12 ms·

The anti crunch hours license

186 points by logicchains 8y ago

vortico 8y ago
Ah, yet another "open-source if you follow my principles" license. It should be an uninteresting fact at this point that yes, you can in fact put whatever clauses you want in your software license. Note that this is a license restriction addon, not a standalone license. To use, ammend to and reference by another license. Note that this removes "open-source" status from the original license if it is open-source, according to OSI's "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" definition.
- xYTa 8y ago
  Why would anyone care about a bunch of OSI apparatchiks? The people who talk loudest about Open Source always manage to get a position that profits from the labor of the actual authors.
- wqedwed 8y ago
  Why would anyone care about the opinion of OSI? The people who talk loudest about Open Source always manage to get a position that profits from the labor of the actual authors.
  - geofft 8y ago
    Don't create new accounts to work around bans. However, since your question is one that comes up a lot (though, perhaps, only from your accounts), I'll answer it as if it's in good faith and not downvote / flag your comment. The Open Source Definition is not at all the opinion of OSI. It was taken word-for-word from the Debian Free Software Guidelines, with some minor editorial changes to make it more generic than just Debian. It has influenced the free software definition of other projects (the Ubuntu Licensing Policy, Fedora and Red Hat's list of approved licenses, etc.) The practical reason to care about the Open Source Definition is that you want your software to be in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, etc. Being able to install software as part of a distro, and having distro maintainers work with you on getting visibility for the software, is valuable, and you shouldn't give it up lightly. If you are going to give it up—which is a fine thing to do, there's lots of good non-open-source software in the world—why restrict yourself to a half-open-source license? Why not preserve your right to commercialize your software so you can profit from your labor as much as you want? Presumably you've decided that you will make more profit (or other benefit) from association with the concept of "open source," but that association only helps you if you actually satisfy the Open Source Definition.
    - captainbland 8y ago
      Well, it might also be that you actually want many people to be able to use, learn and understand your software freely but you also don't want your software to be installed on a military drone or used to enable a company that is working its employees to death. Not everything is profiteering and marketing.
      - geofft 8y ago
        That sounds great! But it's not open source. Debian, Fedora, etc. by policy do not want to prevent use of their software on military drones or by companies that work their employees to death. You will not convince them to change that policy. Therefore, you need to decide which of those two desires is more important to you: is it more valuable to have people be able to apt install / dnf install your software at the cost of letting it be usable by the military and exploitative employers? It's totally legitimate to decide no, I care more about restricting use of my software, so I'll make packages (or a curl | sh script, or whatever) available on my website and guide people to do that. By all means, go do that, if that's what you want to do. (If your'e actually considering doing this, I would like to try to convince you that a software license is the wrong tool for the job, here. But reasonable people can disagree on whether that's true.)
        zzzcpan 8y ago
        Still open source, but I guess you think Debian, Fedora, etc. are willing to ignore a lot of new open source software with more restrictive licenses and sacrifice some or a lot of their user base in favor of more full featured distros. I don't think this is going to happen. They will change policies and accept the new world.
        geofft 8y ago
        I do strongly think that will not happen. Debian, for instance, constitutionally requires a 3-to-1 supermajority for a change to its "foundation documents," which include the Debian free software guidelines. The people who would have to vote on this are project members who have already pledged agreement with the existing free software guidelines. There are a lot of people who work on Debian precisely because they personally value the DFSG as it exists today. There have been a lot of attempts at sort-of-free-software-but-not-really licenses over time: see, for instance, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicenses https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSof... . There has been a lot of important software previously released under such licenses, from JSON to code drops from Sun (Java), Microsoft (.NET), and Apple (Darwin). The Linux distros have not included them. Remember that Debian doesn't even ship the gcc man page in the default distribution because it doesn't believe the FSF's own license for that man page is free software. I don't see what is different about today that would make things change. There isn't actually that much new "open source" software under non-OSD-compliant/non-DFSG-compliant licenses. And most of it comes from software that was previously under a compliant license, so for instance Debian and Fedora maintainers have forked the most recent OSD-compliant release of the Redis modules: https://goodformcode.com https://goodformcode.com Remember that every new license - even a new free software license - has an uphill battle because if it's incompatible with existing licenses you can't link software under those licenses or incorporate code under those licenses. There is a strong natural pressure to move to a standard license (or set of mutually-compatible licenses like MIT/BSD/etc.), and we've seen OSD-compliant licenses that are fine but uncommon be dropped in favor of more common ones. That pressure applies much more strongly to code that tries to set itself out as "open source" and is incompatible with every open source license.
  - vortico 8y ago
    >Why would anyone care about the opinion of OSI? Their opinion is not relevant. What is relevant is whether their definition of open-source (https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd) is close to the ideals of developers. And it suffices for me and many others. Your second sentence is nonsense.
    - xnn 8y ago
      > Your second sentence is nonsense. No it is not. But I see that you are a "founder" and thus profiting from my work. Your opinion is self-serving and meaningless.
      - vortico 8y ago
        Please use your main HN account. Temporary accounts for the purpose of hiding will continue to be banned.
