10 ms·

A reminder that you should double-check the licenses for software you use

104 points by serverholic 6y ago

thepangolino 6y ago
Is that a variation for he Apple iTunes license that prohibits me from using apps to build nuclear weapons?
lainga 6y ago
Reminds me of SQLite and the Rule of St. Benedict. https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
- tomrod 6y ago
  Apatheist here. Behavioral rules are fine. I itch when expectations are laid down to sacrifice moral compasses to unseen agenc(ies) and unproven agents.
- pgeorgi 6y ago
  With the difference that sqlite's code of ethics applies to the (more or less closed set of) sqlite developers while that license applies to whoever wants to use the product - and small libraries (such as ldtk-rs) quickly sneak in somewhere, potentially creating lots of pain down the road. So that "reminder" seems appropriate and package managers that download arbitrary cruft should have a license acceptance field somewhere to reject anything that's incompatible.
- butt_hugger 6y ago
  Wild that software that was developed for guided missile destroyers has " Do not murder. ", " Love your enemies. ", " Hate no one. " etc. in their Code of Ethics.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    >No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to dispute or ignore that advice if they wish. >The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability. They view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave. This is a one-way promise, or covenant. In other words, the developers are saying: "We will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us." Nothing wrong with having an ideal to strive for, even if you aren't always living up to it.
    - hprotagonist 6y ago
      Consider what thin gruel an ideal would have to be if you could always live up to it!
    - butt_hugger 6y ago
      You are being transparent. SQLite was developed _for_ war machines, with that as its foundation. The code of ethics is merely an attempt to whitewash its history. The founders are shameful for their lack of self awareness.
1123581321 6y ago
Can the title please be changed to something descriptive like “The Katharos License v0.1.0”?
- serverholic 6y ago
  I don't want people to think I wrote the license. Also, the purpose of this post is more general than this specific license. I feel the current title is appropriately general.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    I don’t think the community expectation is that any given project post is a self-post unless it is prepended with Show/Launch HN.
faho 6y ago
So this claims the bible as the source of truth yet can't be allowed to produce it as it contains sexually suggestive material. "Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love" (proverbs 5:19)
- grawprog 6y ago
  Which is really odd, because then it gives the full list of prohibited uses outlined in the license and none of them really have anything to do with the bible at all save one that tends to be pushed by bible folks and in fact, bans many things advocated by the bible, like slavery. >sex trafficking - human trafficking - slavery - indentured servitude - warfare - weapons manufacturing - war crimes - violence ( except when required to protect public safety ) - weapons of mass destruction - sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other media - excessively gory and/or violent images, artwork, or any other media - abortion - murder - mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information - hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality >The Work shall not be used by any person, entity, product, service or other use that (i) lobbies against, discourages, or frustrates the following activities or (ii) that derives a majority of income from actions that discourage, or frustrate the following activities: -peaceful assembly and association (including worker associations) -democratic processes
  - Robin_Message 6y ago
    Not a supporter or otherwise of this particular license, but I think I could give Bible references for most of these (not giving chapter and verse but trust me if you don't recognise it!): - sex trafficking Sodom and Gomorrah - human trafficking - slavery - indentured servitude Neither slave nor free in Christ Jesus. - warfare - weapons manufacturing - war crimes - violence ( except when required to protect public safety ) - weapons of mass destruction They will beat their spears into ploughshares and swords into pruning hooks. - sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other media And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out - excessively gory and/or violent images, artwork, or any other media - abortion - murder Thou shalt not kill - mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information ??? The Bible does say little on mass surveillance for some reason. - hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality Has no-one condemned you? Then neither do I. -peaceful assembly and association (including worker associations) Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. (But I can't give a reference for unions!) -democratic processes Give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
mmastrac 6y ago
Cargo should have an "acceptable licenses" field in the project toml with a sensible default. I had to do a license audit in a past role and it was a pain. Mark licenses that "require further attention".
- jacobmischka 6y ago
  Would be nice if built in, but cargo-deny is a neat project by Embark that can do this: https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny
  - mmastrac 6y ago
    Ah yeah, that seems useful, thanks.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    I would love to see the functionality of cargo-deny built into cargo, and a sensible set of defaults added that prevent people from accidentally using proprietary code like this (while still allowing people to use proprietary code if they knowingly choose to, as well as allowing local first-party code by default so this doesn't stymie people's own internal development).
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  It already effectively does by having well-known identifiers for acceptable values for the license field (eg “MIT”) while these off-the-beaten track licenses require a path to a license. On crates.io, the license would be displayed as “other” instead of Apache, MIT, etc.
revskill 6y ago
