I can't help but notice that organisations constantly co-opt free software which was developed with the intent to promote freedom, use it to spread hate and ideas which will ultimately infringe on freedom for many.

The fact that hateful people who use such software may then go on to use it to promote or otherwise support fascism which prevents others from enjoying the software in the way it was imagined, is one potential manifestation of the paradox of tolerance in this respect. I think this is particularly true for e.g. social media platforms and the fediverse.

My proposal to combat this would be the introduction of a "paradox of tolerance" license which says that organisations which use the software must enforce a bare-minimum set of rules to combat intolerance. So anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, etc. The idea is then to make overtly hateful organisations legally liable for the use of the software through the incompatibility of the requirements with their hateful belief system.

This could be an extension to GPL and AGPL where the license must be replicated in modified versions of the software, thereby creating virality with these rules.

Is this a thing already? I understand OS and FOSS have historically had a thing for political neutrality but are we not starting to find the faults with this now?

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[–] FreeBird@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

No, thanks. I don't want to see "Users from North Korea, Syria and Iran are not allowed to use this Project" I am already banned from half of the Internet due to sanctions against the asshole leaders of my country. And GitLab has already banned Iranian IP addresses. This license will not stop those big bad organizations or governments, but the average citizen from accessing the projects. I know it is not the purpose of the license to prohibit the citizens of hateful regimes to use the projects, but I can't be optimistic about the effect it might have on people living under tyrannical regimes.

[–] CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Strictly speaking I think such provisions would be unenforceable in those circumstances anyway so doesn't the effect kind of cancel out? Don't get me wrong I get where you're coming from but why would we imagine such a license has an effect in nations that are already hostile to those ideas and probably have broken judicial systems anyway?

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 6 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I think such a licence would need very careful wording. Wording that concentrates on the entity or organisation using rather then jurisdiction.

GPL claims free as in speech not beer. Whereas this would be removing that very concept. By suggesting use for some ideas is not allowed.

I can def see the advantage. Especially for people developing social software. But trying to form a licence like that. While not running fowl of existing GPL restrictions. Would take some seriose legal understanding. As making gpled current libraries incompatible. Could totally remove existing work to expand upon. Removing most developers desire to place the effort needed for the new software.

Would be interesting to watch the project form though. Unfortunately it would be very much like watching a dangerous stunt. Facinating as much for the risk of failure as that of hoping for success.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There are licences like this already

None of which have ever caught on, and none of which are open source.

You would also be making it potentially illegal to use in many countries.

[–] CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Strictly speaking these all do something similar-ish at face value but actually quite different in terms of mechanism and target. I think the unpopularity of a lot of these licensing structures is also down to lack of legal verification in a lot of cases.

The illegality possibility does warrant careful consideration, but I suspect in many cases regimes which would oppose this kind of license would be making the use and enforcement of software fairly selective in any case. If it is made illegal, it's made illegal by the respective government, not the software author or license writer.

A question is then raised as to what degree the implied open source requirement that open source should be leveraged by e.g. Nazis actually benefits developers and users. Or whether it is in effect a kind of appeasement as no doubt use which contradicts those values (and hence promotes freedom) is illegal already. Those uses which are orthogonal to that aim may be selectively targeted for arbitrary reasons such as the identity of the user.

[–] drspod@lemmy.ml 12 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Only the good bad-guys will obey the terms of the license.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 4 points 18 hours ago

Lawful evil is perhaps the term you're looking for

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 21 hours ago

You think you're the first person to have this bad idea? This https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html was written in 2012 and I suggest you read it before posting anything here again.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That would not be open source: https://opensource.org/osd

[–] CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

It is ok to question the benefits of open source provisions. They are written by humans and are fallible.

[–] kreynen@kbin.melroy.org 11 points 1 day ago

@CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml we already did this a decade ago with the Do No Evil license in https://www.json.org/license.html and learned the approach is not compatible with FOSS. Projects have added a layer of accountability with contributor agreements, but those only limit your ability to participate in the development of the project directly. They don't limit your rights to do what you want with the code.

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 22 hours ago

There's too much of a fine line in what is considered hate and what is considered "alternative facts". The current state in the US shows how language can be twisted to mean the opposite and how easy it has always been to dehumanize some group in order to make laws not apply to them.

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There has been some push to group an acceptable use policy into the license itself, so for instance you can stipulate that it can't be used for military projects. I think that's a perfectly valid extension since there's already a mechanism in place to say you can't use it for commercial projects. Here are some licenses that try to achieve that: https://ethicalsource.dev/licenses/

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 2 points 18 hours ago

Best take I've seen in the thread so far.

[–] LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago

I think it's important to consider that the GNU General Public License is really only a part of the Free Software Movement, which is "An effort by a group of people to achieve a social or political goal". That movement is defined by a group of people and a goal and has "infrastructure", such as "The Free Software Foundation" ("a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization"). "The idea of the Free Software Movement is that computer users deserve the freedom to form a community", but if you want to accomplish a different goal, it might be useful to clearly communicate that goal to other people to create a different movement (and create new "infrastructure" to support your effort).

Changing only a part of the GNU General Public License might make it incoherent or otherwise a hindrance to your goal in a way that you might not expect. It might be better to focus on talking with other people about a goal of yours, and you might discover that you can be most effective without investing any energy in creating a new license for software, but if you determine that creating a new license is important you can create a comprehensive design for one to match your efforts more closely.

It seems that your goal might be summarized with "I want people to be able to help themselves (using software) without contributing to spreading hate" ("putting a motion in the positive is a rule in parliamentary procedures").

See also "Chesterton’s Lamp-Post" (a suggestion to only start to act when you actually know what you want the final result to be) and "Chesterton's fence" (a suggestion to not change things when you don't know what the final result will be) for some context about what an undesirable design/plan is.

[–] tapdattl@lemmy.world 0 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

How about instead of restricting use of the software, adding in a clause that states "Use of this software is a formal acknowledgement and agreement by the user that race and gender are a social construct, gender identity and sexual orientation is a spectrum, humans can not be illegal,... " etc.

Thus use of the software is not restricted and is still open source, but forces groups, organizations, and people who disagree with the above to acknowledge something counter to their system of power.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

i dont think that would be actually meaningful in any way unless its something that can have actual consequences for them. theyve shown they themselves think their own words are meaningless.

[–] HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 2 points 16 hours ago

I think you underestimate the hate.

For the organisations that want to deny the ideals suggested. Using software under such a licence would lose them support. So when developers select such a licence. The software itself gets recognised as such. Meaning any shitty organisation using it gets labeled unacceptable to their very user base.

So requiring the acceptance of these facts would have the same effect as anything else.