[License-discuss] Thoughts on the subject of ethical licenses

[Gil Yehuda]

A few weeks ago I said that if I really wanted to know about "ethical
source licensing" I would join the ethical source licensing discussion
group. I was thinking at the time that I'm actually interested in open
source licensing -- which is why I'm in *this* group. But I thought --
maybe I *should* investigate first hand and come to *my own* conclusions
about this other movement. So I took my advice and requested to join their
slack group. Although it is not for skeptics -- and I applied, saying that
I'm a skeptic, I was allowed to join and given pre-reading to orient me.

I have many concerns with what I saw. The Ethical Source Movement will face
barriers and blockers to their success. The best way to help them is to
list the many concerns and provide advice about addressing many of the
issues they will encounter. But I'm not motivated to help. Why? Their
stated approach is based on making changes to the open source movement,
that would undo years of valuable work in an attempt to create other
potential value. But I'm not seeing that promise being realized given their
approach, nor the risk worth taking in trying.

I think discussions are good. But Coraline's message this morning is that
she's not continuing to be part of this discussion. Moreover her message
indicates that she's been gathering feedback from this discussion in
service to enhancements to her work. Which means that we should consider
the value of continuing this conversation. We have an open list (consistent
with our ethos), the ethical source movement's communications channel is
not open. So this is asymmetric at best. The way she framed her message
makes it seem exploitative.

I think this discussion list should focus on ways to help the open source
movement. If another movement wants to help, wonderful. If they want to
exist independently in service of some other value, that's fine too. But
I'm saddened to see this discussion being used as it has. If I thought
helping them was a good idea I would urge them to reconsider their approach
so that their success is not predicated on exploiting the open source
movement.

Gil Yehuda


On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 9:41 AM Coraline Ada Ehmke <coraline at idolhands.com>
wrote:

> I’ve been trying to cultivate the ability to extract actionable and
> constructive feedback from even rude, confrontational, dismissive,
> personal, or smug criticism. Thank you all for engaging, no matter if your
> criticism was well-intended or no, and most importantly for giving me the
> opportunity to learn in public.
>
> Watch for an important change on https://ethicalsource.dev/definition next
> week.
>
> Not responding to this thread anymore, feel free to carry on without me.
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>
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