7 ms·

The Anti-Capitalist Software License

52 points by jarmitage 6y ago

codetrotter 6y ago
> An organization of people that seeks shared profit for all its members and does not exploit the labor of non-members Sounds basically impossible to me. How do you ensure that you don’t exploit the labor of non-members? If you buy as much as even an office chair, or a pencil sharpener, or a carpet, or whatever, there were probably very many people involved and some of them were being exploited in that they were paid a very low amount for their work.
- throwanem 6y ago
  The language intends to describe a co-op, I think. The intent would not be to restrict the license only to organizations which meet the impossible bar of ethical consumption under capitalism, but rather to those in which everyone who contributes to production has a meaningful voice in what is produced and how - or, again, a co-op. I feel like it would be more useful to describe the types of organizations to which the license refers in terms that might be more clear to people not already familiar. Perhaps I'll email them, or something - shame I can't open a PR.
  - nailer 6y ago
    > the impossible bar of ethical consumption under capitalism Under non-capitalism ethical consumption would also be rare, as it would be common for money paid by a consumer to be stolen from another, since all labour is rewarded equally without regard to effort or ingenuity.
    - johnny22 6y ago
      that implies that you think that your idea of what communism is also the only alternative to capitalism. That is not the case.
      - nailer 6y ago
        Small asides: obviously that idea of communism isn't just my perception, it's the historical record of communism. What other non-capitalist modes of economy exist? Agrarian society isn't too common, social democracy is a form of capitalism.
        guerrilla 6y ago
        Various forms of mutualism [1], libertarian socialism [2], market socialism [3] and democratic state socialism [4] are all non-capitalisms. The only "communism" you are familiar with from history is Marxism-Lenninism and Moaism (a variation of the former.) Both of them are authoritarian state socialisms, although I'd argue that their historical incarnations weren't even that since there really was no social ownership, it was just capitalism with a single monopoly and black markets. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory) [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism [4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism
        nailer 6y ago
        > The only "communism" you are familiar with from history is Marxism-Lenninism and Moaism (a variation of the former.) That is the only communism that has ever existed at scale. Please stop trying to equate documented world history with personal subjective viewpoints. > Various forms of mutualism [1], libertarian socialism [2], market socialism [3] and democratic state socialism [4] are all non-capitalisms. As mentioned in the comment you're replying to, the countries described as social democracies (typically Nordic) are also capitalist. What countries have mutualist economies?
        throwanem 6y ago
        This is a weak argument. You're responding with a demand for historical examples of alternatives to an argument, not that history provides examples of all alternatives, but that history provides poor examples of how some alternatives can be implemented. As presented, your argument reduces to the claim that nothing which has not already been done can ever be done, which is so transparently absurd that I can't imagine it's what you actually intend to say.
- hooby 6y ago
  To me this sounds pretty much like Mondragon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation Rare, but not outright impossible.
  - KingOfCoders 6y ago
    Mondragon would not be allowed to use software under this license.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > Sounds basically impossible to me. How do you ensure that you don’t exploit the labor of non-members? If I'm not mistaken, it's suggesting that you can only buy from other worker-owned cooperatives. > If you buy as much as even an office chair, or a pencil sharpener, or a carpet, or whatever, there were probably very many people involved and some of them were being exploited in that they were paid a very low amount for their work. If you're not buying from another worker-owned cooperative you could buy it second-hand, which isn't ordering any new labor to be done. If this is what they intended and if this wasn't clear to you then I think that's a problem for the license because there's really no room for such ambiguity and interpretation. It's going to have to be a lot more explicit than it is for it to be useful.
