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Asking builders to ONLY use maximally permissive licenses is equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every poss

Asking builders to ONLY use maximally permissive licenses is equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every possible way. On a practical level this would massively chill research, as most builders and engineers I know give significant consideration to the impact of their work. On a personal level, it's objectifying: "Give me the code and don't make me consider your intentions in creating it." You can't collaborate and live in a world free of others' value judgements, which are implicit in how they spend their time and what research / code / weights they choose to share. "Ethical" licenses at least make those value judgements explicit, and allow communities of builders with compatible values to organize and share.

FiniteField 3y ago
>Asking builders to ONLY use maximally permissive licenses is equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every possible way. That's exactly right, and it shouldn't be their call how someone uses their thing. When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Just because you have an idea, you shouldn't be granted the legal power to send the police after people who use your idea "the wrong way". To me, this goes just as much for copyright as it does for this new trend of "ethical" licences. >On a practical level this would massively chill research, as most builders and engineers I know give significant consideration to the impact of their work Good? People who develop things that can be used for harm and then act entitled to be the arbiter of what that "harm" is are just kidding themselves into trying to have their cake and eat it too. For the things that cause real harm, the actors that are going to cause the most harm (nation states) aren't going to listen to what you have to say no matter what (a recent film comes to mind).
- hooverd 3y ago
  Which film?
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  People can make the things the way they want to make them. Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. What this sounds like is entitlement. That really should be obvious. Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero.
  - saurik 3y ago
    FWIW, I'd be more OK with this if liability for later use were then fairly distributed: if you sell me a hammer (or a phone or let me make phone calls), and I can do anything I want with it, and what I want to do is evil, the hammer seller is off the hook; but, if the hammer seller wants to believe they are in control of the use cases of their hammer, and attempts to use legal and/or technological controls to limit what I later do with our hammer (via licenses or digital rights management technology or even an army of moderators), they should be now--at least partially--at fault for what I do with the hammer, and they should suffer consequences along with me, whether it be in the form of costly joint and several liability on a tort claim or even indirect criminal liability from at least negligence if not racketeering charges. Regardless, as a lot of the weight of your argument seems to rely on the rhetorical use of "entitlement", note that that word applies to both sides: people who sell hammers and then expect to still be involved in the life of the hammer after they sell it are clearly the ones with entitlement issues, and if they didn't want to sell me the hammer then they shouldn't have sold it in the first place; if you want a lot of control over something, you should continue to own it, as it violates the entire notion of selling something and transferring physical possession for you to be continuing to employ legal and technological restrictions that have nothing to do with you anymore. Buyers have no obligation to care one iota about the wishes of a maker after the sale, and it is only due to the messed up incentives and (to many of us) unconstitutional extensions of copyright law in the last 30 years that have made this look even slightly reasonable.
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero. Or instead of that we can recognize that we live in a society and we can make rules that cause society to be better. We make laws all the time. And it is perfectly reasonable to make laws that increases peoples permissive ability to do whatever they want with things that they own. > Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. Well, they would if we remove the "makers" ability to leverage the law to target users. If we take away their ability to use the government's monopoly on violence, we can effectively cause things to be much more permissive.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Eh, this is where it gets problematic... For example if you're a seller of an items and the person says "I am going to use this item to commit a crime" before you sell it, you could very well find yourself on the very expensive end of a civil lawsuit. This black and white world where you throw all liability on the end user does not exist. You will quickly find yourself buried up to your butthole in heathen lawyers looking for their pound of flesh.
- evrydayhustling 3y ago
  So the take here is: - I like how it feels to own a hammer, so everything should be like that. (I guess people shouldn't be able to rent hammers, or anything else?) - You can't prevent the government from using what you build, so you might as well set up no barriers to anybody using it. If you don't see any difference between limited control and no control, I don't think I'll convince you. But I think most of the ways we engage with the world involve degrees of control, and that there's value in picking where to exercise yours.
horsawlarway 3y ago
I think this is fundamentally incorrect. > equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every possible way. NO! What it's saying is: If you provide a tool, you are not entitled to control how I use that tool. I am allowed to retain my autonomy to use that tool in any legal way I choose. What it absolutely is NOT saying is: Society has to let anything be fair game. We can still have laws, regulations, prohibitions, etc - but they can't come from a bunch of rich technocrats who believe that they are the moral police. That way lies ALL sorts of terrible, terrible outcomes.
- jefftk 3y ago
  > If you provide a tool, you are not entitled to control how I use that tool. I am allowed to retain my autonomy to use that tool in any legal way I choose. That principle eems like it was rule out the GPL, AGPL, and other copyleft software?
  - FiniteField 3y ago
    I touched on this in a cousin comment, but freedom 0 of the GPL states categorically that the user has: >The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose Redistributing modified versions of the software it what is regulated under the GPL and other copyleft licences. Even then, the main aim of this restriction is to subvert the system of copyright which works in the opposite way (and unlike copyleft, is not just an academic concern, being constantly wielded by people and companies as a weapon against free speech).
    - jefftk 3y ago
      I don't think that's true for the AGPL? If I publish something under the AGPL, I am saying that you are allowed to run it on your server as long as the users who interact with it are able to download the source code including any modifications you have made. That sounds a lot like controlling how you use a tool I have made available?
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago

FiniteField 3y ago

>Asking builders to ONLY use maximally permissive licenses is equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every possible way. That's exactly right, and it shouldn't be their call how someone uses their thing. When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Just because you have an idea, you shouldn't be granted the legal power to send the police after people who use your idea "the wrong way". To me, this goes just as much for copyright as it does for this new trend of "ethical" licences. >On a practical level this would massively chill research, as most builders and engineers I know give significant consideration to the impact of their work Good? People who develop things that can be used for harm and then act entitled to be the arbiter of what that "harm" is are just kidding themselves into trying to have their cake and eat it too. For the things that cause real harm, the actors that are going to cause the most harm (nation states) aren't going to listen to what you have to say no matter what (a recent film comes to mind).

hooverd 3y ago
Which film?
kelseyfrog 3y ago
People can make the things the way they want to make them. Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. What this sounds like is entitlement. That really should be obvious. Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero.
- saurik 3y ago
  FWIW, I'd be more OK with this if liability for later use were then fairly distributed: if you sell me a hammer (or a phone or let me make phone calls), and I can do anything I want with it, and what I want to do is evil, the hammer seller is off the hook; but, if the hammer seller wants to believe they are in control of the use cases of their hammer, and attempts to use legal and/or technological controls to limit what I later do with our hammer (via licenses or digital rights management technology or even an army of moderators), they should be now--at least partially--at fault for what I do with the hammer, and they should suffer consequences along with me, whether it be in the form of costly joint and several liability on a tort claim or even indirect criminal liability from at least negligence if not racketeering charges. Regardless, as a lot of the weight of your argument seems to rely on the rhetorical use of "entitlement", note that that word applies to both sides: people who sell hammers and then expect to still be involved in the life of the hammer after they sell it are clearly the ones with entitlement issues, and if they didn't want to sell me the hammer then they shouldn't have sold it in the first place; if you want a lot of control over something, you should continue to own it, as it violates the entire notion of selling something and transferring physical possession for you to be continuing to employ legal and technological restrictions that have nothing to do with you anymore. Buyers have no obligation to care one iota about the wishes of a maker after the sale, and it is only due to the messed up incentives and (to many of us) unconstitutional extensions of copyright law in the last 30 years that have made this look even slightly reasonable.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > Besides, if users want permissivity and it doesn't exist, one of them can step up, make it, and be a hero. Or instead of that we can recognize that we live in a society and we can make rules that cause society to be better. We make laws all the time. And it is perfectly reasonable to make laws that increases peoples permissive ability to do whatever they want with things that they own. > Makers have no obligation to make things maximally permissive. Well, they would if we remove the "makers" ability to leverage the law to target users. If we take away their ability to use the government's monopoly on violence, we can effectively cause things to be much more permissive.
pixl97 3y ago
>When I acquire a hammer, I don't have to sign an agreement that it will never be used to build a wall, and the world is better for this. Eh, this is where it gets problematic... For example if you're a seller of an items and the person says "I am going to use this item to commit a crime" before you sell it, you could very well find yourself on the very expensive end of a civil lawsuit. This black and white world where you throw all liability on the end user does not exist. You will quickly find yourself buried up to your butthole in heathen lawyers looking for their pound of flesh.
evrydayhustling 3y ago
So the take here is: - I like how it feels to own a hammer, so everything should be like that. (I guess people shouldn't be able to rent hammers, or anything else?) - You can't prevent the government from using what you build, so you might as well set up no barriers to anybody using it. If you don't see any difference between limited control and no control, I don't think I'll convince you. But I think most of the ways we engage with the world involve degrees of control, and that there's value in picking where to exercise yours.

horsawlarway 3y ago

I think this is fundamentally incorrect. > equivalent to telling people never to release anything they're not ok with being used in every possible way. NO! What it's saying is: If you provide a tool, you are not entitled to control how I use that tool. I am allowed to retain my autonomy to use that tool in any legal way I choose. What it absolutely is NOT saying is: Society has to let anything be fair game. We can still have laws, regulations, prohibitions, etc - but they can't come from a bunch of rich technocrats who believe that they are the moral police. That way lies ALL sorts of terrible, terrible outcomes.

jefftk 3y ago
> If you provide a tool, you are not entitled to control how I use that tool. I am allowed to retain my autonomy to use that tool in any legal way I choose. That principle eems like it was rule out the GPL, AGPL, and other copyleft software?
- FiniteField 3y ago
  I touched on this in a cousin comment, but freedom 0 of the GPL states categorically that the user has: >The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose Redistributing modified versions of the software it what is regulated under the GPL and other copyleft licences. Even then, the main aim of this restriction is to subvert the system of copyright which works in the opposite way (and unlike copyleft, is not just an academic concern, being constantly wielded by people and companies as a weapon against free speech).
  - jefftk 3y ago
    I don't think that's true for the AGPL? If I publish something under the AGPL, I am saying that you are allowed to run it on your server as long as the users who interact with it are able to download the source code including any modifications you have made. That sounds a lot like controlling how you use a tool I have made available?
ToucanLoucan 3y ago