- fao_ 8y ago
  Well of course, because open source is about ignoring the ability of software developers to do good in the world, their abilities to change things, so instead companies can make money off the backs of software developers who are almost always working for free in their spare time. All in the hope that a software developer might get hired to maintain a project that they thought up. The point of open source is to not be political, but that is an inane statement. Choosing to 'not be political', is itself a choice for the status quo. Choosing to 'not discriminate against any particular group, either positively or negatively' in a world where there is implicit, mostly-unspoken discrimination, is an implicit choice to continue that forward. So why should those values be something to aspire towards? The status quo is a world in which the majority of people are not being payed what they are worth, so the people doing the paying can further inflate their ridiculously large bank balances. I am probably the last person to quote MLK in common conversation, because a lot of his quotes have been misused or mispurposed to argue for something that he personally did not support. But, right now this one feels incredible pertinent: "" I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; ""
  - geofft 8y ago
    Right, but MLK would not have identified himself as a "white moderate except ___," nor said "I like order, but also ___". His point was he had a different worldview from the white moderate, and tacking on to the white moderate would not have accomplished his goals. Open source is definitely political, but it's also a very specific political movement. There can be other political movements with other goals. The reasons that open source advocates dislike licenses with restrictions on use are not just "we don't want to be political" or "we don't want to rock the boat." Some have a moral/ethical opinion that you should not restrict use via copyright, usually that you should not be able to restrict use via copyright. Some have a pragmatic opinion that attempts to restrict use will lead to worse outcomes. The 996.ICU folks seem like they would be better served with their own movement that doesn't go by the name of "open source." We don't need to add that label to them.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  It removes the status of OSI approved license if it used such license, because it becomes a different license, but it's still what people usually call open source. And it doesn't matter if you don't like the common meaning of open source, which has nothing to do with OSI's own definition.
  - vortico 8y ago
    What bullet points does your "common meaning of open source" disagree with in https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd?
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      It's irrelevant if you don't want to recognize, that people usually don't use OSI's definition when they talk about "open source".
      - geofft 8y ago
        "People"? Most people I know do actually mean the OSD. Most of my friends do, and certainly all my employers that have had open-source processes do—I can't necessarily use that process to release code to a weird non-OSD-compliant license just because the source is visible under some conditions. (Also, "people" use the word "copyright" when they mean "trademark", and post "No copyright intended" on their YouTube video when they mean "no copyright infringement intended" and absolutely unequivocally are infringing copyright. The fact that some people don't know the meanings of words doesn't change whether the words have meanings.)
        zzzcpan 8y ago
        You are assuming they do, but they likely don't. Counter example for this is SQLite. Almost everyone considers it open source, presumably even you. Lots of projects that embed it are considered open source. SQLite, however, is not OSI open source and none of the projects that embed it can be OSI open source either. And it's ok, because people generally don't think of open source as something with OSI approved licenses.
- rqs 8y ago
  > Note that this removes "open-source" status from the original license if it is open-source From what I can read, that's the plan. After all "open-source" or not is pointless when developers are on the bed inside of ICU :D
- jes5199 8y ago
  all open source licenses are “follow my principles” licenses. We’vr just had a monoculture of software principles for the last few decades.
  - vortico 8y ago
    I disagree because the OSI definition explicitly states that the software must not limit groups of people of any kind from using the software, regardless of how evil they may be or whether they comply to whatever monoculture you speak of. That's the point. By writing open-source software, you are explicitly allowing people with completely opposite ideals to use, review, and derive the software. And that's the beauty of it.
marcinzm 8y ago
This license excludes any company that practices a 10x4 (10 hours for 4 day a week) work schedule which positive things have been said about previously. Also excludes companies with hourly jobs that work more than 45 hours but get paid 2/3x for extra hours. A lot of government agencies with unions have employees that love doing that since it gives them a lot of money. edit: Hospitals as well since employees work odd shifts such as 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off for ER doctors, or 6 days in a row for lab technicians (with more days off every other week), etc.
- logicchains 8y ago
  It's a hard problem. To cover all such cases, the license would essentially have to be as complex as a developed country's labour laws. But adding complexity adds loopholes that could be exploited, for instance if a rule just allowed "working more than 45 hours for 2/3x overtime pay", a company could just reduce the main pay by two thirds for non-overtime work. Countering this might require some reference to local minimum wages or average wages, which makes the license significantly more complex to apply across jurisdictions.
gtirloni 8y ago
Similar comments made about the "No Evil" license apply: https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil
Kaveren 8y ago
You have no clue why someone is working more than 10 hours consecutively or more than 45 hours a week. Maybe that's something they're being paid quite well to do, and maybe they want to do so. This type of restriction just screams "I want to feel like a good person." You're within your rights to use this restriction, but it's equally as ridiculous as a restriction forcing employees not to eat toast on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays. I hope this doesn't catch on. Edit: If the main target here is China, how much do you really believe Chinese companies care about Western copyright laws?
