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

These kinds of "ethical" restricted licensing terms often backfire. The licenses behind the OCB mode of operation for block ciphers (https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/license.htm) was intended to prevent it from being used by the military for ethical reasons, but that resulted in it not being accepted by NIST and thus never incorporated into IEEE 802.11i (instead a much slower mode, CCM, was used).

The best we can do is ensure that software cannot be monopolized by those in power, and that is accomplished by regular FOSS licenses that put everyone on a more equal playing field.

Ultimately any "no evil" license is useless against any evil doer, who by definition does not obey rules and laws.

And any license cannot constraint state actors, like Putin (as head of Russia) as by definition sovereign actors are above the laws and license can only be useful under the laws under sovereignty of a country..

My thoughts on various other bits and pieces:

> Another possible approach to ending proprietary software is a universal boycott on authorship of proprietary software (perhaps through mass unionization of software developers). This is one of my favorite “thought experiments”, as it shows how much power individual software developers have regarding proprietary software. However, this universal boycott is also politically unviable, at least as long as proprietary software companies continue to pay such exorbitant salaries relative to other fields of endeavor.

It's not just about money. Some of my coworkers and colleagues at various FAANG companies are totally hostile to the idea of unionization *in general*, let alone the idea of specifically forcing Big Tech to open up all of its software. AWU, to cite a high-profile example, is much more focused on "traditional" social justice issues like fair pay and better working conditions (particularly for non-tech workers, who typically get a much worse deal than the average software engineer). AWU has taken positions on issues like user privacy, but I'm not aware of the union having a position on universal software freedom, nor do I think that AWU could successfully advocate for such a thing.

> Copyleft generally works reasonably well as a strategy [for ending proprietary software], but it admittedly requires constant vigilance.

The portion enclosed in square brackets is my interpretation of this line; it does not appear in the original, but based on the context, I believe my interpretation is at least reasonable. Frankly, I am deeply skeptical of this statement. Copyleft works well for creating more FOSS, which is a Good Thing in its own right, but I do not believe it has done very much to defeat proprietary software in practice. The vast majority of people are using tons of proprietary software on a daily basis, and to a first approximation, nobody thinks this is a problem outside of the FOSS movement (and a few highly related movements like right-to-repair).

> Over the last twenty years, we've received many reports of GPL violations in the Russian Federation, but we don't pursue them — not because they shouldn't be addressed, but because, under Putin's regime, it's highly unlikely we can get a fair hearing to uphold software freedom and rights for Russian citizens.

This, on the other hand, is exactly right. Nobody tries to enforce licensing in Russia, regardless of whether it's a FOSS license or a proprietary license. Licenses are paper, and there were already numerous pieces of paper which explicitly forbade Russia from invading Ukraine.

> For example, FOSS developers should refuse to work specifically on bug reports from companies who don't pay their workers a living wage. I also recommend that FOSS communities create (alongside their Codes of Conduct for behavior inside the project), written rules of the types of entities that the projects will officially assist with volunteer labor, or (in the case of a commercial FOSS community or organization), what types of entities the community will engage in business deals.

As an employee of a FAANG, I probably shouldn't state an opinion on this, but I will point out that this sort of thing is going to be controversial, at least for some FOSS projects.

> Every FOSS license in existence permits capricious distribution; software freedom guarantees the right to refuse to distribute new versions of the software. (i.e., Copyleft does not require that you publish all your software on the Internet for everyone, or that you give equal access to everyone — rather, it merely requires that those whom you chose to give legitimate access to the software also receive CCS). FOSS projects should thus avoid providing Putin easy access to updates to their FOSS.

I don't understand how this is meant to be accomplished. Geo-blocking is not going to be effective against a nation-state adversary. Heck, it's not even going to be effective against a moderately technically savvy consumer.

These conversations usually end up pointing out that the "ethical source" licenses that exist at the moment impinge upon Freedom 0 ("The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose"). But we can argue that GPL 3 restricts a small number of actual use cases in the name of ensuring that users retain the right to exercise the other freedoms, so I think a reasonable thought exercise is "Would a license that forbid its use in restricting the ability for people to exercise their rights to use other free software" be free software? Using such covered code in a weapon used to kill someone would prevent that person from exercising their rights to use other free software, and as such would be forbidden. As framed, I think this would be a pretty terrible license - it's vague enough that any number of awful outcomes would ensue. But would it be non-free?

Here's a very quick and simple way to support Ukraine: hit the "unsubscribe" button as soon as you read something trying to make a direct connection between FOSS and the latest Russian invasion. Don't waste time reading that sort of non-sense, obviously don't waste even more time answering that sort of non-sense and spend instead your limited and precious time researching how you could actually make some difference.

If you have a good, real-world relationship with your uncle, trying to convince him to stop reading lunatics on the Internet is useful. Keep trying to do that. On the other hand, answering random lunatics on the Internet is worse than a waste of time, it's giving them credit. Fight misinformation by creating, supporting and promoting good information, never answer to the former directly.

XKCD 386

Here's a very possible scenario:

Where I'm from, there are no intellectual propery laws, and there probably won't ever be for the foreseeable future. (Fact)

Say my government decides to do something you don't like, whether it be as simple as taking a sociopolitical stance that you ABSOLUTELY hate, or going as far as invading a country that you love. (Hypothetical)

Would forbidding people from my country from using your software by changing your license do you any good? Down here, everyone pirates movies, games, music, and software. The "laws" did not stop them.

Some people are just so overwhelmed by their egos.

"But I *must* take action against them!"

It's futile, it's pathetic, and in the worst case, you might be woefully wrong and look back at yourself in disgust in a year or two because of how wrong you were. Believe me I've been there.

The *real* question is whether it counts as distribution when someone fires a smart munition or missile running GNU GPLed code at you, and if so, what forms the offer for source code can take in order to remain compliant.