FOSS programmers, what do you think of horrible people using your software?
FOSS programmers, what do you think of horrible people using your software?
I just learned that Nmap is almost GPL except that they revoked the license specifically for SCO group for their SCO–Linux disputes.
This got me thinking, what do open source programmers think of evil companies or horrible people using their software?
Don't get me wrong, FOSS software by its nature can't be controlled or strictly prevented of being used. But in case of companies like SCO, that is a thing that at least can cause them headache and they risk getting into legal trouble. A programmer for example can modify GPL to make so that his software can't be used by Microsoft or Facebook, but it is GPL for everybody else.
The author of JSLint wrote:
"So I added one more line to my license, was that, "the Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." And thought: I've done my job!
/.../
Also about once a year, I get a letter from a lawyer, every year a different lawyer, at a company. I don't want to embarrass the company by saying their name, so I'll just say their initials, "IBM," saying that they want to use something that I wrote, 'cause I put this on everything I write now. They want to use something that I wrote and something that they wrote and they're pretty sure they weren't gonna use it for evil, but they couldn't say for sure about their customers. So, could I give them a special license for that?So, of course!
So I wrote back---this happened literally two weeks ago---I said, "I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil." "
Hmmm I would definitely dick them around for a few weeks with questions back like "What is the projected revenue in potentially using the software for evil?" And "is there any specific processes in your company to avoid evil acts?"
The moment you exclude any group or persons from your licence, it is, by definition, no longer open source.
Of course that doesn't sit well with some people and there are some initiatives to try to account for that, for example the Hippocratic License that allows you to customise your licence to specifically exclude groups that might use your software to cause harm or the Do No Harm license with similar goals.
Honestly, I find it hard to object to the idea. Some might argue it is a slippery slope away from the ideals of software freedom (as has been the case with some of the contraversial licenses recently like BSL and Hashicorp. I'm not a hardline idealist in the same way and if these more restrictive licenses that restrict some freedoms still produce software that might otherwise not exist then I'm happy they are around.
Would I use one? Probably not, for me, whilst I like the idea, I think the controversy generated by using a non-standard licence would become its defining feature and would put off a lot of people from contributing to the project.
The biggest issue is that there isn't a universal agreement on what causes harm. There is agreement on the basics - murder, violence, etc - but they're already illegal anyways, no need to ban them by license.
That and it's impossible say whether or not a given tool or object will never be used to do harm if wielded by the wrong entity.
Like, say you're someone who makes free bricks. Someone uses the brick to build a house, great, that's what it's made for. Someone uses that brick to shatter a cop's windshield, even better.
But someone can also use that brick to smash in the windows of a school, or even that the house built with the bricks you made is being lived in by a bad person.
No one makes bricks thinking "this could be a weapon, I am responsible for the harm it causes" because its primary purpose as building material is self-evident. It therefore has no inherent morality outside of what people you can't control choose to do with what they have. All the brick maker wants to do is make the best bricks they can.
A lot of coopyleft or p2pp projects adopt the license and it's not discussed that much in the identity of the project.
I personally believe that software freedom shouldn't come at the expense of people's freedom, and I consider the FOSS movement a political failure because it's completely incapable of mediating between the two things. New generations are growing more and more alienated from a movement they consider a relic of the past.
For my projects, I avoid FOSS licenses, but they are also not relevant enough to get insights from them.
I still haven't released anything which is not under the AGPLv3 license, which is even more aggressive than the GPL, primarily because I know that it's prohibited to use AGPL-licensed software/libraries at Google.
I'm also hoping that because my stuff is on Codeberg, not GitHub, that its license hasn't been laundered yet by some criminal AI company, but I don't actually believe so. Certainly makes me more reluctant to publish my code.
I don't care, i made it to be open to everyone and my opinions shouldn't interfere with it.
Software is a tool. I develop stuff that i know is of interest to companies working with everything from nuclear energy to hydrogen electrolysis and CO2 storage. I honestly believe I can make a positive contribution to the world by releasing that software under a permissive licence such that companies can freely integrate it into their proprietary production code.
I'm also very aware that the exact same software is of interest to the petroleum industry and weapons manufacturers, and that I enable them by releasing it under a permissive licence.
The way I see it, withholding a tool that can help do a lot of good because it can also be used for bad things just doesn't make much sense. If everybody thinks that way, how can we have positive progress? I don't think I can think of any more or less fundamental technology that can't be used for both. The same chemical process that has saved millions from starvation by introducing synthetic fertiliser has taken millions of lives by creating more and better explosives. If you ask those that were bombed, they would probably say they wish it was never invented, while if you ask those that were saved from the brink of starvation they likely praise the heavens for the technology. Today, that same chemical process is a promising candidate for developing zero-emission shipping.
