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Comment by green_on_black | Hacker News Reader

Here's a (not-recommended but amusing) nuclear option:

Tit-for-tat. Regulators and artists don't want this? Okay, include in all open source software licenses that regulators and artists are now barred from using them without payment.

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That would be neither an open source license (according to the OSI) nor a free license (according to the FSF).

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

> [...] is a nonfree license because it extends the four freedoms only to some kinds of organizations, not to all. Such a restriction in a software license, in the name of any cause whatsoever, imposes too much power over users. Please don't use this license, and we urge you to avoid any software that has been released under it.

https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

> 1. Free Redistribution

> The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

> Rationale: By constraining the license to require free redistribution, we eliminate the temptation for licensors to throw away many long-term gains to make short-term gains. If we didn't do this, there would be lots of pressure for cooperators to defect.

Slight tangent, but you seem to know about licences... Do you happen to know of a licence that has anything like a "can only be used for the benefit of humanity" clause?

I've favoured the MIT licence for what little OSS I've published thus far. But, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that ruthless profit-above-all-else driven companies can include my (benign) work in systems that causes real harm.

That’s far too subjective to be of any legal value. If you want that, you’ll need to (a) spell out what you want to allow, (b) spell out what you want to disallow, or (c) just write the subjective thing out plain and simple and don’t even bother with complying with license norms (e.g. just write “you can do whatever you want with this provided it is for the benefit of humanity”).

That's a fair criticism. My idea of good is not defined, or static - it adapts over time to the norms and values of society.

Perhaps something like the OpenAI approach to their GPT-3 deal with Microsoft is better. That is, if the work Microsoft do with GPT-3 goes in a direction OpenAI doesn't like, OpenAI reserves the right to veto the work [1].

[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview_the_race_to_buil...

Is creating weapons for nations military good, or evil? I’m sure those fighting to protect themselves have an opinion…

Of course a person has to have some sort of opinion of it under such conditions, but is it going to come down mostly condemning the weapons enabling the aggressor or thankful for the weapons that enable some measure of violent defense?

The Slaughterbots campaign argued, rightly, I think, that advanced autonomous lethal weapons should be suppressed because they enable unethical uses and unscrupulous actors far more than legitimate defense.

It can't really be seen in isolation from the environment (social, economical, etc) it's going to come into I suppose, but in the real, concrete world we have creating them is not a neutral act, and some of the consequences are reasonably predictable.

I think there are some instances where it's definitely bad. E.g. weapons that, if used, can by themselves extinguish humanity. Most instances are not that clear unfortunately - lots of sides to the story, extenuating circumstances, etc. etc.

It's not an easy question. However, as the creator of the software I guess I feel that my opinion should count in how it's used. As a simplistic example, if in some dystopian timeline my OSS were used to facilitate a holocaust I'd like to be able to do something to halt that. It doesn't matter that the perpetrators feel that what they're doing is right.

>Do you happen to know of a licence that has anything like a "can only be used for the benefit of humanity" clause?

A terrible idea for a number of reasons (in terms of legal enforceability, unintended side effects, and more). The following two articles do a good job of explaining why such a license really isn't practical:

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

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

Yes, the unintended side effects of HESSLA (sibling comment) were a surprise for me to read about. Thank you for the links - I'd not heard of the Hippocratic License but the criticisms are interesting.

http://www.json.org/license.html

>The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.

AIUI, it was put it mostly as a joke.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/dont-be-evil-google-spurns-no-e...

If only it were that easy to do, and to enforce. Good on them for trying though - at the least it kicks off an interesting debate.

There is a strange psychology at play here.

Your first assumption is that your inventions are important enough to be of use to “bad people”.

The other is your assumption that you have the objective ability to determine good from bad uses of a benign invention.

I’m increasingly looking for the psychological reasons why these ML models and their outputs cause such an emotional reaction in certain individuals.

For example, the language of opponents of Copilot speaks in absolutes. And when presented with the history of copyright when applied to software the opponents seem to not register that copyright (logically) does not extend to the non-expressive parts of a work.

“In computer programs, concerns for efficiency may limit the possible ways to achieve a particular function, making a particular expression necessary to achieving the idea. In this case, the expression is not protected by copyright."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...

This allows for verbatim copies if they are utilitarian in nature!

As for why we should allow verbatim copies of utilitarian features... First, let's preface this with the substantial similarity of the structure, sequence and organization as established in Whelan v. Jaslow which amongst other things says that you cannot merely change the variable names if the expressive structure of the code remains the same. Now let's imagine 10,000 software developers who all implement Dijkstra's algorithm in C and then run it through clang-format. Aside from variable names, isn't it safe to assume that many of the implementations are going to be exactly the same?

Now, this doesn’t mean that GitHub is not in violation of other copyright claims, such as clearly expressive parts like comments and more!

The HESSLA is the closest I know of to that kind of thing, although it's not widely used or well regarded.

Thanks for the pointer - the criticisms [1] are interesting to read.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.en.html

What if I don't care much about what the OSI or FSF think and don't buy their rationale? Is there a good, practical argument against such licenses?

Then don't use an open source or free software license. Write your own custom license (perhaps consult with legal counsel in the process) and use it for the software you create.

I don't argue that such licenses are bad (though the FSF might), just that they are neither open source nor free.

Oh, yeah well that's not a real open source license. Apologies I read the "open source" more as in "it's on github" and was a little confused what all the organizations and definitions have to do with the actual idea

then you and the 100 other people who feel that way will be the ones to save humanity. no pressure

Very cool but I don't care about saving humanity either, parent of parent asked a valid question and "FSF says so" with some hand wavy rationale is just not a very satisfying answer.

They call it a "nuclear option" which generally implies some level of effectiveness. The fact that nobody would agree to go along with this sort of scheme renders it ineffective. This isn't a nuclear option, it is a wet fart option.

Thank you, that makes some sense.

I'm not trying to be contrarian here, I was curious why not and why this isn't a thing already. I'm just more of a programmer guy and less of a lawyer guy

Dual license then. Payment required if you are in a category; FLOSS for everyone else.

A lot of open source software authors don't want this either because it can circumvent copyleft and attribution requirements.

Also, discriminating like you suggest would make those licenses closed source by definition.

Interestingly it's the same with attribution requirements for art, but since it's not written words, nobody can claim: "this part is exactly my GPL code". But with art it's "this is exactly how I do texture on metal", "this is exactly how I paint steampunk greeble", "this is how I do clouds" etc.

I'm glad you're responding with real issues, though let me reiterate that my comment was more to amuse and vent.

Long live clopen source!

> Also, discriminating like you suggest would make those licenses closed source by definition.

Definitions are not what matters in the end. Why doesn't the viral and restrictive element of GNU's GPL license make the license "non-open"?

Definitions are what matter, they're the reason you can use words and I can understand what you mean by them.

"Open source" has a definition (https://opensource.org/osd) and the GPL meets it, because it doesn't prevent derived worries from being distributed under the same license.

What a wonderful excuse for a government to pay another 1 billion dollars on crapware to their cronies, who will outsource it to some incompetent software sweatshop on the other side of the world.

We can barely get governments to use open source even today, without restrictions. Hell, we can barely make them manage source code for commercial products they commission and pay for. I've walked into govt shops that were 100% binary dependent to the original software author, which never delivered source code and charged them trough the nose for the basic servicing.

Like it or not, the government and regulators represent us, we need individual accountability but harming the govt. directly harms ourselves firstly. The bureaucrats and the corrupt hardly care.

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