- geofft 8y ago
  Right, this is perhaps the fundamental objection to social-good software licenses: how many people who don't engage in social good do respect copyright? The GPL works because it's pretty unambiguous about what exactly your obligations are, it's pretty unambiguous when there's a violation of those obligations, and because there are entities that do care deeply about copyright (like, oh, Microsoft and Oracle and IBM) that you'd like to affect. Any license of the form "You must not use this code to wage war." is not going to get respected. The military doesn't care if you sue them. Any license of the form "You must obey laws" (like this one, "The above license is only granted to entities that act in concordance with local labor laws") is not going to get respected. Either the entity was going to obey laws, in which case it's redundant, or they weren't, in which case what do they care about copyright. Any license that's five lines long and tells a US court they have to decide whether a Chinese entity is complaint with Chinese labor law is just ... not going to work the way you want it to. Any license that restricts use and not distribution has the practical problem of being difficult to enforce. If your code runs inside Palantir's systems or on a Patriot missile or as part of the PRISM backend, how will you ever know? The AGPL skirts this line by retaining the "distribution" concept and just defining networked use as distribution (and I think even that is questionable) but anything where you're not actually seeing the infringement is not going to be feasible to enforce.
  - progval 8y ago
    > Any license of the form "You must obey laws" (like this one, "The above license is only granted to entities that act in concordance with local labor laws") is not going to get respected. Either the entity was going to obey laws, in which case it's redundant, or they weren't, in which case what do they care about copyright. What about companies that see respecting laws as a tradeoff between having less profits and getting fined? If breaking the law implies an additional fine due to this license, it may tip the balance the other way.
I-Iuw 8y ago
Before this comment section gets any more toxic, please understand the context. The org on GitHub that developed this license is called 996ICU (https://996.icu/#/en_US https://996.icu/#/en_US). It is a (very large) group of Chinese developers that are upset with the common practice of working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Please be mindful of the fact that lots of developers around the world work under genuinely awful conditions, and that your (x times y) work week is a privilege earned by a long history of labour activism in the Western world. (P.S. This is a protest, not a legally binding license)
- balfirevic 8y ago
  > Before this comment section gets any more toxic, please understand the context. Comment section is not "toxic" just because it expresses the notion that this license is useless, nonsensical, stupid or any other thing you disagree with. Even if commenters might have missed the point.
- justinjlynn 8y ago
  12 hours a day, 6 days a week - 72 hours a week - and this is a normal practice businesses expect to keep up every week of the year? Yikes.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  your (x times y) work week is a privilege earned by a long history of labour activism in the Western world. With most of "us" being some kind of a software engineer, I'm sincerely curious: was 80-hours workweek ever a mandatory thing for an engineer (teacher, doctor)?
  - um_ya 8y ago
    In terms of a software development, laws/licences requiring maximum workweek hours is kind of pointless. If any company forces their employees to work in those kinds of conditions, they're going to get poor results, and their customers will notice. Software development requires a clear thinking mind, you can only get away with so much before productivity tanks. Manufacturing work is mindless, so they can get away with extra hours without as much decrease in productivity.
rbohac 8y ago
so hospitals can never use this? their doctors and nurses, who are "employees" regularily work 12 hour shifts. the same goes for first responders
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  I hope so. Hospitals make their staff work counter-productive hours, as if they couldn't function with 8 hour shifts. And you don't need to put double quotes around employees. They are employees and deserve to work in a good environment like everyone else
  - jimktrains2 8y ago
    While I'm not defending the schedules that hospital employees work, one thing to factor in is that every hand off can increase errors. (I wish I could find a paper, but I'm on mobile and not having luck.) However, yes, I do believe that multiple 12+ hour days in a row is ultimately counterproductive. Also, I wonder if overlapping shifts would reduce the chance of errors.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Those long shifts are there to protect patient safety - they reduce the number of dangerous handovers. Part of being a doctor or in something like the military is putting other people first rather than having a comfortable short day.
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      What if handovers are dangerous in large part because the outgoing shift members are fatigued to the point of intoxication?
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
est31 8y ago
I support the general idea of not having to work 12 hours a day for 6 days. That's crazy. But there are other venues for labour activism than changing the license. And in other Chinese industries that aren't related to software at all, labour activism is quite successful as well. So there is no need to resort to license changes. As for your PS, there is no indication that it's a protest and not just a license.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  Uhm... of course there is? https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://996.icu/#/en_US https://996.icu/#/en_US Even on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 The link just shows you one particular file in the repo, but that should be obvious to anyone who ever used GitHub.
  - est31 8y ago
    From the github page: > The purpose of this license is to prevent 996-style companies from using the software or codes under the license, and force those companies to balance their work schedule. Doesn't sound like protest to me, but like extortion. Either you do what we want, or you can't use our software.
    - efnx 8y ago
      That’s not extortion. If you don’t like the terms don’t use the software.
      - est31 8y ago
        Well then what I-Iuw said above in the PS is bullocks. > (P.S. This is a protest, not a legally binding license) It is a legally binding license and not just mere protest. That's all I claimed.