I guess my point is this: For any sufficiently fundamental technology, it is impossible to foresee the uses it may have in the future. Withholding it because it may cause bad stuff is just holding technological development back, lively preventing just as much good as bad. I choose to focus on the positive impact my work can have.
I'm an OpenBSD user & ports maintainer, and while I don't totally agree with the permissive ethos, I'll summerize it the best I can:
Permissive licensing (anyone can use your code for any reason, as long as they give attribution) means more people are using your software, which is improving the quality of software in the world, and regardless of it is being used for nefarious purposes or not, it increases the probability of your software becoming a standard. Copyleft/GPL can lead to total rejection of software by large proprietary/corpo entities, and lead to in-house proprietary implementations instead. A good example is MacOS, which if BSD didn't exist with the license it did, we could have very well have ended up with with two systems as non-portable as Windows instead of one.
My personal opinion on the matter is that your license should change depending on what type of software you're writing. I think permissive is good for libraries and highly portable applications. For something like a game on the other hand, I think something like the GPL isn't good enough; I would pick a license that would would prevent any commercial use whatsoever. I don't care about the purity of open source or what does or doesn't qualify open source or free software; I view it as zealotry, and licenses are a tool, not an ideology.
I don't see it as a matter of being a bad person or not. When I use GPL, whomever uses my software may be "evil". The difference is whether or not they grant the freedoms I granted them to view, modify, distribute, and distribute modifications to whomever uses their version of the software. It is a requirement to pay it forward. Evil or not.
I'm mindful.of Mastodon leading to GAB and Truth social
If I'm the post master I'm proud of everyone being able to communicate and the huge dividends this brings society.
I don't get upset about delivering mail to the prisons. I would get upset if I wasn't allowed to!
I work on software for finding things and summarizing stuff. We were one of those Apache 2 -> other relicenses a while back.
I can't really talk about specifics. But we all have a working imagination though. I think about it a lot. But I still do the job. There are good folks doing good things with it.
I actually never thought about it until now. I hope it evens out since people who I like can use it too, and I like far more people than I dislike.
I built and maintained Open-source software.
I worked for SCO during the time when the rabid halfwits were weaponized by IBM to vilify everything SCO did or didn't do via Pamela-the-ex-IBM-employee's 'totally impartial' website. SCO was, and remains, the best job and work environment ever.
My software was surely used by nefarious types. But by that time, I was done with it: I code it, I build it, I distribute it, and then it belongs to the world. You can't have it any other way, really.
And, one day, find out what really happened with SCO/IBM.
Remember when Darl showed some “encrypted code” that he claimed was stolen and added to Linux and it was really just some POSIX definitions from a header file taken from BSD “encrypted” with a wing dings font? Those were some wild times.
Is there anything specific to open source about this question? If you're a software developer, you might have to decide whether you want to work for a shady company, or whether you want your smaller company to contract with a larger shady company. Those are I think harder decisions to make, because it could be your job on the line.
In the open source world, at least you don't know for sure what people are going to do with your work.
But we do know that if a company is looking to be evil, it's probably going to find a way, whether or not it uses your library.
Disgust. I don't even want the product of my hands in the hands of capitalists or fascists; because they'd be sure to abuse it to their own ends and I wouldn't be able to do shit about it til the Day of the Wall comes.
So don't make your code public
I'm not sure why this has anything to do with FOSS per se. Proprietary software can theoretically be used by people the intellectual property owners hate as well.
I'm guessing you're thinking about it from a FOSS point of view because FOSS authors tend to be ideologically inclined toward making FOSS and perhaps think they're selflessly making the world a better place whereas proprietary software is made exclusively for money. (Not that FOSS can't be made for money.)
But, speaking for myself, a lot of bad actors just straight up blatantly violate FOSS licenses. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is. (Maybe the court case SFC v. Visio will make a difference. We'll have to see.) But it's not going to do the world any good to deprive the world of your contributions because some assholes will disregard your license.
I suppose it could theoretically make a difference if you used a license that called certain companies out by name, but a) then again maybe it actually wouldn't make a difference (they might just blatantly violate the license still) and b) you can't really anticipate all the companies that are assholes at the time you write the license. If your FOSS software actually has a nontrivial user base, somebody somewhere who you don't like is going to use your license some day and there really isn't anything you can do about it.
But I still see releasing your code under FOSS licenses as a big fuck-you to asshole companies. It subverts the whole capitalist foundation on which they stand. It denies them the full ability to own it.
And copyleft licenses do that better than so-called "permissive" licenses.
Be gay, do crime, write FOSS, donate to the SFC.