There should be a short summarization of a LICENSE file, like RECAP_LICENSE, then all users will read and understand it thoroughly. All of LICENSE file i've seen so far is lacking of a short recap.
- rurban 6y ago
  But then you would miss the bible is truth part.
  - revskill 6y ago
    Just like every book/chapter has a summarization/table_of_content ?
  - airhead969 6y ago
    I honestly thought I was reading the side of a Dr. Bronner's soap bottle in the shower.
- robocat 6y ago
  https://tldrlegal.com/ https://tldrlegal.com/ is pretty good at summarising licenses. It doesn’t have a summary for this one yet though.
snicksnak 6y ago
This is totally not usable for any serious project.
BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
> With the Katharos License we want to promote the openness, sharing, and collaboration that is common in the Open Source community, while at the same time protecting the people who may otherwise become victims of the destructive application of our shared works. We want the works that we share to be uplifting and helpful and we want them to be used to benefit people. So adtech, spam farms, and extortion are A-OK, but no genitals. Channeling my inner Olsen, "You got it, dude."
- mannerheim 6y ago
  The first two could qualify as 'mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information' depending how liberally that's interpreted. Extortion is already illegal, anyway (but then again, so are many of the prohibited activities in this license, although I suppose it's not illegal to simply 'support' them as this license prohibits).
  - satokema_work 6y ago
    its not stealing if people are giving that information out for free or if it's just metadata, nothing immoral there
    - mannerheim 6y ago
      Could be mass surveillance, depending on how liberally that's interpreted.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      > its not stealing if people are giving that information out for free If I leave a pie to cool on my windowsill and you take it it's still stealing even if there was no formal agreement or security measures in place to protect the pie. Adtech is kind of like that. If I give a calendar app access to my contacts I certainly don't expect it to take that information and use it for tracking, targeting, and marketing purposes as well. For me to "give" you that information for free, you'd have to ask for it honestly. And yet Facebook - an ad tech company - has been fighting this kind of consent in the next iOS patch tooth-and-nail.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
"The Work shall not be used by any person or entity for any systems, activities, products, services or other uses that (i) lobby for, promote, or support the following activities or materials or (ii) that derive a majority of income from the following activities or materials: sex trafficking ..." So I can use the Work for a product that does not derive the majority of income from sex trafficking, etc. Also, what is "excessively gory"? One arm chopped off ok, two is excessive? I wonder if they really thought this through...
- crdrost 6y ago
  I mean those sorts of issues are unavoidable and would be discussed in a court where there would probably be some invocation of what "a typical person finds" offensive, as has happened in obscenity cases before. What I made sure to be part of my very popular answer on the OSS stack exchange about GPL, is a very careful perspective I have on this whole licensing debate. And that is, a license should be understood as fundamentally "about" what you are willing to sue over. Like, folks take a very moral view of licenses, what "should" you do with the software, what "can't" you do with it, etc., and the pragmatic statement is: you can do things, you just might get sued. A license is saying what conditions will definitely not brook a lawsuit. When you start to see licenses-as-lawsuits, the BSD and MIT licenses are just like "look I don't want to sue you and I don't want you to sue me, let's agree to not do that." The GPL is much more "look I don't want to sue you and I don't want you to sue anybody else and I would be willing to sue you to stop you from suing other people," which is why it is much much longer than those other languages, that's a much more subtle point. This is just saying "look I for the most part don't want to sue you but if I find out that you are promoting things that I find deeply morally offensive, such as {insert list of topics} then I might sue you if you're using my software for that." There's nothing too "not-thought-through" about this, it's just a matter that might have to be litigated where you say "look I don't personally lobby for abortion, just abortion-lobbyists use my platform" and some lawyers make some reasonable cases on both sides and some judge decides on some clarifying line as a result of the argument.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    "excessively gory" is open to interpretation but it's a strange concept to allow gory but not excessively gory... On the other hand, the other point of my previous comment is not open to interpretation: Not the majority of income is fine and because they use 'or' the fact that I lobby, promote, or support is irrelevant and all that matters is the majority of income. So I can use the Work for a free app that promotes abortion, for example. This is permitted although this is contradicting what they seem to want to achieve.
Raed667 6y ago
I would love see someone build a pornographic themed game using this project just to see if such a licence can be enforced.
hannob 6y ago
This is why some people have fought hard to have some standards what is an acceptable FOSS license. Things would be much harder if we wouldn't have such standards. Imagine a software ecosystem with a wild variety of licensing terms with all kinds of crazy clauses. Remember that the next time some company with a deceptive "it's not open source, but we surely want it to sound like open source" license comes along. I was downvoted plenty of times trying to argue for more honesty from those players.
- davidfstr 6y ago
  No license is going to satisfy everyone in all contexts. For example I cannot use GPL at work (based on my own rules as team lead) but am open to it in personal projects. And other folks would consider having something NOT GPL licensed to be suspect. It is not possible to provide a uniform license that will be acceptable to all in all circumstances.
