<div dir="ltr">The field-of-endeavor terms of the OSDs seem to be the ones that people have the most problems with, which is ironic since the goal is anti-discrimination. I wrote this term into the OSD not only in response to the various freeware licenses that restricted commercial use, but specifically because of my experience with the license of Berkeley SPICE at the time. This license restricted use of this electronic circuit simulation program by the Police of South Africa. This was an "ethical" license, like all of the so-called "ethical" licenses to follow it, and like them was both impossible of enforcement (because of a problem in lawsuits against sovereign powers that even some of the most prominent lawyers associated with OSI at the time did not seem to understand) and problematic in its discrimination, especially because by the time we wanted to put SPICE in Debian the police of South Africa were 50% black and Apartheid had been defeated for white a while, yet the license term stood! I wrote to a license executive at University of California and got no help, obviously I have better contacts there today and they know what Open Source is now :-) But the nature of inappropriate "legacy discrimination" in well-meaning licenses that just got stale, and the potential for pro-life and pro-choice licenses led me to think that Debian (and then Open Source) should be a neutral ground where people of different opinions could put them aside to make great software. The sentiment stands today.<div><br></div><div>I don't think discriminatory release fromn terms, rather than imposition of extra ones, would be that harmful, but we have had 30 years of Open Source without even much (if any) discussion of a need for it, so I doubt it's necessary. We have always had an approved way of doing it, which is to use two licenses and give the user a choice, the discriminatory license not being OSI certified, and the non-discriminatory license in this case already is.</div><div><br></div><div> Thanks</div><div><br></div><div> Bruce</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Aug 3, 2026 at 7:52\u202fAM Kevin P. Fleming via License-discuss <<a href="mailto:license-discuss@lists.opensource.org" target="_blank">license-discuss@lists.opensource.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On Mon, Aug 3, 2026, at 09:00, Stefano Maffulli wrote:<br>
> On 8/2/26 18:21, Shao Kai via License-discuss wrote:<br>
>> 1. Does the non-commercial exemption as defined in the additional<br>
>> permission raise any concerns regarding OSD Section 6 (No<br>
>> Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor)?<br>
><br>
> Yes, unequivocally. It's stated in <br>
> <a href="https://opensource.org/licenses/common-reasons-for-rejection-of-licenses" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://opensource.org/licenses/common-reasons-for-rejection-of-licenses</a><br>
><br>
> I haven't processed the other questions.<br>
<br>
That was my additional reaction too, but I'm willing to consider that 'additional permissions' may be acceptable on a field-of-endeavor basis where 'fewer permissions' are not, as long as the baseline set of permissions would otherwise be compatible with the OSD.<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><div><br clear="all"></div><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Bruce Perens K6BP</div></div></div></div>