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

[Gil Yehuda]

Tobie
One day my grandchild will ask me "what did you do to fight genocide in
your day?" I hope to be able to give a better answer than "I helped make
sure to put an anti-genocide clause in my source code licenses."

She'll ask "that's all you did?" and I'll say "no, dear, I made sure that
the license was still OSI-approved."

I think part of the issue here is that in the face of real human issues,
this seems like a misuse of energy. Licenses manage the use of copyright
rights. We fight genocide with laws, with armies, maybe a good protest or
two?


Gil Yehuda: I help with external technology engagement



On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 6:44 PM Tobie Langel <tobie at unlockopen.com> wrote:

> 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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