  - jpmoral 6y ago
    I don't think they meant that there should be One True Open-Source License but rather that open-source projects should pick one of the 'standard' ones (GPL, MIT, etc.) instead of writing their own.
    - davidfstr 6y ago
      Well, if by “open source” you mean broadly any software available whose code is viewable on the internet, you’re essentially advocating for no projects that use “nonstandard” licenses to exist. That seems like a waste if there would be otherwise be projects around with a nonstandard license that was acceptable to a subset of users. For example the CPython interpreter (the official interpreter for the Python language) does not use a standard license. Would you not want Python to exist?
      - mannerheim 6y ago
        Any permissive software license (which it seems CPython's is) is broadly interchangeable with any other, and can be used with both other permissive licenses and copyleft licenses like the GPL. That can't happen with any license that places restrictions on what it can be used for.
altgans 6y ago
Doesn't this license defeat itself? > The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and that He alone is the ultimate authority for what is good and just. vs. > hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality Just think about "Thou shalt have no other gods before me".
- spijdar 6y ago
  Well, you could argue that was directed at the Hebrew people under Moses, and not a directive to everyone everywhere. It's not contradictory to say not to discriminate against people's different religions while forbidding polytheism within your own religion.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    Plenty of modern Christians believe the Law of Moses was superseded by Christ. Acts 15 even has a list of the parts of the law that the apostles told members of the church that they were still expected to follow, but even this isn't straightforward thanks to stuff like Paul's comments on eating food offered to idols.
- Chilinot 6y ago
  That's not the only contradiction either, the bible contains plenty of rules on how to manage your slaves as well. And a plethora of other stuff in direct violation of the license rules. Like stoning women for example.
- vesinisa 6y ago
  The Bible also contains passages calling homosexuality "shameful", among others. And it's hard to think of a book more discriminating by gender: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." -1 Timothy 2:12
actionowl 6y ago
I can't help but be reminded about this open source software license comic: https://burntsushi.net/stuff/wtfpl-strip.jpg https://burntsushi.net/stuff/wtfpl-strip.jpg
quickthrower2 6y ago
Poe’s law applies. A software licences job isn’t to encode “morality”. It just there to specify what rights are being granted.
bjt2n3904 6y ago
You know, it wasn't too long ago that people were unpublishing repos because they learned ICE was using their software. There was a strong drive to add a code of ethics to software, and an attempt to make software developers liable for how people use (or misuse) their software. Opposition to this idea was very poorly received. What makes this any different? Are we for using OSS to try and drive morality, or not? (My answer is no to both accounts, for the record, and hasn't changed.)
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  What makes this different is that is is trying to enforce unpopular ethics
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Unpopular to who? Christianity is a massive chunk of the US population (whether they actually practice what they preach is a different question).
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      Unpopular to a lot of the people in the position of deciding software ethics, going by the dismissive tone here
    - sofixa 6y ago
      Christianity is among the religions that have the biggest amount of interpretations and custom versions believing in subsets or supersets of it ( just for starters, Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Mormons, and a million others). Due to age, evolving interpretations, efforts of modernization and various sects, "Christianity" can mean different things to different people, and enforcing any version of it is bound to piss off any competing sect, religion and all non-religious people, which will probably be the majority.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Codes of Ethics and licenses are somewhat orthogonal. There are various engineering codes of ethics. Without looking, I think both the ACM and IEEE have them. I'd observe though that doesn't keep engineers from working on nuclear weapons for example. Which one may or may not agree with. In general, I don't think the idea of ethical licenses which was at least a somewhat hot topic in certain circles a while back really was a popular idea overall. And, in any case, I haven't heard it come up for a while.
davidfstr 6y ago
Seems reasonable to me that if a prospective dependency has a license that isn’t automatically tagged as a common license type that you be expected to actually read the license. This seems like basic standard of practice.
loloquwowndueo 6y ago
Lol. “ The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and that He alone is the ultimate authority for what is good and just.” Are there legal implications of this premise being false? God is imaginary https://godisimaginary.com/ https://godisimaginary.com/. Also the bible is ok with stuff such as slavery, can I use the software to promote slavery?
- airhead969 6y ago
  Slavery is explicitly excluded. It doesn't say anything about indentured servitude or underpaid/overworked wage slavery though.
  - loloquwowndueo 6y ago
    Oh so God foresaw capitalism and exploitation and that’s what he meant in the bible. Gotcha.
rebuilder 6y ago
It's going to be an interesting day in court if this license ever gets litigated over.
davidfstr 6y ago
If you suppress any knee jerk reaction you might have against religious associations in the preamble, the actual restrictions in the “Permitted Uses” section seem fairly reasonable to me, if not with more moral restrictions than usual: https://github.com/katharostech/ldtk-rs/blob/master/LICENSE.md#permitted-use-of-work https://github.com/katharostech/ldtk-rs/blob/master/LICENSE.... Most OSes have a license restricting use in nuclear power plants. This license adds similar restrictions like “cannot use in adtech”. :)
