14
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The Anti-Capitalist Software License has a goal of "contributing to a world beyond capitalism"
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- The Path to Destroying Capitalism Might Go Through a Software License
- Published
- Aug 3 2020
- Word count
- 1297 words
Per their website:
As they say themselves, it's not serious. It may be an "actual license" but that doesn't mean much. What software projects would use it?
I'd certainly be open to licensing open source libraries I write with some version of a "do no harm" license. For example, I'd be OK with restricting ICE from using anything I write.
This is an actively anti-open-source, anti-free-software licence, and a fearmongering one at that, suggesting that copyleft "can expose sensitive or secure information, and can software [sic] at risk of theft," that it can "require" personal projects "be made public", that open source software licences "automatically release your project to the creative commons or public domain", and that copyleft can "be a drain on limited resources".
I didn't say anything about this specific license.
I said that, broadly, I'm open to the idea that I, as an author of software whose source code I'm publishing for consumption, should be able to restrict entities whose mission is antithetical to my moral values from benefiting from my work.
Ah, yes: I wasn't intending to criticize you, but rather to mention, to anyone reading your comment about open source, that this licence is not open source at all.
I'd agree that restrictions based on missions and types of entities are something that could be reasonable if thought through carefully, though there are, of course, potential complications (eg, as I mention elsewhere, I think many major research universities would be banned from using software under this particular licence).
I think they're serious, but also are fully cognizant that they're not lawyers and this may be unenforceable legally.
I think the quote from the end of the article sets the correct tone:
Yeah, I should clarify what I mean by "not serious" since that's basically a false binary.
Using this license boils down to deciding not to release your obscure project as open source. Maybe that's good? I think many people assume open source by default without really thinking it through.
But it's not really striking a blow against capitalism (as the title seems to imply) because businesses aren't going to care what license you use if they never heard of the project in the first place. There are millions of obscure projects that nobody other than the project's authors care about. It's just doing your own thing.
That is fine, have fun, but as activism it's just pretend. And I think the people who put this out know that?
They did get an article published about them, and we're talking about it. It works as discussion-bait.
No sources here, but I feel like I hear about small innocuous projects released under permissive licenses being used in corporate software all the time. In those cases this would be as much of a deterrent as the GPL would be.
I dunno about it being pretend. Even if it didn't hold water legally, it's something of a mission statement, like putting CC or the copyheart on an art project.
Activism being small scale doesn't make it not activism...one guy standing outside with a sign is still an activist.
Yes, small, even tiny libraries do get used, particularly if they are distributed via npm or other automatic package management systems. But if your library doesn’t have a license that’s acceptable to a business that cares about these things, they will most likely choose something else.
You should think about this as cooperative behavior. These companies don’t want to use your software unless it’s clear from the license that you’re okay with it.
But there are side effects. Let’s say Google picks a different library. If they upstream patches, they will go to the other library. When they release open source software, it will depend on the other library. Using a non-standard license means you’re participating in a separate, smaller ecosystem, where you don’t get any help from software developers who work on open source for businesses. It also means you might not get distributed by Debian or larger open source projects.
Again, that’s okay, but the mainstream open source ecosystem is going to keep going without you, and they have a lot more resources to replace any libraries that aren’t open source. (This seems to have happened with ESLint becoming more popular than JSHint?)
I will concede the point that it’s technically activism, but I would be surprised if it got much momentum. For that to happen it you’d need someone like Richard Stallman who combined persistent activism with serious coding skills to build projects that are relevant to everyone, and it seems a lot harder today since the scene is so much bigger.
It details in the article groups that fall under the four specifications, including hobbyists, co-ops, educators and collaborative efforts.
It's a little more explicit in terms than the non-evil license a few posts back, and leaves guidelines for organizations to use to be able to use the code. It might not change the world, but if you don't want your code TiVo-tized, it would make that intent clear.
In terms of the groups that fall under the specifications, it would appear that many cooperatives would not be allowed to use the software. Consumer cooperatives are banned, for example, by condition 3. Similarly, condition 3 would appear to ban many cooperatives that have more complex ownership arrangements or possibilities.
Many educational institutions would appear to be banned by condition 4, as it bans anyone "working for" the military: anyone working at a university where anyone else had a grant from a military organization would appear to banned: I expect, for example, that almost every major research university in the US would be banned. Researchers would not be able to use the software individually, because, while it is itself a capitalist assumption, all their research labour could be seen as being done for their university, and thus not "for themselves". Similarly, any educational institution with internal law enforcement could potentially be banned for that reason.
If this is meant to be a US-centric licence, however, because it specifies "non-profit" generally, rather than a more specific designation, it would allow a number of organizations, such as lobbyists and PACs, to use the software. It is also unclear to me whether 2(c) and 3 would actually allow completely for-profit partnerships, so long as all partners had equal equity and there were no other employees.
Depending on what you mean by Tivoization, the licence does nothing to prevent it, but Tivoization in the usual sense---circumvention of Free Software goals by releasing sources, but using DRM to prevent the source from being usable on the hardware it is intended for---does not seem meaningful for a license that is not copyleft.
If you mean the more recent application service provider loophole that the AGPL is meant to address, it is similarly not entirely applicable because it is not a free software licence. However, by restricting use, rather than just distribution, it does prevent some ASP problems: most for-profit ASPs would not be able to provide the software as a service, as they would not be able to use it themselves. However, it would appear that an individual (subject to what "laboring for themselves" means) or possibly for-profit equal partnership might be able to provide an online API to the software without violating the licence.
I admire thought and discussion around these topics, but writing licences is very difficult, and it would seem imprudent to consider this licence as a serious and usable one rather than as a piece for discussion.
This license is actually unusable by most non-profits due to clause 3.