bb123 6y ago
The licence prohibits Law Enforcement use. What does that have to do with Capitalism? I'm fairly sure every socialist/communist/facist country has some form of law enforcement.
- colesantiago 6y ago
  Laws and borders are just a social construct, we don't really need them. Even if we do, the community can govern themselves.
  - bb123 6y ago
    Ah yes, countries like Somalia do so well without a system of functioning government and laws. With the added benefit of no taxes! But you might have to pay protection money to your local warlord so YMMV.
  - nailer 6y ago
    Yes we've recently been reminded of how well this works with CHAZ/CHOP.
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      CHAZ/CHOP actually succeeded by being formed by the people but as always the police ruined it and dismantled it. It would have been entirely different had they not got involved.
      - nailer 6y ago
        That's not correct. The deaths, assaults and racial segregation occurred without the involvement of police.
    - kevingadd 6y ago
      CHAZ/CHOP is a horrible example since most of the discourse about it is based on falsehoods and exaggerations, and it existed in a state of constant conflict with local law enforcement. There were certainly many good things about it, but I'm not sure you can learn much from it in the grand scope of things other than "it won't work out well, because most forces don't want it to exist". There are definitely examples out there of more successful self-governance, though.
jeanlucas 6y ago
It doesn’t make sense, feels like a teenager approach to the world.
- rvz 6y ago
  Exactly. That's if the author believes in a sustainable anarcho-communist society which this license is geared towards. I'd guess that this license is towards utopian ideals than actual reality.
- psoots 6y ago
  Is the GPL not just as teenager-like with its radical openness? Wanting to maintain your values through a software license feels passive and sneaky and awkward, but that's how we do it. And if you value your labor and the labor of others, in a way the GPL does not, why not write that into the license?
mikl 6y ago
… or “How to make your software unusable with questionable legalese”. Not a lawyer, but I can easily imagine how “An organization of people that seeks shared profit for all its members and does not exploit the labor of non-members” could be interpreted in dozens of different ways, making the use of any such licensed software a very dicey proposition.
- slooonz 6y ago
  Pretty sure the authors of that license would consider that a feature actually.
kome 6y ago
Also give the authors background, that's more an artistic take - than a real, well thought, license. For a "real", pro-freedom AND anti-capitalist software license, please consider GPL 3. And for a "real", pro-freedom AND capitalism-agnostic software license, consider MIT.
- gspr 6y ago
  > For a "real", pro-freedom AND anti-capitalist software license, please consider GPL 3. I wouldn't say that GPL3 is "anti-capitalist". Rather, it's extremely pro-freedom and forces certain behavior on part of the capitalists that they aren't inclined to partake in on their own volition.
  - kome 6y ago
    true IMHO among the various OS licenses, GPL it's the more inclined toward anti-capitalism. But that's a personal reading.
    - kryptiskt 6y ago
      The intention behind it might be, that doesn't mean that capitalists can't use it as a tool. There's a whole business model in GPLing software and then selling proprietary add-ons (which non-copyright holders can't compete with as they have to offer source) or exceptions to it.
    - zzz61831 6y ago