        seba_dos1 8y ago
TheCoreh 8y ago
I live in Brazil. Under Brazilian labor laws, a work week is defined as 44 hours, with each work day having up to 8 hours. So you just excluded companies that have ever had anyone do more than one hour of (paid) overtime any week. Which is basically every company in my country, considering (occasional, paid) overtime is normal and predicted in the relevant laws. Here, 12 hour shifts with 36 hour rest periods is also the norm for security guards, etc. (So that 4 can provide 24h security) That results in more than 45 hours every other week. The license also doesn't specify how to remedy the situation in case it's ever violated, which feels very draconian and not very pragmatic.
- rqs 8y ago
  I think this worry is reasonable. Maybe you can try to file a pull request to suggest a change, remember to explain your situation and concerns inside the pull request so it won't be discarded.
  - est31 8y ago
    The issue with licenses is that you can't just change them around like you want. The GPLv2 in the Linux kernel for example is almost impossible to get exchanged due to the giant amount people who possibly hold copyright. You need agreement of every single one of them.
    - rqs 8y ago
      Personally, I don't even believe they can receive that many stars on GitHub. The fact they did amazed me. Of course I understand ask some projects to suddenly change their license to support anti-996 is hard and unreal, but hey, the show of force and well there is already a win. For me, the step they've taken to reach out for support (by ask others to change their code license etc) is already something positively progressive. Regardless whether or not they did successfully convinced anyone. They got the message out, that's important.
- forinti 8y ago
  It's a bit worse than it seems, because lunch breaks are not included, so whereas an American would call his 9-to-5 job a 40 hour work week, it would be equivalent to a 35 hour Brazilian work week. A Brazilian work day is usually 8h30 to 18h18 so that 44h will fit into 5 days. You can see how adding a commute of at least and hour (could easily be 2h or 3h in São Paulo or Rio) will simply eat up your whole day. I think a reduction of the 44h week is long due in Brazil and I don't understand why there isn't more pressure from workers. They probably don't have the time to protest.
Raed667 8y ago
Is this kind of lisence enforcement possible? Any prior art?
- filesystemdude 8y ago
  This _type_ of license? Maybe. Depends on jurisdiction. _This_ license? Probably not. Making your own license is hard. The best advice is probably don't try unless you're a licensing expert or have unlimited access to one.
  - yyrdl 8y ago
    https://github.com/kattgu7/996-License-Draft/ https://github.com/kattgu7/996-License-Draft/
abhinai 8y ago
In the best job I ever had in my life, my boss basically told me that she didn't care about the hours I kept or how long I worked every day as long as I got my job done. I usually showed up to work at 12pm and left around 4pm. It ended up being one of the most productive times of my life. I created products that had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of impact on the company bottom line. In my immediate next job I had to keep long hours and for some reasons I wasn't nearly half as productive. Atleast in my life, shorter work hours tend to heavily inversely correlate with my work output.
- 089723645897236 8y ago
  I am currently working in a ROWE (results only work environment). I have a similar schedule. I get way more done and have way more ideas. It's almost as if "gasp" letting people design their own work process makes them more effective!
- tc7 8y ago
  Does this work best if your work is well-planned by someone else? E.g., you have a list of prioritized tickets with requirements complete, and can just code down the list? I work 32h/wk (mon-thu), and I feel happy with my productivity, but also recognize that I spend tons of time in meetings, clarifying requirements, helping other devs, etc. These aren't all really my role, so I could theoretically optimize them away and hope the invisible tasks get picked up successfully by someone else, but I know we'd have worse outcomes if I wasn't involved and "just" did my explicitly assigned tasks. Can someone with team lead/management responsibilities optimize for 'job done' this aggressively?
  - abhinai 8y ago
    Can someone with team lead/management responsibilities optimize for 'job done' this aggressively? I will have an answer for you in a month because I am going to start trying this strategy out in my current job starting this week. :)
    - mkeedlinger 8y ago
089723645897236 8y ago
Labor tech is the future. Next up block chain mutual aid networks.
whatshisface 8y ago
Overworking is a problem on a national scale, because it leads to the decay of every aspect of society that is not work. The most critical aspect is that it leads to the decay of families. It can lead to a big problem where the population is much lower and the people that do exist have had little invested into them as children. It also leads to a decay of the civil duty to shepherd your government, although the Chinese would consider that a good thing. It is tempting to eat the cake today but the price will be paid in full in one generation.
mirimir 8y ago
As a consultant, I have a 50% rush fee. But for that, I've at times worked ~20 hours per day.
- progval 8y ago
  I think you technically aren't affected by that license, as you are not an employee.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    I know. I'm just arguing that asking for more work is OK, if you're willing to pay for it. Many years ago, I worked a union job (chemical plant) and we got 1.5x wages for overtime, and 2x wages for working legal holidays.
chrisco255 8y ago
Free software (free as in speech) means you accept that others will build on your ideas in ways that you don't control.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
How is business structured in China? Are there impediments to programmers operating as consultants and setting their own hours?
adrr 8y ago
Copyright license only covers copying the software or source code. This seems like a "terms of use" that they tried to shove into a copyright license which I don't think would hold up in court. This license would cover the package distribution site/provider/github, not the person/entity using the package. The entity/person using software would only trigger the copyright license if they distributed the package(eg: putting the package into a mobile app or selling the software).
povertyworld 8y ago
People should be careful what they wish for. Far too many Americans are trying to survive on part time jobs.
iceninenines 8y ago
It should be called the "anti-slavery" license.

