Mastodawn

This is a long read, but I think it has a much more coherent take on the idea of creating ethical, political, or anti-capitalistic software licenses:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/mar/17/copyleft-ethical-source-putin-ukraine/

#nccc #ppl #agpl #gpl #foss #fosh #freesoftware #freehardware #license #licensing #softwarelicense #softwarelicensing #copyleft #copyfarleft

Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Toward a Broad Ethical Software Licensing CoalitionWe are passionate about and dedicated to the cause of software freedom and rights because proprietary software harmfully takes control of and agency in software away from users. In 2014, we started talking about FOSS as fundamental to “ethical software” (and, more broadly “ethical technology”) — which contrasts FOSS with the unethical behavior that Big Tech carries out with proprietary software. Some FOSS critics (circa 2018) coined the phrase “ethical source” — which outlined a new approach to these issues — based on the assumption that software freedom activists were inherently complicit in the bad behavior of Big Tech and other bad actors since the inception of FOSS. These folks argue that copyleft — the only form of software licensing that makes any effort to place ethical and moral requirements on FOSS redistributors/reusers — has fundamentally ignored the larger problems of society such as human rights abuses and unbridled capitalism. They propose new copyleft-like licenses, which, rather than focusing on the requirement of disclosure of source code, they instead use the mechanisms of copyleft to mandate behaviors in areas of ethics generally unrelated to software. For example, the Hippocratic License molds a copyleft clause into a generalized mechanism for imposing a more comprehensive moral code on software redistributors/re-users. In essence, they argue that copylefted software (such as software under the GPL) is unethical software. This criticism of copyleft reached crescendo in the last three weeks as pundits began to criticize FOSS licenses for failing to prohibit Putin from potentially using FOSS in his Ukrainian invasion or other bad acts.

Software Freedom Conservancy

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J Lou Nov 3, 2024

@contrapunctus @Wuzzy There is actually this idea, #copyfarleft, that is like a #copyleft license that requires that commercial users are structured as worker coops

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J Lou Jul 31, 2024

@nixCraft Widespread use of permissive #OpenSource licenses. We should be using #copyleft as a bare minimum and probably use even stronger licenses like #copyfarleft. There is no point in releasing code under licenses that don't require some form of reciprocity from commercial capitalist users. There is no virtue in developing software for free for capitalists

J Lou Jul 23, 2024

@[email protected] I have been thinking about this as well. FOSS has the kernel of a new mode of production within it. I think some ideas such an endeavor could take inspiration from are #copyfarleft, which requires commercial users to be structured as worker coops. Within the commons any funds should be allocated by democratic non-market mechanisms like quadratic funding. See (5 minutes):

https://youtu.be/xwY0UAk14Rk

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J Lou Jul 19, 2024

@j0 @Olli I agree FOSS has failed. To really change things, the new mode of production must provide livelihoods to people working on it. The community needs to move towards #copyfarleft to prevent capitalist enclosure and extraction while providing a livelihood to developers. The mistake in FOSS was not recognizing and protecting the rights of software developers as well as software users.

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J Lou Jul 19, 2024

@beejjorgensen @F100 @ajroach42 Even without government spending, there are ways to start experiment with these mechanisms now through clever licensing schemes and special organizations representing the commons as in #copyfarleft, #copyfair and harberger licenses

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Malte Dec 1, 2023

@matrix I don't fully understand the different licenses in this case. I think I get the overall dilemma. It reminds me of similar license discussions about profit/non-profit and how to keep actors on a competitive commodity market from exploiting commons. I think Dmitry Kleiner did some really important work with the idea of #copyfarleft that perhaps could be built on.

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LeftyLabourTechToronto Aug 27, 2023

@chaz When there was not a lot of free/libre "copyleft" software around it perhaps made some sense to have software from corporations channelled in to the "commons". But now with the commons channelling software into the corporate, and the corporate getting a free/cheap labour force, some thought at least is being given to how the commons deals with all of this, including discussion of a new idea of #copyfarleft. These are ideas that will need some serious discussion and debate.

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LeftyLabourTechToronto Aug 22, 2023

@chaz Another concept that is beginning to be discussed is #copyfarleft

There's some discussion of these types of licenses here:

https://github.com/LibreCybernetics/awesome-copyfarleft