts even further.