4 ms·

While this is funny, it does highlight that you should probably have an actual legal opinion if you decide to write your own license. A less tongue-in-cheek exa

by macksd 3y ago

While this is funny, it does highlight that you should probably have an actual legal opinion if you decide to write your own license. A less tongue-in-cheek example that I've run into is https://dst.lbl.gov/ACSSoftware/colt/license.html https://dst.lbl.gov/ACSSoftware/colt/license.html. "any usage related to military applications is expressly forbidden", which is still poorly defined enough that it makes lots of corporate lawyers nervous and you end up having to remove those packages even for stuff that isn't really a military application just because it's not clear how military-adjacent something is allowed to be. It's especially ironic since it's being distributed by a Department of Energy national lab. I wonder if DOE national labs ever have military applications... It's also not clear to me that this does actually make it illegal for the military to just use it directly, even if they cared about following the letter of the law. If copyright is the real power behind the enforcement of open-source licenses, I'm not sure usage is something the license grantor gets to dictate as long as you're not redistributing something.

asynchronous 3y ago
Can confirm DOE labs work on military adjacent things all the time
- macksd 3y ago
  Yes my question was, itself, tongue-in-cheek. I've been told that a customer insisted the packages in question be removed because although they did nothing military-related, they did happen to have a customer that is well-known for being a contractor on military projects and they didn't want to be getting in trouble just because their civilian service was used by a civilian company that did military-adjacent work. And even if LBL isn't developing nuclear weapons they seem a mite closer to it than that.
verve_rat 3y ago
I mean... no? There is nothing compelling these organisations to use that particular piece of software. When contacted the author could just shrug and say "not my problem" and the organisation would just have to find some other software to use. The author has no obligation to make things easier for people that don't know if they are doing evil or not, or if they are military or not.
- macksd 3y ago
  There's nothing compelling the author, no, except for in the situation outlined above they're really doing nothing to prevent military use, but they are hampering adoption among companies scrupulous or careful enough to not run afoul of a poorly defined legal term. Seems counter-productive to the apparent motives.
  - harry8 3y ago
    Only law abiding people follow the law too, what's the point of them?
    - lmm 3y ago
      Laws that are at least somewhat enforced can be good. Laws that are never enforced are counterproductive.
      - barnabee 3y ago
        Depends, if the alternative is those laws are changed or removed from the statute books, their existence counterproductive for sure. If the alternative is all the bad laws society regularly bends or ignores outright (suggesting there’s little or no democratic support for them) start being aggressively enforced, I’ll take never enforced every time. In many societies there’s plenty of the latter.
    - macksd 3y ago
      There isn't even a law preventing direct military usage of that library as far as I understand, because they're not violating copyright law by just downloading something, which by the way is hosted using federal funds. But the absurdity of high energy physics / national nuclear research labs saying you can't use the software for military applications, and then this mainly comes up in civilian applications with nervous lawyers? Yeah it's missing the point more than you seem to be implying.
  - cortesoft 3y ago
    With something like this, the apparent motive is more likely to signal to other people his views on the military, more so than actually preventing them from using the software.
pabs3 3y ago
Hmm, doesn't the LGPL allow you to remove any additional restrictions?
- macksd 3y ago
  Interesting - do you mean because of the "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed" clause? I wonder.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    No, the GPLv3 includes this language: > All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. And the LGPLv3 incorporates the GPLv3 by reference, then grants additional permissions.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  It says it does, but in at least one lawsuit courts have outright said that this language does not apply to copyright holders. Which is explicitly opposed to the FSF's own intent drafting the license, which was to prohibit copyright owners from calling their license "GPL plus (insert nonfree clause here)"
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    It is like the license needs a bootstrapping license
psunavy03 3y ago
For those not aware, DoE is literally responsible for the design, testing, and manufacture of US nuclear weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Energy#Nuclear_weapons_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_En...
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  In the Soviet Union, they gave its counterpart a wonderfully euphemistic name of "Ministry of Medium Machinery Building". Everyone knows what is "heavy machinery" and while "light machinery" is not a thing one could imagine what it could mean, but medium machinery? What the hell could that even be?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
flomo 3y ago
This sort of confusing 'anti-pentagon' license goes back to way back when, and was supposedly one of the reasons RMS established "Freedom Zero" to run the software "for any purpose". But yeah, high energy physics just might have military applications...

by macksd 3y ago

asynchronous 3y ago

Can confirm DOE labs work on military adjacent things all the time

macksd 3y ago
Yes my question was, itself, tongue-in-cheek. I've been told that a customer insisted the packages in question be removed because although they did nothing military-related, they did happen to have a customer that is well-known for being a contractor on military projects and they didn't want to be getting in trouble just because their civilian service was used by a civilian company that did military-adjacent work. And even if LBL isn't developing nuclear weapons they seem a mite closer to it than that.

verve_rat 3y ago

I mean... no? There is nothing compelling these organisations to use that particular piece of software. When contacted the author could just shrug and say "not my problem" and the organisation would just have to find some other software to use. The author has no obligation to make things easier for people that don't know if they are doing evil or not, or if they are military or not.

macksd 3y ago
There's nothing compelling the author, no, except for in the situation outlined above they're really doing nothing to prevent military use, but they are hampering adoption among companies scrupulous or careful enough to not run afoul of a poorly defined legal term. Seems counter-productive to the apparent motives.
- harry8 3y ago
  Only law abiding people follow the law too, what's the point of them?
  - lmm 3y ago
    Laws that are at least somewhat enforced can be good. Laws that are never enforced are counterproductive.
    - barnabee 3y ago
      Depends, if the alternative is those laws are changed or removed from the statute books, their existence counterproductive for sure. If the alternative is all the bad laws society regularly bends or ignores outright (suggesting there’s little or no democratic support for them) start being aggressively enforced, I’ll take never enforced every time. In many societies there’s plenty of the latter.
  - macksd 3y ago
    There isn't even a law preventing direct military usage of that library as far as I understand, because they're not violating copyright law by just downloading something, which by the way is hosted using federal funds. But the absurdity of high energy physics / national nuclear research labs saying you can't use the software for military applications, and then this mainly comes up in civilian applications with nervous lawyers? Yeah it's missing the point more than you seem to be implying.
- cortesoft 3y ago
  With something like this, the apparent motive is more likely to signal to other people his views on the military, more so than actually preventing them from using the software.

pabs3 3y ago

Hmm, doesn't the LGPL allow you to remove any additional restrictions?

macksd 3y ago
Interesting - do you mean because of the "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed" clause? I wonder.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  No, the GPLv3 includes this language: > All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. And the LGPLv3 incorporates the GPLv3 by reference, then grants additional permissions.
kmeisthax 3y ago
It says it does, but in at least one lawsuit courts have outright said that this language does not apply to copyright holders. Which is explicitly opposed to the FSF's own intent drafting the license, which was to prohibit copyright owners from calling their license "GPL plus (insert nonfree clause here)"
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  It is like the license needs a bootstrapping license

psunavy03 3y ago

For those not aware, DoE is literally responsible for the design, testing, and manufacture of US nuclear weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Energy#Nuclear_weapons_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_En...

Joker_vD 3y ago
In the Soviet Union, they gave its counterpart a wonderfully euphemistic name of "Ministry of Medium Machinery Building". Everyone knows what is "heavy machinery" and while "light machinery" is not a thing one could imagine what it could mean, but medium machinery? What the hell could that even be?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

flomo 3y ago

This sort of confusing 'anti-pentagon' license goes back to way back when, and was supposedly one of the reasons RMS established "Freedom Zero" to run the software "for any purpose". But yeah, high energy physics just might have military applications...