      Maybe GPL started as an anti-capitalist license, but in practice it became very much pro-capitalist. It got to the point that GPLv3 and AGPLv3 were split into two licenses to satisfy capitalists. Among various properly written and practical open source licenses Parity license is probably the most anti-capitalist one.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    One problem with GPL2 and GPL3 from an anti-capitalist perspective is that there are lots of ways for capitalists to satisfy the requirements of the license and still make a big pile of money off of it, with the owners of the company pocketing most of the returns. Worse still, the original authors aren't being compensated. GPL mostly helps with freedoms for the users, which is still very useful.
bb123 6y ago
This is only worth reading if you take it as a commentary/artwork. If you read it as a real licence it all feels a little bit childish.
- tgv 6y ago
  That's a deserved, but harsh criticism of modern art.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Harsh, I agree. But deserved? "Modern art" (in the vernacular sense, rather than the art-history one) seems to me a 'thought-terminating cliché', an excuse to disdain an entire and rather broad field of endeavor without first taking the trouble to engage at all with it. At least that's how I find I most often see it used. Perhaps that's not what is actually happening here, but nothing I've seen so far distinguishes this example from any other of the type. Nor do I see any reason why this example deserves any more favorable consideration than any other.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
> all workers are owners with equal share. How common is this in worker co-operatives? My guess is "doesn't exist anywhere" -- I'm guessing there's always some correlation between seniority and ownership share, even if it's just "you have to pass a short probationary period before you're an owner". It sounds like they haven't really thought this through. Besides seniority -- does someone who's worked there for twenty years really deserve the same share of ownership that someone who started last week does? -- there's also hours to consider: does someone who works ten or twenty hours a week deserve the same share as someone who works forty hours a week? I think most would agree that doesn't really make sense, but the current wording of the license mandates it.
- throwanem 6y ago
  I agree that it doesn't seem to have been completely thought through, but I still like the idea, I think.
- k_sze 6y ago
  Hours are also not necessarily a good measure of contribution. A good developer can put in 1 hour of work and produce more value than a bad developer in 2, 5, or even 10 hours.
  - slowmovintarget 6y ago
    Which is an argument for unequal pay, yes?
    - k_sze 6y ago
      I think it depends on which camp you're in: - the camp that believes pay should be proportional to the value produced; or - the camp that believes pay should be proportional to the effort put in.
      - ernst_klim 6y ago
        > the camp that believes pay should be proportional to the value produced The problem is that no one knows, how to evaluate this proportion. Assuming LTV makes sense, how to evaluate who contributes more: a designer or a programmer.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hooby 6y ago
I kinda like the idea. I severely doubt the practically and usability of this. I would be interested to see an expert lawyers take on how to write this license, so that it could actually work and hold up in court.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  I've seen comments to the effect that making the license impractical (and non-lawyer-approved) was intended as a way to ensure big companies like Google won't touch it. Not sure how I feel about that as a strategy, but there's a certain logic to it, similar to Crockford's "do no evil" license.
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    It is counter productive. The GPL is a work of genius in part because it encourages use and propagation. Creating a stupid license blocks even legitimate users, which prevents the social program from progressing.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
mhh__ 6y ago
The GPL is not anti-capitalist but it will in some ways stop businesses profiting of your work withing giving back. I believe all software should be either some variant of the GPL or GPL/Commercial dual. The latter is so a company can choose not to comply with the GPL but still give back to the project (financially). Anti-capitalism is a strange ideology given recent history. Most flaws pointed at capitalism today actually stem from problems that most capitalists would take issue with (corruption, overregulation, underregulation etc.). The people who built the Soviet Union and other socialist countries weren't stupid, the task is just impossible.
