[License-discuss] How can we as a community help empower authors outside license agreements?

[Lukas Atkinson]

Oh, it seems the Ethical Source definition recently changed. Those changes
look good! To disambiguate, I'm referring to the [EOS] linked below, as
opposed to the previous [ESD]. (Please consider adding a version number!)

As far as I can see, this EOS definition is potentially compatible with the
OSD, in the sense that *a project and its license can satisfy OSD and EOS
at the same time. *The crucial part is that the *EOS talks about how
project maintainers behave and does not impose restrictions on downstream
recipients*. Importantly, the ESD's problematic human rights clause has
been removed. Thank you for that change!

However, a license that would *force* a project and its derivatives to be
EOS would violate the OSD. OSD#6 clashes with the general spirit of EOS.
And EOS#6 walks a fine line that has been controversially discussed on
license-review during approval of the CAL. In the context of the CAL, the
major argument in favor of such a requirement was not privacy, but that
access to data is necessary to exercise software freedom to such a
fundamental degree that it overrides OSD#6 concerns. Similarly, I could see
the accessibility requirements in EOS#4 as potentially OSD-compatible, if a
license were to express that in clear and enforceable language, taking into
account OSD#10.

As others here have noted, EOS#7 is a bit weird. Of course anyone could ask
for donations/voluntary support. A license forbidding that would also
violate the OSD. However, using the words “compensation”, “remuneration”,
or “consideration” seems to be a red herring as they imply a contractual
requirement that goes directly against OSD#1. EOS could be made more
clearly compatible by stating that redistribution or modification of
software must not be subject to royalty-like fees.

[EOS]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200316101958/https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/
[ESD]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200308160424/https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/

On Mon, 16 Mar 2020 at 00:31, Coraline Ada Ehmke <coraline at idolhands.com>
wrote:

>
> On Mar 15, 2020, at 7:07 PM, Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>
>  Ethical software is by definition not open source.
>
>
> Can you point to any specific points in the definition of Ethical Open
> Source that conflicts with the OSD? (I’m not talking about ELOS.)
>
> https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/
>
> —Coraline
>
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