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

[Grahame Grieve]

The question for me is whether there's some useful middle ground. Is there
value in having an ethical use license where the creator gives up many but
not all rights, in a way that respects some core tenets of the open source
movement, and where the ethical restrictions are careful, and that this
place, while not proper open source, is still a recognisable benefit with a
name like Ethical Public Source or something?

A different phrasing might be, do the managers of opensource.org believe in
all or nothing? Personally, I think that it's consistent with the open
source philosophy to encourage creators to be as open as they can be, and
not to encourage the more predatory aspects of proprietary source just
because it''s not wholly open source. Noting that I, of course, am just an
opinion holder, not someone who is important.

Grahame


On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 1:33 PM Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:

> On 3/10/20 3:32 PM, Pamela Chestek wrote:
>
> > On 3/10/2020 1:32 PM, Russell McOrmond wrote:
> >> "I think the fundamental thing that bothers me the most about the OSD
> >> 1.x is that it grants rights downstream, but doesn’t give the creators
> >> any real rights. And that’s a major difference between open and
> >> #EthicalSource — ethical source is about empowering creators."
> >> https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1234307401169408001
> >>
> > I was struck by this too. The reality is that, by virtue of the
> > structure of copyright, creators (or more accurately authors) have ALL
> > the rights and it's only through license that they give up some of those
> > rights. An author is free to craft a license to whomever they choose on
> > the terms they choose. So I didn't understand the argument.
> But only those licenses which give up the right to control use,
> modification, and redistribution may be called Open Source. Licenses
> which retain the right to allow only ethical use not not Open Source
> .... And That Is Okay. It's always been okay. But it's not our way, and
> will never be our way.
>
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