- throwanem 6y ago
  The SaaS paradigm trivially defeats the intent of the GPL, doesn't it? The problem people have with capitalism isn't that it has failure modes; every economic ideology has those. The problem people have with capitalism is that, in a capitalist society, the failure modes of capitalism are the ones that are the problem, and it's very hard to see how the status quo could be repaired without having to be replaced. (Which I think is fair. Look at what it took to fix it last time, and how long that hasn't lasted...)
- bccdee 6y ago
  Anti-capitalists would argue that those problems (corporatism, money-in-politics, wealth inequality) are inevitable products of capitalism. Obviously the Soviet model was a failure, but I think it's a bit silly to use the failure of one competing model as an argument that no other model could ever succeed.
  - zepto 6y ago
    The Soviet model is not proof that no other model could ever succeed. However it (and other failed communisms) are proof of particular failure modes. Given that these are the outcomes we know about, they are a reasonable null hypothesis. Amongst modern proponents of socialism I have not so far seen anyone actually say how those failure modes would be avoided.
    - 6y ago
krapp 6y ago
As I read it, an individual is allowed to use this software to seek a profit, so it isn't anti-capitalist at all, at best it's anti-corporatist. IANAL but I'm just guessing no court would take this seriously.
amoe_ 6y ago
How would this be applied in the case where the user was a wholly-or-partially state-funded organization (that was neither military nor law enforcement)? [clearly hasn't been lawyer-vetted, but any wild guesses?]
- throwanem 6y ago
  At a guess, State or NIAID or NCBI would be permitted to use software with this license - the distinction appears to be that civil government or NGO is allowed, while military or LE is not. Not, I agree, that this would likely prove enforceable as written, but I think that's what they're going for. And maybe they're trying to elicit a test case? That makes more sense than some of the speculation at hand, I think.
andyljones 6y ago
Worth contrasting with other 'Ethos licenses'. There's a really good writeup of 'common' ones here: https://coss.media/advent-of-ethos-licensing/ https://coss.media/advent-of-ethos-licensing/ The most famous is the JSON Good-Not-Evil one. I particularly like the term 'crayon license' for licenses drawn up by people without experience in writing licenses.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
Probably doesn't work for many cooperatives that are often a mix of owners and employees.
jonahbenton 6y ago
Part of the genius of the work of RMS- his behavioral issues aside- is the creation out of whole cloth of a legal protocol that is sufficiently precisely defined, sufficiently operationalizable, and sufficiently defensible as to...actually work, to have behavioral impacts in the real world. It is hard to appreciate how incredible an achievement that is. This license is not that, for all sorts of obvious reasons, which is a shame. Articulating a set of use principles in the extremely broad area the authors have an interest in is not impossible. Not only not impossible, but desirable. Software is leverage, and working to ensure leverage can only be used by the weaker party in any specific context is part of an equity protocol. If such a thing is going to exist, someone has to do the work to define it. One hopes they take a step back and give it another go.
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  Because RMS rested his edifice on the foundation of ownership in the classical sense, something that works and is widespread in the real world.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
joshspankit 6y ago
What about those companies who argue that they don’t seek profit, but that they profit anyways. Also: would this then include Amazon pre-2001?
blargmaster33 6y ago
We're hitting irony levels that shouldn't even be possible...