186 points by logicchains 8y ago

Ah, yet another "open-source if you follow my principles" license. It should be an uninteresting fact at this point that yes, you can in fact put whatever clauses you want in your software license. Note that this is a license restriction addon, not a standalone license. To use, ammend to and reference by another license. Note that this removes "open-source" status from the original license if it is open-source, according to OSI's "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" definition.

xYTa 8y ago
Why would anyone care about a bunch of OSI apparatchiks? The people who talk loudest about Open Source always manage to get a position that profits from the labor of the actual authors.
wqedwed 8y ago
Why would anyone care about the opinion of OSI? The people who talk loudest about Open Source always manage to get a position that profits from the labor of the actual authors.
- geofft 8y ago
  Don't create new accounts to work around bans. However, since your question is one that comes up a lot (though, perhaps, only from your accounts), I'll answer it as if it's in good faith and not downvote / flag your comment. The Open Source Definition is not at all the opinion of OSI. It was taken word-for-word from the Debian Free Software Guidelines, with some minor editorial changes to make it more generic than just Debian. It has influenced the free software definition of other projects (the Ubuntu Licensing Policy, Fedora and Red Hat's list of approved licenses, etc.) The practical reason to care about the Open Source Definition is that you want your software to be in Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, etc. Being able to install software as part of a distro, and having distro maintainers work with you on getting visibility for the software, is valuable, and you shouldn't give it up lightly. If you are going to give it up—which is a fine thing to do, there's lots of good non-open-source software in the world—why restrict yourself to a half-open-source license? Why not preserve your right to commercialize your software so you can profit from your labor as much as you want? Presumably you've decided that you will make more profit (or other benefit) from association with the concept of "open source," but that association only helps you if you actually satisfy the Open Source Definition.
  - captainbland 8y ago
    Well, it might also be that you actually want many people to be able to use, learn and understand your software freely but you also don't want your software to be installed on a military drone or used to enable a company that is working its employees to death. Not everything is profiteering and marketing.
    - geofft 8y ago
      That sounds great! But it's not open source. Debian, Fedora, etc. by policy do not want to prevent use of their software on military drones or by companies that work their employees to death. You will not convince them to change that policy. Therefore, you need to decide which of those two desires is more important to you: is it more valuable to have people be able to apt install / dnf install your software at the cost of letting it be usable by the military and exploitative employers? It's totally legitimate to decide no, I care more about restricting use of my software, so I'll make packages (or a curl | sh script, or whatever) available on my website and guide people to do that. By all means, go do that, if that's what you want to do. (If your'e actually considering doing this, I would like to try to convince you that a software license is the wrong tool for the job, here. But reasonable people can disagree on whether that's true.)
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        Still open source, but I guess you think Debian, Fedora, etc. are willing to ignore a lot of new open source software with more restrictive licenses and sacrifice some or a lot of their user base in favor of more full featured distros. I don't think this is going to happen. They will change policies and accept the new world.
        geofft 8y ago
        I do strongly think that will not happen. Debian, for instance, constitutionally requires a 3-to-1 supermajority for a change to its "foundation documents," which include the Debian free software guidelines. The people who would have to vote on this are project members who have already pledged agreement with the existing free software guidelines. There are a lot of people who work on Debian precisely because they personally value the DFSG as it exists today. There have been a lot of attempts at sort-of-free-software-but-not-really licenses over time: see, for instance, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicenses https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#NonFreeSof... . There has been a lot of important software previously released under such licenses, from JSON to code drops from Sun (Java), Microsoft (.NET), and Apple (Darwin). The Linux distros have not included them. Remember that Debian doesn't even ship the gcc man page in the default distribution because it doesn't believe the FSF's own license for that man page is free software. I don't see what is different about today that would make things change. There isn't actually that much new "open source" software under non-OSD-compliant/non-DFSG-compliant licenses. And most of it comes from software that was previously under a compliant license, so for instance Debian and Fedora maintainers have forked the most recent OSD-compliant release of the Redis modules: https://goodformcode.com https://goodformcode.com Remember that every new license - even a new free software license - has an uphill battle because if it's incompatible with existing licenses you can't link software under those licenses or incorporate code under those licenses. There is a strong natural pressure to move to a standard license (or set of mutually-compatible licenses like MIT/BSD/etc.), and we've seen OSD-compliant licenses that are fine but uncommon be dropped in favor of more common ones. That pressure applies much more strongly to code that tries to set itself out as "open source" and is incompatible with every open source license.
- vortico 8y ago
  >Why would anyone care about the opinion of OSI? Their opinion is not relevant. What is relevant is whether their definition of open-source (https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd) is close to the ideals of developers. And it suffices for me and many others. Your second sentence is nonsense.
  - xnn 8y ago
    > Your second sentence is nonsense. No it is not. But I see that you are a "founder" and thus profiting from my work. Your opinion is self-serving and meaningless.
    - vortico 8y ago
      Please use your main HN account. Temporary accounts for the purpose of hiding will continue to be banned.
fao_ 8y ago
Well of course, because open source is about ignoring the ability of software developers to do good in the world, their abilities to change things, so instead companies can make money off the backs of software developers who are almost always working for free in their spare time. All in the hope that a software developer might get hired to maintain a project that they thought up. The point of open source is to not be political, but that is an inane statement. Choosing to 'not be political', is itself a choice for the status quo. Choosing to 'not discriminate against any particular group, either positively or negatively' in a world where there is implicit, mostly-unspoken discrimination, is an implicit choice to continue that forward. So why should those values be something to aspire towards? The status quo is a world in which the majority of people are not being payed what they are worth, so the people doing the paying can further inflate their ridiculously large bank balances. I am probably the last person to quote MLK in common conversation, because a lot of his quotes have been misused or mispurposed to argue for something that he personally did not support. But, right now this one feels incredible pertinent: "" I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; ""
- geofft 8y ago
  Right, but MLK would not have identified himself as a "white moderate except ___," nor said "I like order, but also ___". His point was he had a different worldview from the white moderate, and tacking on to the white moderate would not have accomplished his goals. Open source is definitely political, but it's also a very specific political movement. There can be other political movements with other goals. The reasons that open source advocates dislike licenses with restrictions on use are not just "we don't want to be political" or "we don't want to rock the boat." Some have a moral/ethical opinion that you should not restrict use via copyright, usually that you should not be able to restrict use via copyright. Some have a pragmatic opinion that attempts to restrict use will lead to worse outcomes. The 996.ICU folks seem like they would be better served with their own movement that doesn't go by the name of "open source." We don't need to add that label to them.
zzzcpan 8y ago
It removes the status of OSI approved license if it used such license, because it becomes a different license, but it's still what people usually call open source. And it doesn't matter if you don't like the common meaning of open source, which has nothing to do with OSI's own definition.
- vortico 8y ago
  What bullet points does your "common meaning of open source" disagree with in https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd?
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    It's irrelevant if you don't want to recognize, that people usually don't use OSI's definition when they talk about "open source".
    - geofft 8y ago
      "People"? Most people I know do actually mean the OSD. Most of my friends do, and certainly all my employers that have had open-source processes do—I can't necessarily use that process to release code to a weird non-OSD-compliant license just because the source is visible under some conditions. (Also, "people" use the word "copyright" when they mean "trademark", and post "No copyright intended" on their YouTube video when they mean "no copyright infringement intended" and absolutely unequivocally are infringing copyright. The fact that some people don't know the meanings of words doesn't change whether the words have meanings.)
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        You are assuming they do, but they likely don't. Counter example for this is SQLite. Almost everyone considers it open source, presumably even you. Lots of projects that embed it are considered open source. SQLite, however, is not OSI open source and none of the projects that embed it can be OSI open source either. And it's ok, because people generally don't think of open source as something with OSI approved licenses.
rqs 8y ago
> Note that this removes "open-source" status from the original license if it is open-source From what I can read, that's the plan. After all "open-source" or not is pointless when developers are on the bed inside of ICU :D
jes5199 8y ago
all open source licenses are “follow my principles” licenses. We’vr just had a monoculture of software principles for the last few decades.
- vortico 8y ago
  I disagree because the OSI definition explicitly states that the software must not limit groups of people of any kind from using the software, regardless of how evil they may be or whether they comply to whatever monoculture you speak of. That's the point. By writing open-source software, you are explicitly allowing people with completely opposite ideals to use, review, and derive the software. And that's the beauty of it.

