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konceptz | 6 years ago

Interesting approach. Makes me wonder if you authored a component and extended a license to say that “use of this code must abide by [inert relevant code of ethics]”, could you enforce that?

discuss

order

caseysoftware|6 years ago

Fundamentally, it depends on the license. When this came up under Bush 43, the appeal was "the military is not allowed to use this!" and RMS and many others pointed out terms like this. This one is from the GPL v3 specifically:

> All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.

Other licenses have similar clauses and a short list of requirements which must be met. Since the relevant groups, agencies, etc were (and presumably are) meeting the requirements, there's no grounds to revoke the license.

iirc, the Open Source Initiative stated that any claims/requirements limiting who could use the software or where they could use it would not meet the definition of "open source."

ceejayoz|6 years ago

The license for JSON is an example of this. https://www.json.org/license.html

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

IBM requested, and received, an exemption...

> I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.

which apparently pleased their lawyers.

garmaine|6 years ago

Such licenses exist, and yes. But it wouldn’t apply retroactively.

temac|6 years ago

Also such licenses are not Free Software. And from a practical point of view (existing in the ecosystem) that matters a lot.

jki275|6 years ago

I guess it would be enforceable. The problem with those sorts of license restrictions are that in general no one will use code licensed that way.