52 points by jarmitage 6y ago

> An organization of people that seeks shared profit for all its members and does not exploit the labor of non-members Sounds basically impossible to me. How do you ensure that you don’t exploit the labor of non-members? If you buy as much as even an office chair, or a pencil sharpener, or a carpet, or whatever, there were probably very many people involved and some of them were being exploited in that they were paid a very low amount for their work.

throwanem 6y ago
The language intends to describe a co-op, I think. The intent would not be to restrict the license only to organizations which meet the impossible bar of ethical consumption under capitalism, but rather to those in which everyone who contributes to production has a meaningful voice in what is produced and how - or, again, a co-op. I feel like it would be more useful to describe the types of organizations to which the license refers in terms that might be more clear to people not already familiar. Perhaps I'll email them, or something - shame I can't open a PR.
- nailer 6y ago
  > the impossible bar of ethical consumption under capitalism Under non-capitalism ethical consumption would also be rare, as it would be common for money paid by a consumer to be stolen from another, since all labour is rewarded equally without regard to effort or ingenuity.
  - johnny22 6y ago
    that implies that you think that your idea of what communism is also the only alternative to capitalism. That is not the case.
    - nailer 6y ago
      Small asides: obviously that idea of communism isn't just my perception, it's the historical record of communism. What other non-capitalist modes of economy exist? Agrarian society isn't too common, social democracy is a form of capitalism.
      - guerrilla 6y ago
        Various forms of mutualism [1], libertarian socialism [2], market socialism [3] and democratic state socialism [4] are all non-capitalisms. The only "communism" you are familiar with from history is Marxism-Lenninism and Moaism (a variation of the former.) Both of them are authoritarian state socialisms, although I'd argue that their historical incarnations weren't even that since there really was no social ownership, it was just capitalism with a single monopoly and black markets. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory) [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism [4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism
        nailer 6y ago
        > The only "communism" you are familiar with from history is Marxism-Lenninism and Moaism (a variation of the former.) That is the only communism that has ever existed at scale. Please stop trying to equate documented world history with personal subjective viewpoints. > Various forms of mutualism [1], libertarian socialism [2], market socialism [3] and democratic state socialism [4] are all non-capitalisms. As mentioned in the comment you're replying to, the countries described as social democracies (typically Nordic) are also capitalist. What countries have mutualist economies?
        throwanem 6y ago
        This is a weak argument. You're responding with a demand for historical examples of alternatives to an argument, not that history provides examples of all alternatives, but that history provides poor examples of how some alternatives can be implemented. As presented, your argument reduces to the claim that nothing which has not already been done can ever be done, which is so transparently absurd that I can't imagine it's what you actually intend to say.
hooby 6y ago
To me this sounds pretty much like Mondragon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation Rare, but not outright impossible.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  Mondragon would not be allowed to use software under this license.
guerrilla 6y ago
> Sounds basically impossible to me. How do you ensure that you don’t exploit the labor of non-members? If I'm not mistaken, it's suggesting that you can only buy from other worker-owned cooperatives. > If you buy as much as even an office chair, or a pencil sharpener, or a carpet, or whatever, there were probably very many people involved and some of them were being exploited in that they were paid a very low amount for their work. If you're not buying from another worker-owned cooperative you could buy it second-hand, which isn't ordering any new labor to be done. If this is what they intended and if this wasn't clear to you then I think that's a problem for the license because there's really no room for such ambiguity and interpretation. It's going to have to be a lot more explicit than it is for it to be useful.

bb123 6y ago

The licence prohibits Law Enforcement use. What does that have to do with Capitalism? I'm fairly sure every socialist/communist/facist country has some form of law enforcement.

colesantiago 6y ago
Laws and borders are just a social construct, we don't really need them. Even if we do, the community can govern themselves.
- bb123 6y ago
  Ah yes, countries like Somalia do so well without a system of functioning government and laws. With the added benefit of no taxes! But you might have to pay protection money to your local warlord so YMMV.
- nailer 6y ago
  Yes we've recently been reminded of how well this works with CHAZ/CHOP.
  - colesantiago 6y ago
    CHAZ/CHOP actually succeeded by being formed by the people but as always the police ruined it and dismantled it. It would have been entirely different had they not got involved.
    - nailer 6y ago
      That's not correct. The deaths, assaults and racial segregation occurred without the involvement of police.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    CHAZ/CHOP is a horrible example since most of the discourse about it is based on falsehoods and exaggerations, and it existed in a state of constant conflict with local law enforcement. There were certainly many good things about it, but I'm not sure you can learn much from it in the grand scope of things other than "it won't work out well, because most forces don't want it to exist". There are definitely examples out there of more successful self-governance, though.

jeanlucas 6y ago

It doesn’t make sense, feels like a teenager approach to the world.

rvz 6y ago
Exactly. That's if the author believes in a sustainable anarcho-communist society which this license is geared towards. I'd guess that this license is towards utopian ideals than actual reality.
psoots 6y ago
Is the GPL not just as teenager-like with its radical openness? Wanting to maintain your values through a software license feels passive and sneaky and awkward, but that's how we do it. And if you value your labor and the labor of others, in a way the GPL does not, why not write that into the license?

mikl 6y ago

… or “How to make your software unusable with questionable legalese”. Not a lawyer, but I can easily imagine how “An organization of people that seeks shared profit for all its members and does not exploit the labor of non-members” could be interpreted in dozens of different ways, making the use of any such licensed software a very dicey proposition.

slooonz 6y ago
Pretty sure the authors of that license would consider that a feature actually.

kome 6y ago

Also give the authors background, that's more an artistic take - than a real, well thought, license. For a "real", pro-freedom AND anti-capitalist software license, please consider GPL 3. And for a "real", pro-freedom AND capitalism-agnostic software license, consider MIT.