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  The main problem with this is that it misrepresents itself as an "Open Source" license, while not actually being Open Source. People can write and use a license with any restrictions they want; there are plenty of proprietary licenses out there. I hope such licenses don't get used or propagated by anyone else, but people are still free to write them. But it would be especially problematic if people use code under such a license, or worse, put new code under such a license, while thinking they're using an Open Source license.
- jamesrr39 6y ago
  This reminds me of the original JSON parse/stringify license, which stated > The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil This sounds all good and well, and in theory is great, but in practice how does this work? Who defines what is "Good", and what is "Evil". Admittedly this license is much more targeted but there are a few ambiguous ones: > sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other media the understanding of what is explicit varies wildly between different cultures across the world; which understanding is applicable here? Can an art gallery/auction house that sells lots of portraits use this software? Does it depend where the art gallery is located geographically (and what if it has many sites around the world)? > mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information What counts as surveillance? For example, can I use my software to track where you as a user go? I guess not. But then what if I then say it's for a "rent a bike" service, that has a partnership with the local city, which uses that data to figure out where to build cyclepaths? I'm not saying that the objectives the license is trying to achieve aren't worthy goals (and perhaps the example use cases I gave have nothing to do with the project). I just think that the practical situation ends up being more complicated in the end than writers of the license intend.
alexfromapex 6y ago
Especially at startups where you don't know if they were ever truly vetted
airhead969 6y ago
It's likely this license is illegal and/or unenforceable in many jurisdictions. Also, given the craziness contained in it, it's that much more certain. Probably better off avoiding lunacy in the first place.
airhead969 6y ago
Every Sperm is Sacred https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk
hermitcrab 6y ago
>The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true Even the bits that contradict each other?
- nkrisc 6y ago
  Like all good religions, you get to pick which parts are true.
nanoscopic 6y ago
It is extremely difficult to get adequate funding for open source software. The various "open source" licenses are inadequate to ensure any funding. The only standard licenses that in any way help to get paid for producing open source are the non-commercial licenses and they are frowned upon by the community. Why are they frowned on? Because companies wishing to use the software to make money don't want to pay for software; they just want to use it for free. They additionally commonly don't contribute back changes. I have begun shifting the license for all of the software I have created to a custom license because I want to prohibit commercial use by companies that can and should pay for my software, while still allowing commercial use freely by anyone else. As a result I have a license with a list of specific banned companies. It isn't considered "open source" because of this, but I need to make a living somehow. Giving away software for free doesn't pay my bills. I dislike these discussions because it usually amounts to a mixture of the following. 1. "Everyone should only use truly free GPL etc because it ensures everyone can use the software for free!" 2. Diatribe on how evil custom licenses are, usually quoting Stallman 3. Anything except discussion of the severe under-funding of heavily used and crucial open source software. Remember all the OpenSSL problems? Did any of you read the comments from the devs? They basically said "please pay us! we are broke!" 4. Mockery of people with strong religious beliefs. While I agree many/most/all of these people are "out there", I still think they should be treated respectfully and not mocked. If there is to be discussion about licenses, I'd like to see a serious discussion on how to simultaneously: 1. Prevent the abuse of licenses ( mainly by large software companies ) 2. Enable free and open usage by all non license abusers 3. Ensure developers get paid for their work
Aeronwen 6y ago
Someone should tell Github they're illegally hosting this.
zelon88 6y ago
How do you reconcile other people's perceptions? The facts are defined insofar as we know we can't use the license if we actively frustrate worker associations, but from Amazon's perspective they are doing their employees a favor by creating "panels" internally "so the workers don't have to unionize!" Arguably they could hold the perspective that they "support" worker associations.
vegadw 6y ago
Obviously most of this licence is awful, to the point where I could be convinced it's a troll. On the other hand, I don't fully disagree with some ideas of a moral license. I've even considered adding a line forbing any thing I make from being used for irl weapons/war as I don't think I could handle the weight of knowing code or hardware Ive designed was used to intentionally hurt someone. From the perspective, I can see how somebody that is a very devout Christian could want to use this licence. I think the idea of morality licenses deserve more thought than an outright dismissal. Of course, as other comments have pointed out, drawing that line will always be hard. If I already wanted to exclude being used for weapons/war, why not tack sexism, racism, use by opressive governments, being used to hinder free speech, etc. on there too? I suppose the easiest answer is to say that there's a threshold of ambiguity, that is while there might be edge cases in weapons/war, sexism and racism would be a lot harder to define- is porn sexism? Is talking about statistics about health data between races racism? I suspect HN is pretty heavily left-learning atheist, which is leading us to immediately dismiss an otherwise not-crazy idea because of a particularly crazy example. I suppose I'd like to know if there are some morality clauses that could be considered reasonable? Especially that of weapons/war.

