I just learned that Nmap is almost GPL except that they revoked the license specifically for SCO group for their SCO–Linux disputes.
This got me thinking, what do open source programmers think of evil companies or horrible people using their software?
Don’t get me wrong, FOSS software by its nature can’t be controlled or strictly prevented of being used. But in case of companies like SCO, that is a thing that at least can cause them headache and they risk getting into legal trouble. A programmer for example can modify GPL to make so that his software can’t be used by Microsoft or Facebook, but it is GPL for everybody else.
I built and maintained Open-source software.
I worked for SCO during the time when the rabid halfwits were weaponized by IBM to vilify everything SCO did or didn’t do via Pamela-the-ex-IBM-employee’s ‘totally impartial’ website. SCO was, and remains, the best job and work environment ever.
My software was surely used by nefarious types. But by that time, I was done with it: I code it, I build it, I distribute it, and then it belongs to the world. You can’t have it any other way, really.
And, one day, find out what really happened with SCO/IBM.
Remember when Darl showed some “encrypted code” that he claimed was stolen and added to Linux and it was really just some POSIX definitions from a header file taken from BSD “encrypted” with a wing dings font? Those were some wild times.
The moment you exclude any group or persons from your licence, it is, by definition, no longer open source.
Of course that doesn’t sit well with some people and there are some initiatives to try to account for that, for example the Hippocratic License that allows you to customise your licence to specifically exclude groups that might use your software to cause harm or the Do No Harm license with similar goals.
Honestly, I find it hard to object to the idea. Some might argue it is a slippery slope away from the ideals of software freedom (as has been the case with some of the contraversial licenses recently like BSL and Hashicorp. I’m not a hardline idealist in the same way and if these more restrictive licenses that restrict some freedoms still produce software that might otherwise not exist then I’m happy they are around.
Would I use one? Probably not, for me, whilst I like the idea, I think the controversy generated by using a non-standard licence would become its defining feature and would put off a lot of people from contributing to the project.
The biggest issue is that there isn’t a universal agreement on what causes harm. There is agreement on the basics - murder, violence, etc - but they’re already illegal anyways, no need to ban them by license.
The author of JSLint wrote:
"So I added one more line to my license, was that, “the Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” And thought: I’ve done my job!
/…/
Also about once a year, I get a letter from a lawyer, every year a different lawyer, at a company. I don’t want to embarrass the company by saying their name, so I’ll just say their initials, “IBM,” saying that they want to use something that I wrote, 'cause I put this on everything I write now. They want to use something that I wrote and something that they wrote and they’re pretty sure they weren’t gonna use it for evil, but they couldn’t say for sure about their customers. So, could I give them a special license for that?So, of course!
So I wrote back—this happened literally two weeks ago—I said, “I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.” "