marcinzm 8y ago

This license excludes any company that practices a 10x4 (10 hours for 4 day a week) work schedule which positive things have been said about previously. Also excludes companies with hourly jobs that work more than 45 hours but get paid 2/3x for extra hours. A lot of government agencies with unions have employees that love doing that since it gives them a lot of money. edit: Hospitals as well since employees work odd shifts such as 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off for ER doctors, or 6 days in a row for lab technicians (with more days off every other week), etc.

logicchains 8y ago
It's a hard problem. To cover all such cases, the license would essentially have to be as complex as a developed country's labour laws. But adding complexity adds loopholes that could be exploited, for instance if a rule just allowed "working more than 45 hours for 2/3x overtime pay", a company could just reduce the main pay by two thirds for non-overtime work. Countering this might require some reference to local minimum wages or average wages, which makes the license significantly more complex to apply across jurisdictions.

gtirloni 8y ago

Similar comments made about the "No Evil" license apply: https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil

Kaveren 8y ago

You have no clue why someone is working more than 10 hours consecutively or more than 45 hours a week. Maybe that's something they're being paid quite well to do, and maybe they want to do so. This type of restriction just screams "I want to feel like a good person." You're within your rights to use this restriction, but it's equally as ridiculous as a restriction forcing employees not to eat toast on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays. I hope this doesn't catch on. Edit: If the main target here is China, how much do you really believe Chinese companies care about Western copyright laws?

