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

[Chris Travers]

Indeed.

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 22:20 Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:

> * Coraline Ada Ehmke:
>
> > Can you provide an example of an ethical source license that is
> > based on a controversial social or political line?
>
> Not sure if I understand the question correctly, but:
>
> Some proponents of the GPL cite ethical reasons for implementing it.
> Copyleft is a controversial social concept.
>

I would add that I prefer the BSD licenses for ethical reasons.  The
differences I have with the Copyleft movement are fundamentally ethical
differences grounded in a different understanding of human freedom.  I see
freedom as grounded in the ownership of one's labor rather than the freedom
to use.  Software Freedom in my view is only freedom if it is freedom to
produce.  Therefore adding consumer protections to, for example the Gplv3
is unethical.

This is why I think the GPLv3 is actually a good parallel to Coraline's
proposals.  But while the former meets the outlines of the OSD, the ESL is
at least one bridge too far.

Of course we should strongly think about ethics as we choose open source
licenses.  And we should discuss our differences.

 But one thing we have right that the ESM gets completely wrong is whether
folks should ever be excluded from economic production and what the
consequence of that is.

>
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