gspr 6y ago
> For a "real", pro-freedom AND anti-capitalist software license, please consider GPL 3. I wouldn't say that GPL3 is "anti-capitalist". Rather, it's extremely pro-freedom and forces certain behavior on part of the capitalists that they aren't inclined to partake in on their own volition.
- kome 6y ago
  true IMHO among the various OS licenses, GPL it's the more inclined toward anti-capitalism. But that's a personal reading.
  - kryptiskt 6y ago
    The intention behind it might be, that doesn't mean that capitalists can't use it as a tool. There's a whole business model in GPLing software and then selling proprietary add-ons (which non-copyright holders can't compete with as they have to offer source) or exceptions to it.
  - zzz61831 6y ago
    Maybe GPL started as an anti-capitalist license, but in practice it became very much pro-capitalist. It got to the point that GPLv3 and AGPLv3 were split into two licenses to satisfy capitalists. Among various properly written and practical open source licenses Parity license is probably the most anti-capitalist one.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  One problem with GPL2 and GPL3 from an anti-capitalist perspective is that there are lots of ways for capitalists to satisfy the requirements of the license and still make a big pile of money off of it, with the owners of the company pocketing most of the returns. Worse still, the original authors aren't being compensated. GPL mostly helps with freedoms for the users, which is still very useful.

bb123 6y ago

This is only worth reading if you take it as a commentary/artwork. If you read it as a real licence it all feels a little bit childish.

tgv 6y ago
That's a deserved, but harsh criticism of modern art.
- throwanem 6y ago
  Harsh, I agree. But deserved? "Modern art" (in the vernacular sense, rather than the art-history one) seems to me a 'thought-terminating cliché', an excuse to disdain an entire and rather broad field of endeavor without first taking the trouble to engage at all with it. At least that's how I find I most often see it used. Perhaps that's not what is actually happening here, but nothing I've seen so far distinguishes this example from any other of the type. Nor do I see any reason why this example deserves any more favorable consideration than any other.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

> all workers are owners with equal share. How common is this in worker co-operatives? My guess is "doesn't exist anywhere" -- I'm guessing there's always some correlation between seniority and ownership share, even if it's just "you have to pass a short probationary period before you're an owner". It sounds like they haven't really thought this through. Besides seniority -- does someone who's worked there for twenty years really deserve the same share of ownership that someone who started last week does? -- there's also hours to consider: does someone who works ten or twenty hours a week deserve the same share as someone who works forty hours a week? I think most would agree that doesn't really make sense, but the current wording of the license mandates it.

throwanem 6y ago
I agree that it doesn't seem to have been completely thought through, but I still like the idea, I think.
k_sze 6y ago
Hours are also not necessarily a good measure of contribution. A good developer can put in 1 hour of work and produce more value than a bad developer in 2, 5, or even 10 hours.
- slowmovintarget 6y ago
  Which is an argument for unequal pay, yes?
  - k_sze 6y ago
    I think it depends on which camp you're in: - the camp that believes pay should be proportional to the value produced; or - the camp that believes pay should be proportional to the effort put in.
    - ernst_klim 6y ago
      > the camp that believes pay should be proportional to the value produced The problem is that no one knows, how to evaluate this proportion. Assuming LTV makes sense, how to evaluate who contributes more: a designer or a programmer.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hooby 6y ago

I kinda like the idea. I severely doubt the practically and usability of this. I would be interested to see an expert lawyers take on how to write this license, so that it could actually work and hold up in court.

kevingadd 6y ago
I've seen comments to the effect that making the license impractical (and non-lawyer-approved) was intended as a way to ensure big companies like Google won't touch it. Not sure how I feel about that as a strategy, but there's a certain logic to it, similar to Crockford's "do no evil" license.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  It is counter productive. The GPL is a work of genius in part because it encourages use and propagation. Creating a stupid license blocks even legitimate users, which prevents the social program from progressing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mhh__ 6y ago

