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Even in the US, it's common to have clauses about specific illegal activity, such as breaking embargoes or similar. For example, you might be banned from using
by vintagedave 7y ago
Even in the US, it's common to have clauses about specific illegal activity, such as breaking embargoes or similar. For example, you might be banned from using the software in, or cooperating with someone located in, Iran. You could do both of those with a git client.
This is more generally phrased than the very lawyer-written EULAs you generally find, but it's not unreasonable or unprecedented.
- jessaustin 7y agoAssuming for the sake of argument that I'm not supposed to collaborate with someone in some particular place... why again do the authors of these clients care about that? Are the black-bag squad going to disappear them because they didn't warn us to be good? Actually the charitable interpretation is probably that this is a sort of cargo-culted license without much informed decision-making behind it. Embargoes and sanctions have no ethical force behind them anyway. They are merely a way to harm poor people while ginning up more pretexts for more wars. Anyone who can oppose such monstrosities using git should do so.
- vintagedave 7y agoRather than protecting themselves, it's more likely that the author of the software desires that their software is only used for legal or ethical purposes, and that clause is their attempt to require that. It's fair for a software author to not want their software used to make the world worse. I think you have a very different interpretation of "charitable interpretation" than I do. As for embargoes - sure. It's just an example. There are plenty of other less morally ambiguous things too.