geofft 8y ago
Right, this is perhaps the fundamental objection to social-good software licenses: how many people who don't engage in social good do respect copyright? The GPL works because it's pretty unambiguous about what exactly your obligations are, it's pretty unambiguous when there's a violation of those obligations, and because there are entities that do care deeply about copyright (like, oh, Microsoft and Oracle and IBM) that you'd like to affect. Any license of the form "You must not use this code to wage war." is not going to get respected. The military doesn't care if you sue them. Any license of the form "You must obey laws" (like this one, "The above license is only granted to entities that act in concordance with local labor laws") is not going to get respected. Either the entity was going to obey laws, in which case it's redundant, or they weren't, in which case what do they care about copyright. Any license that's five lines long and tells a US court they have to decide whether a Chinese entity is complaint with Chinese labor law is just ... not going to work the way you want it to. Any license that restricts use and not distribution has the practical problem of being difficult to enforce. If your code runs inside Palantir's systems or on a Patriot missile or as part of the PRISM backend, how will you ever know? The AGPL skirts this line by retaining the "distribution" concept and just defining networked use as distribution (and I think even that is questionable) but anything where you're not actually seeing the infringement is not going to be feasible to enforce.
- progval 8y ago
  > Any license of the form "You must obey laws" (like this one, "The above license is only granted to entities that act in concordance with local labor laws") is not going to get respected. Either the entity was going to obey laws, in which case it's redundant, or they weren't, in which case what do they care about copyright. What about companies that see respecting laws as a tradeoff between having less profits and getting fined? If breaking the law implies an additional fine due to this license, it may tip the balance the other way.

I-Iuw 8y ago

Before this comment section gets any more toxic, please understand the context. The org on GitHub that developed this license is called 996ICU (https://996.icu/#/en_US https://996.icu/#/en_US). It is a (very large) group of Chinese developers that are upset with the common practice of working 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Please be mindful of the fact that lots of developers around the world work under genuinely awful conditions, and that your (x times y) work week is a privilege earned by a long history of labour activism in the Western world. (P.S. This is a protest, not a legally binding license)

balfirevic 8y ago
> Before this comment section gets any more toxic, please understand the context. Comment section is not "toxic" just because it expresses the notion that this license is useless, nonsensical, stupid or any other thing you disagree with. Even if commenters might have missed the point.
justinjlynn 8y ago
12 hours a day, 6 days a week - 72 hours a week - and this is a normal practice businesses expect to keep up every week of the year? Yikes.
AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
your (x times y) work week is a privilege earned by a long history of labour activism in the Western world. With most of "us" being some kind of a software engineer, I'm sincerely curious: was 80-hours workweek ever a mandatory thing for an engineer (teacher, doctor)?
- um_ya 8y ago
  In terms of a software development, laws/licences requiring maximum workweek hours is kind of pointless. If any company forces their employees to work in those kinds of conditions, they're going to get poor results, and their customers will notice. Software development requires a clear thinking mind, you can only get away with so much before productivity tanks. Manufacturing work is mindless, so they can get away with extra hours without as much decrease in productivity.

rbohac 8y ago

so hospitals can never use this? their doctors and nurses, who are "employees" regularily work 12 hour shifts. the same goes for first responders

jimnotgym 8y ago
I hope so. Hospitals make their staff work counter-productive hours, as if they couldn't function with 8 hour shifts. And you don't need to put double quotes around employees. They are employees and deserve to work in a good environment like everyone else
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  While I'm not defending the schedules that hospital employees work, one thing to factor in is that every hand off can increase errors. (I wish I could find a paper, but I'm on mobile and not having luck.) However, yes, I do believe that multiple 12+ hour days in a row is ultimately counterproductive. Also, I wonder if overlapping shifts would reduce the chance of errors.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Those long shifts are there to protect patient safety - they reduce the number of dangerous handovers. Part of being a doctor or in something like the military is putting other people first rather than having a comfortable short day.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    What if handovers are dangerous in large part because the outgoing shift members are fatigued to the point of intoxication?
    - chrisseaton 8y ago

est31 8y ago

I support the general idea of not having to work 12 hours a day for 6 days. That's crazy. But there are other venues for labour activism than changing the license. And in other Chinese industries that aren't related to software at all, labour activism is quite successful as well. So there is no need to resort to license changes. As for your PS, there is no indication that it's a protest and not just a license.

seba_dos1 8y ago
Uhm... of course there is? https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://996.icu/#/en_US https://996.icu/#/en_US Even on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507620 The link just shows you one particular file in the repo, but that should be obvious to anyone who ever used GitHub.
- est31 8y ago
  From the github page: > The purpose of this license is to prevent 996-style companies from using the software or codes under the license, and force those companies to balance their work schedule. Doesn't sound like protest to me, but like extortion. Either you do what we want, or you can't use our software.
  - efnx 8y ago
    That’s not extortion. If you don’t like the terms don’t use the software.
    - est31 8y ago
      Well then what I-Iuw said above in the PS is bullocks. > (P.S. This is a protest, not a legally binding license) It is a legally binding license and not just mere protest. That's all I claimed.
      - seba_dos1 8y ago

TheCoreh 8y ago

I live in Brazil. Under Brazilian labor laws, a work week is defined as 44 hours, with each work day having up to 8 hours. So you just excluded companies that have ever had anyone do more than one hour of (paid) overtime any week. Which is basically every company in my country, considering (occasional, paid) overtime is normal and predicted in the relevant laws. Here, 12 hour shifts with 36 hour rest periods is also the norm for security guards, etc. (So that 4 can provide 24h security) That results in more than 45 hours every other week. The license also doesn't specify how to remedy the situation in case it's ever violated, which feels very draconian and not very pragmatic.

