A New Kind of Open Source Organization | Hacker News Reader

A New Kind of Open Source Organization

ethicalsource.dev

25 pointsscastiel19 comments

This has been pointed out before, but the Hippocratic license is not an open source license as defined by the OSI[1]. The author of the licence, Coraline Ada Ehmke, argues that OSI does not define what is and isn't open source[2]. My personal view is that re-using a well-established name (brand?) for a purpose not aligning to the brand's mission[3] is disingenuous. On a broader level I don't think it will be helpful to either side: detracting from true open source licences on one side and detracting from arguments made by Coraline on the other (since every announcement will be subject to comments like this).

That's why I'm pleased that the new organisation is called the Organization for Ethical Source. I think that there are plenty of interesting arguments around the Hippocratic licence, and calling it "Ethical Source" would be (IMHO) a much better term, both from describing what it does and avoiding the comparisons to open source licenses / criticisms from open source purists.

[1] https://twitter.com/OpenSourceOrg/status/1176229398929977344

[2] https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1175878569169432582

[3] https://opensource.org/osd

https://perens.com/2019/09/23/sorry-ms-ehmke-the-hippocratic...

I'm sure it's been posted before, but this is a pretty thorough explanation of why this is a terrible license, and why it really isn't open source. And that's before you get into issues of legal enforceability.

"The creator of the Hippocratic License, an ethical license for open source, and Contributor Covenant, the first and most popular code of conduct for open source projects, today announced the establishment of a new nonprofit, the Organization for Ethical Source (OES).

Central to the philosophy of open source is the notion of software freedom, referred to as “Freedom Zero”: that open source software can be used for any purpose without restriction, even for explicitly “evil” purposes. The world has changed since the Open Source Definition was created — open source has become ubiquitous, and is now being leveraged by bad actors for mass surveillance, racist policing, and other human rights abuses all over the world. The OES believes that the open source community must evolve to address the magnitude and complexity of today’s social, political and technological challenges."

I was a bit surprised to see so many charged words in a single paragraph about software licensing: oath, covenant, ethics, evil, abuses.

"The software may not be used by individuals, corporations, governments, or other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well-being of underprivileged individuals or groups."

I like how you can use it to write extermination camp AIs as long as the camp is full of privileged individuals or groups.

This is so broad and interpretable that it means whatever the author wants it to mean that day. I am worried about how it empowers woke attacks and cancel culture. How can you make sure a software that makes use of a library under this license is never used in a bad way after you release it?

I have recently seen various calls to take a stand as software developers and scientists, to oppose the abusive uses of technology. But the problem is that people don't agree on what is good or bad, no matter what position you take there are always going to be issues.

And the second problem is that a discovery or invention takes a life of its own and doesn't remain subject to the will of its creator.

Good concerns though the Hippocratic license relies on the declaration of human rights, which are well defined and broadly accepted.

To the second issue, I’d argue that intellectual property doesn’t need to take a will of its own. Creators can ensure that their work doesn’t contribute to human rights abuse. Companies assert IP rights all the time.

The Hippocratic license explains how issues can be taken to EU court. I haven’t seen it happen yet but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Just call it what it is: malware It’s not ethical to use the term OSS for this. It’s far from right and ethical..

Does anyone know if that kind of license can stand in court? Or if it has been tested already in a court (or a similar one has been tested).

I’m personally skeptical but interested to learn from others.

Is it a Paradox of Tolerance type reasoning that capital O Open Source people suddenly are not at all about freedom when someone is releasing code under a new, non OSI license (elastic, this)?

Or is it honestly all about the term Open Source? That one feels like a lost cause but ok.

As someone who as expressed concerns about the Hippocratic license in the past, it is 100% about the term Open Source.

As noted in my earlier comment, this new organisation may(?) be signalling a change where the term "Ethical Source" is used - I think that is a much better name for these sorts of licenses.

The Cooperative Non-Violent Public License, specifically limiting use to worker-owned cooperatives is wonderful. We should all switch.

So that only the tiny fraction of the world that are part of co-ops can use them, and thus only that tiny fraction of the population will have an interest in contributing to/maintaining such software?

RMS wrote an article years ago explaining why such licenses are ultimately detrimental to software freedom:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...

Some key arguments from the article:

>I've stated some of my views about other political issues, about activities that are or aren't unjust. Your views might differ, and that's precisely the point. If we accepted programs with usage restrictions as part of a free operating system such as GNU, people would come up with lots of different usage restrictions. There would be programs banned for use in meat processing, programs banned only for pigs, programs banned only for cows, and programs limited to kosher foods. Someone who hates spinach might write a program allowing use for processing any vegetable except spinach, while a Popeye fan might allow use only for spinach. There would be music programs allowed only for rap music, and others allowed only for classical music.

>The result would be a system that you could not count on for any purpose. For each task you wish to do, you'd have to check lots of licenses to see which parts of your system are off limits for that task.

>How would users respond to that? I think most of them would use proprietary systems. Allowing any usage restrictions whatsoever in free software would mainly push users towards nonfree software. Trying to stop users from doing something through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective as pushing on an object through a long, soft, straight piece of spaghetti.

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