104 points by serverholic 6y ago

Is that a variation for he Apple iTunes license that prohibits me from using apps to build nuclear weapons?

Reminds me of SQLite and the Rule of St. Benedict. https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

tomrod 6y ago
Apatheist here. Behavioral rules are fine. I itch when expectations are laid down to sacrifice moral compasses to unseen agenc(ies) and unproven agents.
pgeorgi 6y ago
With the difference that sqlite's code of ethics applies to the (more or less closed set of) sqlite developers while that license applies to whoever wants to use the product - and small libraries (such as ldtk-rs) quickly sneak in somewhere, potentially creating lots of pain down the road. So that "reminder" seems appropriate and package managers that download arbitrary cruft should have a license acceptance field somewhere to reject anything that's incompatible.
butt_hugger 6y ago
Wild that software that was developed for guided missile destroyers has " Do not murder. ", " Love your enemies. ", " Hate no one. " etc. in their Code of Ethics.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  >No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to dispute or ignore that advice if they wish. >The founder of SQLite and all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability. They view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite users of how the developers are expected to behave. This is a one-way promise, or covenant. In other words, the developers are saying: "We will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us." Nothing wrong with having an ideal to strive for, even if you aren't always living up to it.
  - hprotagonist 6y ago
    Consider what thin gruel an ideal would have to be if you could always live up to it!
  - butt_hugger 6y ago
    You are being transparent. SQLite was developed _for_ war machines, with that as its foundation. The code of ethics is merely an attempt to whitewash its history. The founders are shameful for their lack of self awareness.

1123581321 6y ago

Can the title please be changed to something descriptive like “The Katharos License v0.1.0”?

serverholic 6y ago
I don't want people to think I wrote the license. Also, the purpose of this post is more general than this specific license. I feel the current title is appropriately general.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  I don’t think the community expectation is that any given project post is a self-post unless it is prepended with Show/Launch HN.

faho 6y ago

So this claims the bible as the source of truth yet can't be allowed to produce it as it contains sexually suggestive material. "Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love" (proverbs 5:19)

grawprog 6y ago
Which is really odd, because then it gives the full list of prohibited uses outlined in the license and none of them really have anything to do with the bible at all save one that tends to be pushed by bible folks and in fact, bans many things advocated by the bible, like slavery. >sex trafficking - human trafficking - slavery - indentured servitude - warfare - weapons manufacturing - war crimes - violence ( except when required to protect public safety ) - weapons of mass destruction - sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other media - excessively gory and/or violent images, artwork, or any other media - abortion - murder - mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information - hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality >The Work shall not be used by any person, entity, product, service or other use that (i) lobbies against, discourages, or frustrates the following activities or (ii) that derives a majority of income from actions that discourage, or frustrate the following activities: -peaceful assembly and association (including worker associations) -democratic processes
- Robin_Message 6y ago
  Not a supporter or otherwise of this particular license, but I think I could give Bible references for most of these (not giving chapter and verse but trust me if you don't recognise it!): - sex trafficking Sodom and Gomorrah - human trafficking - slavery - indentured servitude Neither slave nor free in Christ Jesus. - warfare - weapons manufacturing - war crimes - violence ( except when required to protect public safety ) - weapons of mass destruction They will beat their spears into ploughshares and swords into pruning hooks. - sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other media And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out - excessively gory and/or violent images, artwork, or any other media - abortion - murder Thou shalt not kill - mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information ??? The Bible does say little on mass surveillance for some reason. - hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality Has no-one condemned you? Then neither do I. -peaceful assembly and association (including worker associations) Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. (But I can't give a reference for unions!) -democratic processes Give to Caesar what is Caesar's.

mmastrac 6y ago

Cargo should have an "acceptable licenses" field in the project toml with a sensible default. I had to do a license audit in a past role and it was a pain. Mark licenses that "require further attention".

jacobmischka 6y ago
Would be nice if built in, but cargo-deny is a neat project by Embark that can do this: https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny
- mmastrac 6y ago
  Ah yeah, that seems useful, thanks.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  I would love to see the functionality of cargo-deny built into cargo, and a sensible set of defaults added that prevent people from accidentally using proprietary code like this (while still allowing people to use proprietary code if they knowingly choose to, as well as allowing local first-party code by default so this doesn't stymie people's own internal development).
ComputerGuru 6y ago
It already effectively does by having well-known identifiers for acceptable values for the license field (eg “MIT”) while these off-the-beaten track licenses require a path to a license. On crates.io, the license would be displayed as “other” instead of Apache, MIT, etc.

revskill 6y ago

There should be a short summarization of a LICENSE file, like RECAP_LICENSE, then all users will read and understand it thoroughly. All of LICENSE file i've seen so far is lacking of a short recap.

rurban 6y ago
But then you would miss the bible is truth part.
- revskill 6y ago
  Just like every book/chapter has a summarization/table_of_content ?
- airhead969 6y ago
  I honestly thought I was reading the side of a Dr. Bronner's soap bottle in the shower.
robocat 6y ago
https://tldrlegal.com/ https://tldrlegal.com/ is pretty good at summarising licenses. It doesn’t have a summary for this one yet though.

snicksnak 6y ago

This is totally not usable for any serious project.

