The MIT license (with personal exceptions) | Hacker News Reader

The MIT license (with personal exceptions)

github.com

20 pointsexolymph23 comments

For context, jamebuilds is the maintainer or contributor of many javascript libraries like Lerna, Babel, and Yarn. He recently tweeted [1] that he would go to war with Palantir for collaboration with ICE. He opened several issues with Palantir's blueprint which uses Lerna [2]. He then opened a PR to change Lerna's license with the MIT license (with persional exceptions) [3] where it was merged after the original author agreed since jamebuilds is one of the primary maintainers now. Palantir did respond in one of the issues [4] where they clarified they work with HSI and would be open to meeting in person but it did not seem to change jamebuild's opinion.

[1]: https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/1034517589001613312

[2]: https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/issues/2870,

https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/issues/2875,

https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/issues/2876

[3]: https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1616

[4]: https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/issues/2870#issuecomme...

Useful background, thank you. Am I alone in thinking the response from Palantir looks like more feedback than one would have expected from the average corp? It makes jamiebuilds' reply seem more provocative than it otherwise would have, but I praise their conviction to their morals.

Edit for vague closing sentence: I'm praising jamiebuilds' moral conviction.

I don't get what this is supposed to accomplish. The license doesn't specify that Walmart can't use the software. It grants everyone except Walmart, Microsoft, etc, the following rights:

> to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Those are the entire conditions to which a grant of rights is subject.

So, while Walmart doesn't get to use this license directly, anyone who isn't on the list is free to copy the software, redistribute it to Walmart for any or no charge, and to themselves permit Walmart to deal in the software without restriction, including by using it, copying it, selling it, or anything else.

What rights exactly has Walmart lost here? Does this differ in any tangible way from the standard MIT license?

Jamie's put up a disclaimer saying "I don't care if this is not 'open source', it's the right thing for me to do." But this is just as open as it was before. I'll grant permission right here for Microsoft, Palantir, Amazon, Northeastern University, Ernst & Young, Thomson Reuters, Motorola, Deloitte, Johns Hopkins, Dell, Xerox, Canon, Vermont State College, Charter Communications, Spectrum, Time Warner Cable, LinkedIn, UPS, Walmart, Sears, Apple, Tyson Foods, Target, Tesla, and the H&M group to use the software without restriction.

Walmart cannot tell anyone to copy the software, lest that person become an agent of Walmart and violate the terms. So Walmart has to hope that some third party relicenses the software out of the goodness of their heart.

Of course, who knows what'd happen in court if that scenario was actually tested.

EDIT: if you are serious about that line that you'd extend them license, automate it! a little script that finds repos with that license and copies them to straight MIT would be pretty silly

You can’t remove the permission notice, though. So maybe legally they can keep using the software, but they have to also keep the bit that says they can’t use it.

The list of companies isn't part of the permission notice. The permission notice is the text saying "Permission is hereby granted...". That's why the terms say you have to include the permission notice and the copyright statement. Neither includes the list of disfavored companies.

It’s a political statement.

Don't sponge off the MIT license's goodwill. Make up your own name.

As I point out sidethread, he hasn't actually modified the license, so it seems fine for him to use the "MIT license" name.

He's published a list of companies, such as Amazon, to which he isn't directly granting permission to use the software. But anyone who isn't on the list, such as Jeff Bezos in his personal capacity, is free to both provide the software to the companies on the list and to grant them permission without restriction to use, copy, modify, distribute, sublicense, or otherwise benefit from the software.

Couldn't MIT complain that he is using the "MIT" trademark for something that they don't sanction?

Please don't let this be a thing, sigh. I don't want to be further entrenched in identity politics.

You're just throwing words around. There's nothing about this that has anything to do with identity politics.

Do you really expect anybody to believe that?

You may not be interested in identity politics, but identity politics is interested in you.

All of us are deeply involved in politics whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. - Nashville, 1975

When I release an open source project, I want it to be open. So I absolutely don't involve politics when promoting free, open software.

Politics are involved whether you like it or not. The idea of open-source software is a deeply political one.

Politics is war by other means. Do you really believe everybody should constantly be at war with those who disagree with them?

I personally like the idea of these kinds of licenses, however I prefer the idea of licenses which do not grant such rights to certain types of entities without a written exception. Much more future proof. I remember somebody posted here a license that required Government institutions to get explicit permissions. That was quite a good way of doing things.

While I'm very strong on Libre software, for me I personally have a distaste for blind ideological adherence to the idea, at the expense of actual outcomes for human wellbeing.

Seems like this would be fine if software is created by contractors or third party vendors for these companies? If that’s the case, then the impact would be lesser.

The “abusive treatment of workers” clause, if applied thoroughly, should cover every single large electronic device/appliance manufacturing company in the world that gets things made in China (using China here as an example, not that worker abuse doesn’t happen elsewhere) — like Samsung, LG, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and many, many more.

Also, this license could have a larger impact if it’s adopted by many other prominent and popular pieces of open source software.

> Seems like this would be fine if software is created by contractors or third party vendors

I had the same thought. Seems like it would be trivial to create a "license condom"[1] in the form of a contractor who exercises the rights granted under the license as a proxy for the real user. I'd add "...or any entity acting on behalf of same" to the end of the first paragraph. Or even better, I'd get a real copyright lawyer's opinion about what phrasing to use.

[1] Don't blame me for the term. It has been around for a while, and the subterfuge to which it refers is a large part of the reason GPLv3 exists.

An interesting idea. Part of me thinks this may be potentially useful in causing change, depending on the projects that adapted it.

Another part of me dislikes bringing politics directly into software. What offends people varies from person to person and imagining every FOSS project having a different, and constantly changing exception list gives me a headache. This seems somewhat antithetical to at least certain aspects of open source

If you’re going to go down this road, shouldn’t the list also include ICE itself and contractors hired by ICE?

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