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> This is based entirely on the UN Charter of Human Rights. These are not political aims in the sense of "you can reasonably be on either side of this". The UD

by mikl 7y ago

> This is based entirely on the UN Charter of Human Rights. These are not political aims in the sense of "you can reasonably be on either side of this". The UDHR is a very broad and vague definition of human rights. The actual interpretation of it is an extremely legally complex and politically charged topic. Human rights cases usually takes years of court battles to resolve. If you see the discussion around “Ethical Source”, people want to ban Amazon from using their source because they’re doing business with ICE. And BP for crimes against humanity. Others might want to ban any Israeli businesses, and again others wanting to ban anyone associated with the Palestinian Authority, because either or both are in their opinion violating human rights. Anyone using ESD software would open themselves to insanely expensive lawsuits. It would be all too easy for anyone to come up with a claim that your business is somehow aiding in the violation of human rights in some fashion, and since the legalities are so complex, you can’t easily have the suit dismissed. You’ll have to spend months or even years fighting the claim in court, burning hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.

Certhas 7y ago
That's a fair point, and I fully agree that there are many political issues around the UCHR. I am certain a lot of the business world would want to stay away from code that is licensed in this way, and I suspect that the authors of code licensed accordingly would be just fine with that. My overall point though, that there are legitimate issues on balancing freedom and other values, stands. I think there is a good argument to be made that licenses are not the place to do this balancing act, but the naive "freedom maximalists" deny that there even is an issue to discuss here, quoting Paine, and what have you to take the grandest of stands. Creative Commons for example allows for at least some of this type of fine tuning in the license. After all CC NC is a thing, and I haven't heard doom-sayers predicting the end of liberty because CC blessed the possibility that authors would want to restrict the use of their work in that direction, even while sharing it freely otherwise. Seriously, look at the quoted message by ESR here: http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.... I wouldn't choose ESD style licenses for many of the reasons noted. But I also support contributors ability to choose how to give away their contributions, and to actively shape the communities they participate in. I think it's legitimate that the OSI says that this does not meet their definition of an Open License. But ESR is not arguing for that, he is seeing the very existence of people who don't share his "freedom maximalist" position (or like code of conducts, or...) as a grave threat that "his" culture needs to be protected from.
Certhas 7y ago
P.S.: Regarding "people want to ban Amazon from using their source because they’re doing business with ICE", from what I can see they merely want to use the license as a place to express their misgivings. Amazon would still be free to use the code as long as they also distribute the license file that says that the authors don't like Amazon for doing business with ICE. Amazons freedom would be limited in the same way as for any copy-left license that requires reproducing the license. Now this is still a questionable idea for any number of reasons, but it's not a ban, and no novel lawsuit threats would emerge from this.

by mikl 7y ago

Certhas 7y ago

That's a fair point, and I fully agree that there are many political issues around the UCHR. I am certain a lot of the business world would want to stay away from code that is licensed in this way, and I suspect that the authors of code licensed accordingly would be just fine with that. My overall point though, that there are legitimate issues on balancing freedom and other values, stands. I think there is a good argument to be made that licenses are not the place to do this balancing act, but the naive "freedom maximalists" deny that there even is an issue to discuss here, quoting Paine, and what have you to take the grandest of stands. Creative Commons for example allows for at least some of this type of fine tuning in the license. After all CC NC is a thing, and I haven't heard doom-sayers predicting the end of liberty because CC blessed the possibility that authors would want to restrict the use of their work in that direction, even while sharing it freely otherwise. Seriously, look at the quoted message by ESR here: http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.... I wouldn't choose ESD style licenses for many of the reasons noted. But I also support contributors ability to choose how to give away their contributions, and to actively shape the communities they participate in. I think it's legitimate that the OSI says that this does not meet their definition of an Open License. But ESR is not arguing for that, he is seeing the very existence of people who don't share his "freedom maximalist" position (or like code of conducts, or...) as a grave threat that "his" culture needs to be protected from.

Certhas 7y ago

P.S.: Regarding "people want to ban Amazon from using their source because they’re doing business with ICE", from what I can see they merely want to use the license as a place to express their misgivings. Amazon would still be free to use the code as long as they also distribute the license file that says that the authors don't like Amazon for doing business with ICE. Amazons freedom would be limited in the same way as for any copy-left license that requires reproducing the license. Now this is still a questionable idea for any number of reasons, but it's not a ban, and no novel lawsuit threats would emerge from this.