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago

> With the Katharos License we want to promote the openness, sharing, and collaboration that is common in the Open Source community, while at the same time protecting the people who may otherwise become victims of the destructive application of our shared works. We want the works that we share to be uplifting and helpful and we want them to be used to benefit people. So adtech, spam farms, and extortion are A-OK, but no genitals. Channeling my inner Olsen, "You got it, dude."

mannerheim 6y ago
The first two could qualify as 'mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information' depending how liberally that's interpreted. Extortion is already illegal, anyway (but then again, so are many of the prohibited activities in this license, although I suppose it's not illegal to simply 'support' them as this license prohibits).
- satokema_work 6y ago
  its not stealing if people are giving that information out for free or if it's just metadata, nothing immoral there
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    Could be mass surveillance, depending on how liberally that's interpreted.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    > its not stealing if people are giving that information out for free If I leave a pie to cool on my windowsill and you take it it's still stealing even if there was no formal agreement or security measures in place to protect the pie. Adtech is kind of like that. If I give a calendar app access to my contacts I certainly don't expect it to take that information and use it for tracking, targeting, and marketing purposes as well. For me to "give" you that information for free, you'd have to ask for it honestly. And yet Facebook - an ad tech company - has been fighting this kind of consent in the next iOS patch tooth-and-nail.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

"The Work shall not be used by any person or entity for any systems, activities, products, services or other uses that (i) lobby for, promote, or support the following activities or materials or (ii) that derive a majority of income from the following activities or materials: sex trafficking ..." So I can use the Work for a product that does not derive the majority of income from sex trafficking, etc. Also, what is "excessively gory"? One arm chopped off ok, two is excessive? I wonder if they really thought this through...

crdrost 6y ago
I mean those sorts of issues are unavoidable and would be discussed in a court where there would probably be some invocation of what "a typical person finds" offensive, as has happened in obscenity cases before. What I made sure to be part of my very popular answer on the OSS stack exchange about GPL, is a very careful perspective I have on this whole licensing debate. And that is, a license should be understood as fundamentally "about" what you are willing to sue over. Like, folks take a very moral view of licenses, what "should" you do with the software, what "can't" you do with it, etc., and the pragmatic statement is: you can do things, you just might get sued. A license is saying what conditions will definitely not brook a lawsuit. When you start to see licenses-as-lawsuits, the BSD and MIT licenses are just like "look I don't want to sue you and I don't want you to sue me, let's agree to not do that." The GPL is much more "look I don't want to sue you and I don't want you to sue anybody else and I would be willing to sue you to stop you from suing other people," which is why it is much much longer than those other languages, that's a much more subtle point. This is just saying "look I for the most part don't want to sue you but if I find out that you are promoting things that I find deeply morally offensive, such as {insert list of topics} then I might sue you if you're using my software for that." There's nothing too "not-thought-through" about this, it's just a matter that might have to be litigated where you say "look I don't personally lobby for abortion, just abortion-lobbyists use my platform" and some lawyers make some reasonable cases on both sides and some judge decides on some clarifying line as a result of the argument.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  "excessively gory" is open to interpretation but it's a strange concept to allow gory but not excessively gory... On the other hand, the other point of my previous comment is not open to interpretation: Not the majority of income is fine and because they use 'or' the fact that I lobby, promote, or support is irrelevant and all that matters is the majority of income. So I can use the Work for a free app that promotes abortion, for example. This is permitted although this is contradicting what they seem to want to achieve.

Raed667 6y ago

I would love see someone build a pornographic themed game using this project just to see if such a licence can be enforced.

hannob 6y ago

This is why some people have fought hard to have some standards what is an acceptable FOSS license. Things would be much harder if we wouldn't have such standards. Imagine a software ecosystem with a wild variety of licensing terms with all kinds of crazy clauses. Remember that the next time some company with a deceptive "it's not open source, but we surely want it to sound like open source" license comes along. I was downvoted plenty of times trying to argue for more honesty from those players.

