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Comment by spot | Hacker News Reader

One problem with releasing your code as open source is it can get used in ways that you don't approve of, eg weapon systems by the military or crapware by the carriers.

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And if you sell chalk, it might get used on the chalkboards for the Manhattan Project...

I don't think it's a problem at all that you can't enforce morality. I'd be much more offended by licenses that tried to enforce some sort of morality by forbidding redistribution to particular groups, whether it be the military, Amnesty International, Saddam Hussein ( http://www.google.com/search?q=saddam+hussein+playstation ), or even the Situation from Jersey Shore.

Theo De Raadt put it best:

But software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.

Do you realize governments can appropriate any technology, closed or open, for whatever purpose they see fit, and you're entitled to just "reasonable compensation"?

Can you expound a little more on this please. Let's say I write something, how, exactly can they appropriate the technology?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

Yes, it is, but it is a problem you must accept, even Stallman thinks so: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/open-sauce-software-10006241/st...

"Trying to deploy a T9000 XF Ground-Based Cluster Missile? There's an app for that."

Regardless of what the law says, governments can and do take whatever they want, so that shouldn't dissuade anybody from making software free.

It's up for debate if it's a bug or a feature but yes, that's an issue that anyone releasing code needs to consider.

One other thing people forget to consider when creating intellectual property of closed source or open source is that copyright does not last forever.

Every piece of intellectual property you create will eventually belong to the public domain, albeit after 75-100+ years.

In the US, congress has been extending the terms of copyrights quickly enough that they effectively do last forever, despite an explicit "limited times" requirement in the constitution (which the supreme court unfortunately made meaningless).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_copyright#United_Stat...

This is why the GPL is better than Apache. The military would have to release their code.

Why? They don't distribute it outside of their organization.

good point. I didn't think of that.

Use AGPL.

They still wouldn't be distributing the service outside of their organization.

You are right. AGPL is not a solution.

Thank you.

What if they shared it with a contractor?

Then they would have to share it with the contractor under the terms of the GPL. The contractor could then release it further. More likely though, the contractor would be brought in to work on the project and the military would argue that it wasn't distributing the code.

> The contractor could then release it further.

Unless the contract said that they couldn't. And even if a specific contract didn't stop a given contractor from redistributing some GPL technology, how many contractors are going to risk being banned from future contracts because they redistributed?

> Unless the contract said that they couldn't.

I was going to mention that, but I wasn't sure whether the GPL would prevent that or not. As for the later point, yeah, no shit.:)

That's one of the things about classified systems. They might violate your patents and your copyright, but how would you know if you don't even know they exist?

Never argue licensing with people with guns.

What if the code is classified?

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