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

[Tobie Langel]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 22:45 McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:

> *On Behalf Of *Tobie Langel
> *Sent:* Friday, March 20, 2020 9:55 AM
>
> I agree. Currently section 5 and 6 are vague (in particular the term
> "field of endeavor") and imho an ethical licenses could be written that
> complied with the OSD.
> Field of Endeavor is a pretty well established term in the law.  See,
> inter alia, In Re Richard M. Deminski, 796 F.2d 436 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
>

Is the OSD a legal document rooted in American law, though? The OSD uses
“genetic research” or “being used in a business” as examples of fields of
endeavor. The annotated version is even more explicit about section 6’s
role.

> If there’s an ethical license that satisfies the OSD (particularly 5 & 6),
> I have yet to see one.
>
Regardless of how useless such a license would be, wouldn’t a simple MIT
license with the additional clause “Must not be use to commit genocide”
actually satisfy all OSD criteria? Note I’m absolutely not claiming it
would be certified by the OS. It also violates freedom 0, but the four
freedoms aren’t part of the OSD

Committing genocide is clearly not a field of endeavor as defined by
section 6 of the OSD, and people who commit genocide aren’t a protected
class that would warrant protection of section 5 (and even if that argument
was made, people who commit genocide could still use the software, just not
to commit genocide).

Am I missing anything beyond the fact that this is a contrived example?

—tobie
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