davidfstr 6y ago
No license is going to satisfy everyone in all contexts. For example I cannot use GPL at work (based on my own rules as team lead) but am open to it in personal projects. And other folks would consider having something NOT GPL licensed to be suspect. It is not possible to provide a uniform license that will be acceptable to all in all circumstances.
- jpmoral 6y ago
  I don't think they meant that there should be One True Open-Source License but rather that open-source projects should pick one of the 'standard' ones (GPL, MIT, etc.) instead of writing their own.
  - davidfstr 6y ago
    Well, if by “open source” you mean broadly any software available whose code is viewable on the internet, you’re essentially advocating for no projects that use “nonstandard” licenses to exist. That seems like a waste if there would be otherwise be projects around with a nonstandard license that was acceptable to a subset of users. For example the CPython interpreter (the official interpreter for the Python language) does not use a standard license. Would you not want Python to exist?
    - mannerheim 6y ago
      Any permissive software license (which it seems CPython's is) is broadly interchangeable with any other, and can be used with both other permissive licenses and copyleft licenses like the GPL. That can't happen with any license that places restrictions on what it can be used for.

altgans 6y ago

Doesn't this license defeat itself? > The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and that He alone is the ultimate authority for what is good and just. vs. > hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality Just think about "Thou shalt have no other gods before me".

spijdar 6y ago
Well, you could argue that was directed at the Hebrew people under Moses, and not a directive to everyone everywhere. It's not contradictory to say not to discriminate against people's different religions while forbidding polytheism within your own religion.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Plenty of modern Christians believe the Law of Moses was superseded by Christ. Acts 15 even has a list of the parts of the law that the apostles told members of the church that they were still expected to follow, but even this isn't straightforward thanks to stuff like Paul's comments on eating food offered to idols.
Chilinot 6y ago
That's not the only contradiction either, the bible contains plenty of rules on how to manage your slaves as well. And a plethora of other stuff in direct violation of the license rules. Like stoning women for example.
vesinisa 6y ago
The Bible also contains passages calling homosexuality "shameful", among others. And it's hard to think of a book more discriminating by gender: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." -1 Timothy 2:12

actionowl 6y ago

I can't help but be reminded about this open source software license comic: https://burntsushi.net/stuff/wtfpl-strip.jpg https://burntsushi.net/stuff/wtfpl-strip.jpg

quickthrower2 6y ago

Poe’s law applies. A software licences job isn’t to encode “morality”. It just there to specify what rights are being granted.

bjt2n3904 6y ago

You know, it wasn't too long ago that people were unpublishing repos because they learned ICE was using their software. There was a strong drive to add a code of ethics to software, and an attempt to make software developers liable for how people use (or misuse) their software. Opposition to this idea was very poorly received. What makes this any different? Are we for using OSS to try and drive morality, or not? (My answer is no to both accounts, for the record, and hasn't changed.)

thatguy0900 6y ago
What makes this different is that is is trying to enforce unpopular ethics
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Unpopular to who? Christianity is a massive chunk of the US population (whether they actually practice what they preach is a different question).
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    Unpopular to a lot of the people in the position of deciding software ethics, going by the dismissive tone here
  - sofixa 6y ago
    Christianity is among the religions that have the biggest amount of interpretations and custom versions believing in subsets or supersets of it ( just for starters, Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Mormons, and a million others). Due to age, evolving interpretations, efforts of modernization and various sects, "Christianity" can mean different things to different people, and enforcing any version of it is bound to piss off any competing sect, religion and all non-religious people, which will probably be the majority.
ghaff 6y ago
Codes of Ethics and licenses are somewhat orthogonal. There are various engineering codes of ethics. Without looking, I think both the ACM and IEEE have them. I'd observe though that doesn't keep engineers from working on nuclear weapons for example. Which one may or may not agree with. In general, I don't think the idea of ethical licenses which was at least a somewhat hot topic in certain circles a while back really was a popular idea overall. And, in any case, I haven't heard it come up for a while.

davidfstr 6y ago

Seems reasonable to me that if a prospective dependency has a license that isn’t automatically tagged as a common license type that you be expected to actually read the license. This seems like basic standard of practice.

loloquwowndueo 6y ago

Lol. “ The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and that He alone is the ultimate authority for what is good and just.” Are there legal implications of this premise being false? God is imaginary https://godisimaginary.com/ https://godisimaginary.com/. Also the bible is ok with stuff such as slavery, can I use the software to promote slavery?

airhead969 6y ago
Slavery is explicitly excluded. It doesn't say anything about indentured servitude or underpaid/overworked wage slavery though.
- loloquwowndueo 6y ago
  Oh so God foresaw capitalism and exploitation and that’s what he meant in the bible. Gotcha.

rebuilder 6y ago

It's going to be an interesting day in court if this license ever gets litigated over.

davidfstr 6y ago

If you suppress any knee jerk reaction you might have against religious associations in the preamble, the actual restrictions in the “Permitted Uses” section seem fairly reasonable to me, if not with more moral restrictions than usual: https://github.com/katharostech/ldtk-rs/blob/master/LICENSE.md#permitted-use-of-work https://github.com/katharostech/ldtk-rs/blob/master/LICENSE.... Most OSes have a license restricting use in nuclear power plants. This license adds similar restrictions like “cannot use in adtech”. :)