rqs 8y ago
I think this worry is reasonable. Maybe you can try to file a pull request to suggest a change, remember to explain your situation and concerns inside the pull request so it won't be discarded.
- est31 8y ago
  The issue with licenses is that you can't just change them around like you want. The GPLv2 in the Linux kernel for example is almost impossible to get exchanged due to the giant amount people who possibly hold copyright. You need agreement of every single one of them.
  - rqs 8y ago
    Personally, I don't even believe they can receive that many stars on GitHub. The fact they did amazed me. Of course I understand ask some projects to suddenly change their license to support anti-996 is hard and unreal, but hey, the show of force and well there is already a win. For me, the step they've taken to reach out for support (by ask others to change their code license etc) is already something positively progressive. Regardless whether or not they did successfully convinced anyone. They got the message out, that's important.
forinti 8y ago
It's a bit worse than it seems, because lunch breaks are not included, so whereas an American would call his 9-to-5 job a 40 hour work week, it would be equivalent to a 35 hour Brazilian work week. A Brazilian work day is usually 8h30 to 18h18 so that 44h will fit into 5 days. You can see how adding a commute of at least and hour (could easily be 2h or 3h in São Paulo or Rio) will simply eat up your whole day. I think a reduction of the 44h week is long due in Brazil and I don't understand why there isn't more pressure from workers. They probably don't have the time to protest.

Raed667 8y ago

Is this kind of lisence enforcement possible? Any prior art?

filesystemdude 8y ago
This _type_ of license? Maybe. Depends on jurisdiction. _This_ license? Probably not. Making your own license is hard. The best advice is probably don't try unless you're a licensing expert or have unlimited access to one.
- yyrdl 8y ago
  https://github.com/kattgu7/996-License-Draft/ https://github.com/kattgu7/996-License-Draft/

abhinai 8y ago

In the best job I ever had in my life, my boss basically told me that she didn't care about the hours I kept or how long I worked every day as long as I got my job done. I usually showed up to work at 12pm and left around 4pm. It ended up being one of the most productive times of my life. I created products that had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of impact on the company bottom line. In my immediate next job I had to keep long hours and for some reasons I wasn't nearly half as productive. Atleast in my life, shorter work hours tend to heavily inversely correlate with my work output.

089723645897236 8y ago
I am currently working in a ROWE (results only work environment). I have a similar schedule. I get way more done and have way more ideas. It's almost as if "gasp" letting people design their own work process makes them more effective!
tc7 8y ago
Does this work best if your work is well-planned by someone else? E.g., you have a list of prioritized tickets with requirements complete, and can just code down the list? I work 32h/wk (mon-thu), and I feel happy with my productivity, but also recognize that I spend tons of time in meetings, clarifying requirements, helping other devs, etc. These aren't all really my role, so I could theoretically optimize them away and hope the invisible tasks get picked up successfully by someone else, but I know we'd have worse outcomes if I wasn't involved and "just" did my explicitly assigned tasks. Can someone with team lead/management responsibilities optimize for 'job done' this aggressively?
- abhinai 8y ago
  Can someone with team lead/management responsibilities optimize for 'job done' this aggressively? I will have an answer for you in a month because I am going to start trying this strategy out in my current job starting this week. :)
  - mkeedlinger 8y ago

089723645897236 8y ago

Labor tech is the future. Next up block chain mutual aid networks.

whatshisface 8y ago

Overworking is a problem on a national scale, because it leads to the decay of every aspect of society that is not work. The most critical aspect is that it leads to the decay of families. It can lead to a big problem where the population is much lower and the people that do exist have had little invested into them as children. It also leads to a decay of the civil duty to shepherd your government, although the Chinese would consider that a good thing. It is tempting to eat the cake today but the price will be paid in full in one generation.

mirimir 8y ago

As a consultant, I have a 50% rush fee. But for that, I've at times worked ~20 hours per day.

progval 8y ago
I think you technically aren't affected by that license, as you are not an employee.
- mirimir 8y ago
  I know. I'm just arguing that asking for more work is OK, if you're willing to pay for it. Many years ago, I worked a union job (chemical plant) and we got 1.5x wages for overtime, and 2x wages for working legal holidays.

chrisco255 8y ago

Free software (free as in speech) means you accept that others will build on your ideas in ways that you don't control.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

How is business structured in China? Are there impediments to programmers operating as consultants and setting their own hours?

adrr 8y ago

Copyright license only covers copying the software or source code. This seems like a "terms of use" that they tried to shove into a copyright license which I don't think would hold up in court. This license would cover the package distribution site/provider/github, not the person/entity using the package. The entity/person using software would only trigger the copyright license if they distributed the package(eg: putting the package into a mobile app or selling the software).

povertyworld 8y ago

People should be careful what they wish for. Far too many Americans are trying to survive on part time jobs.

iceninenines 8y ago

It should be called the "anti-slavery" license.