>While the RAIL organization suggests adding the word “Open” to RAIL licenses that include similar open-access and free-use as open source (i.e. OpenRAIL-M), th

>While the RAIL organization suggests adding the word “Open” to RAIL licenses that include similar open-access and free-use as open source (i.e. OpenRAIL-M), this is confusing since the license is not open source so long as it includes usage restrictions. A better name would be EthicalRAIL-M. Using the term “ethical” to describe this category license clearly indicates its functional difference from open source licenses. I don't even think we should be using the word "ethical" because it implies that anything more permissive is unethical. We should call these morality clause licenses. The question of whether or not we should have morality clauses involved is complicated. Most bad actors do not give a shit about the licensing status of the code they are using. And these licenses also cause headaches for people who want to follow the rules[0] and avoid copyleft trolling[1]. On the other hand, the morality clauses in OpenRAIL-M are relatively straightforward and non-obnoxious. [0] This also applies to "non-commercial" licensing, since that is a concept entirely foreign to copyright law. As far as I'm concerned the 'NC' clause in Creative Commons just means 'OK to torrent'. [1] A practice in which people abuse copyleft licenses to try and extract licensing agreements for minor license violations. The forgiveness periods added to GPLv3 and later versions of Creative Commons are specifically to prevent this behavior.