The GPL is not anti-capitalist but it will in some ways stop businesses profiting of your work withing giving back. I believe all software should be either some variant of the GPL or GPL/Commercial dual. The latter is so a company can choose not to comply with the GPL but still give back to the project (financially). Anti-capitalism is a strange ideology given recent history. Most flaws pointed at capitalism today actually stem from problems that most capitalists would take issue with (corruption, overregulation, underregulation etc.). The people who built the Soviet Union and other socialist countries weren't stupid, the task is just impossible.

throwanem 6y ago
The SaaS paradigm trivially defeats the intent of the GPL, doesn't it? The problem people have with capitalism isn't that it has failure modes; every economic ideology has those. The problem people have with capitalism is that, in a capitalist society, the failure modes of capitalism are the ones that are the problem, and it's very hard to see how the status quo could be repaired without having to be replaced. (Which I think is fair. Look at what it took to fix it last time, and how long that hasn't lasted...)
bccdee 6y ago
Anti-capitalists would argue that those problems (corporatism, money-in-politics, wealth inequality) are inevitable products of capitalism. Obviously the Soviet model was a failure, but I think it's a bit silly to use the failure of one competing model as an argument that no other model could ever succeed.
- zepto 6y ago
  The Soviet model is not proof that no other model could ever succeed. However it (and other failed communisms) are proof of particular failure modes. Given that these are the outcomes we know about, they are a reasonable null hypothesis. Amongst modern proponents of socialism I have not so far seen anyone actually say how those failure modes would be avoided.
  - 6y ago

krapp 6y ago

As I read it, an individual is allowed to use this software to seek a profit, so it isn't anti-capitalist at all, at best it's anti-corporatist. IANAL but I'm just guessing no court would take this seriously.

amoe_ 6y ago

How would this be applied in the case where the user was a wholly-or-partially state-funded organization (that was neither military nor law enforcement)? [clearly hasn't been lawyer-vetted, but any wild guesses?]

throwanem 6y ago
At a guess, State or NIAID or NCBI would be permitted to use software with this license - the distinction appears to be that civil government or NGO is allowed, while military or LE is not. Not, I agree, that this would likely prove enforceable as written, but I think that's what they're going for. And maybe they're trying to elicit a test case? That makes more sense than some of the speculation at hand, I think.

andyljones 6y ago

Worth contrasting with other 'Ethos licenses'. There's a really good writeup of 'common' ones here: https://coss.media/advent-of-ethos-licensing/ https://coss.media/advent-of-ethos-licensing/ The most famous is the JSON Good-Not-Evil one. I particularly like the term 'crayon license' for licenses drawn up by people without experience in writing licenses.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

Probably doesn't work for many cooperatives that are often a mix of owners and employees.

jonahbenton 6y ago

Part of the genius of the work of RMS- his behavioral issues aside- is the creation out of whole cloth of a legal protocol that is sufficiently precisely defined, sufficiently operationalizable, and sufficiently defensible as to...actually work, to have behavioral impacts in the real world. It is hard to appreciate how incredible an achievement that is. This license is not that, for all sorts of obvious reasons, which is a shame. Articulating a set of use principles in the extremely broad area the authors have an interest in is not impossible. Not only not impossible, but desirable. Software is leverage, and working to ensure leverage can only be used by the weaker party in any specific context is part of an equity protocol. If such a thing is going to exist, someone has to do the work to define it. One hopes they take a step back and give it another go.

slowmovintarget 6y ago
Because RMS rested his edifice on the foundation of ownership in the classical sense, something that works and is widespread in the real world.

deleted 6y ago

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joshspankit 6y ago

What about those companies who argue that they don’t seek profit, but that they profit anyways. Also: would this then include Amazon pre-2001?

blargmaster33 6y ago

We're hitting irony levels that shouldn't even be possible...