JoshTriplett 6y ago
The main problem with this is that it misrepresents itself as an "Open Source" license, while not actually being Open Source. People can write and use a license with any restrictions they want; there are plenty of proprietary licenses out there. I hope such licenses don't get used or propagated by anyone else, but people are still free to write them. But it would be especially problematic if people use code under such a license, or worse, put new code under such a license, while thinking they're using an Open Source license.
jamesrr39 6y ago
This reminds me of the original JSON parse/stringify license, which stated > The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil This sounds all good and well, and in theory is great, but in practice how does this work? Who defines what is "Good", and what is "Evil". Admittedly this license is much more targeted but there are a few ambiguous ones: > sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other media the understanding of what is explicit varies wildly between different cultures across the world; which understanding is applicable here? Can an art gallery/auction house that sells lots of portraits use this software? Does it depend where the art gallery is located geographically (and what if it has many sites around the world)? > mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information What counts as surveillance? For example, can I use my software to track where you as a user go? I guess not. But then what if I then say it's for a "rent a bike" service, that has a partnership with the local city, which uses that data to figure out where to build cyclepaths? I'm not saying that the objectives the license is trying to achieve aren't worthy goals (and perhaps the example use cases I gave have nothing to do with the project). I just think that the practical situation ends up being more complicated in the end than writers of the license intend.

alexfromapex 6y ago

Especially at startups where you don't know if they were ever truly vetted

airhead969 6y ago

It's likely this license is illegal and/or unenforceable in many jurisdictions. Also, given the craziness contained in it, it's that much more certain. Probably better off avoiding lunacy in the first place.

airhead969 6y ago

Every Sperm is Sacred https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk

hermitcrab 6y ago

>The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true Even the bits that contradict each other?

nkrisc 6y ago
Like all good religions, you get to pick which parts are true.

nanoscopic 6y ago

It is extremely difficult to get adequate funding for open source software. The various "open source" licenses are inadequate to ensure any funding. The only standard licenses that in any way help to get paid for producing open source are the non-commercial licenses and they are frowned upon by the community. Why are they frowned on? Because companies wishing to use the software to make money don't want to pay for software; they just want to use it for free. They additionally commonly don't contribute back changes. I have begun shifting the license for all of the software I have created to a custom license because I want to prohibit commercial use by companies that can and should pay for my software, while still allowing commercial use freely by anyone else. As a result I have a license with a list of specific banned companies. It isn't considered "open source" because of this, but I need to make a living somehow. Giving away software for free doesn't pay my bills. I dislike these discussions because it usually amounts to a mixture of the following. 1. "Everyone should only use truly free GPL etc because it ensures everyone can use the software for free!" 2. Diatribe on how evil custom licenses are, usually quoting Stallman 3. Anything except discussion of the severe under-funding of heavily used and crucial open source software. Remember all the OpenSSL problems? Did any of you read the comments from the devs? They basically said "please pay us! we are broke!" 4. Mockery of people with strong religious beliefs. While I agree many/most/all of these people are "out there", I still think they should be treated respectfully and not mocked. If there is to be discussion about licenses, I'd like to see a serious discussion on how to simultaneously: 1. Prevent the abuse of licenses ( mainly by large software companies ) 2. Enable free and open usage by all non license abusers 3. Ensure developers get paid for their work

Aeronwen 6y ago

Someone should tell Github they're illegally hosting this.

zelon88 6y ago

How do you reconcile other people's perceptions? The facts are defined insofar as we know we can't use the license if we actively frustrate worker associations, but from Amazon's perspective they are doing their employees a favor by creating "panels" internally "so the workers don't have to unionize!" Arguably they could hold the perspective that they "support" worker associations.

vegadw 6y ago

Obviously most of this licence is awful, to the point where I could be convinced it's a troll. On the other hand, I don't fully disagree with some ideas of a moral license. I've even considered adding a line forbing any thing I make from being used for irl weapons/war as I don't think I could handle the weight of knowing code or hardware Ive designed was used to intentionally hurt someone. From the perspective, I can see how somebody that is a very devout Christian could want to use this licence. I think the idea of morality licenses deserve more thought than an outright dismissal. Of course, as other comments have pointed out, drawing that line will always be hard. If I already wanted to exclude being used for weapons/war, why not tack sexism, racism, use by opressive governments, being used to hinder free speech, etc. on there too? I suppose the easiest answer is to say that there's a threshold of ambiguity, that is while there might be edge cases in weapons/war, sexism and racism would be a lot harder to define- is porn sexism? Is talking about statistics about health data between races racism? I suspect HN is pretty heavily left-learning atheist, which is leading us to immediately dismiss an otherwise not-crazy idea because of a particularly crazy example. I suppose I'd like to know if there are some morality clauses that could be considered reasonable? Especially that of weapons/war.