[HN Gopher] A reminder that you should double-check the licenses...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A reminder that you should double-check the licenses for software
       you use
        
       Author : serverholic
       Score  : 94 points
       Date   : 2021-03-04 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | bjt2n3904 wrote:
       | You know, it wasn't too long ago that people were unpublishing
       | repos because they learned ICE was using their software. There
       | was a strong drive to add a code of ethics to software, and an
       | attempt to make software developers liable for how people use (or
       | misuse) their software.
       | 
       | Opposition to this idea was very poorly received.
       | 
       | What makes this any different? Are we for using OSS to try and
       | drive morality, or not?
       | 
       | (My answer is no to both accounts, for the record, and hasn't
       | changed.)
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | Codes of Ethics and licenses are somewhat orthogonal.
         | 
         | There are various engineering codes of ethics. Without looking,
         | I think both the ACM and IEEE have them. I'd observe though
         | that doesn't keep engineers from working on nuclear weapons for
         | example. Which one may or may not agree with.
         | 
         | In general, I don't think the idea of ethical licenses which
         | was at least a somewhat hot topic in certain circles a while
         | back really was a popular idea overall. And, in any case, I
         | haven't heard it come up for a while.
        
           | bjt2n3904 wrote:
           | It's like we're rediscovering morality from first principles.
           | 
           | "Haha, look at those old fashioned religions and their quaint
           | religious texts. How shocking that someone would not know how
           | to behave if it weren't for some words on a page. Anyways,
           | I've just submitted a pull request to update the terms on our
           | code of ethics that all users are bound to adhere to. It's
           | very important to use the software to advance social causes!"
        
         | thatguy0900 wrote:
         | What makes this different is that is is trying to enforce
         | unpopular ethics
        
       | airhead969 wrote:
       | It's likely this license is illegal and/or unenforceable in many
       | jurisdictions. Also, given the craziness contained in it, it's
       | that much more certain. Probably better off avoiding lunacy in
       | the first place.
        
       | mytailorisrich wrote:
       | " _The Work shall not be used by any person or entity for any
       | systems, activities, products, services or other uses that (i)
       | lobby for, promote, or support the following activities or
       | materials or (ii) that derive a majority of income from the
       | following activities or materials:
       | 
       | sex trafficking ..._"
       | 
       | So I can use the Work for a product that does not derive _the
       | majority_ of income from sex trafficking, etc.
       | 
       | Also, what is " _excessively gory_ "? One arm chopped off ok, two
       | is excessive?
       | 
       | I wonder if they really thought this through...
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | > Also, what is "excessively gory"? One arm chopped off ok, two
         | is excessive?
         | 
         | Given that the licensed software is a library intended for use
         | in game development, this is actually an important question!
        
         | microtherion wrote:
         | It just has to stay within the boundaries of taste set by the
         | Holy Bible, e.g.:
         | 
         | Gore:
         | 
         | > For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his
         | fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he
         | hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be
         | cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases,
         | and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. (Isaiah 34)
         | 
         | Sex:
         | 
         | > Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her
         | youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and
         | lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of
         | donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. (Ezekiel 23)
         | 
         | So, you know, as long as you go easy on the depiction of BBQ
         | and shrimp, you're probably going to be OK.
        
         | crdrost wrote:
         | I mean those sorts of issues are unavoidable and would be
         | discussed in a court where there would probably be some
         | invocation of what "a typical person finds" offensive, as has
         | happened in obscenity cases before.
         | 
         | What I made sure to be part of my very popular answer on the
         | OSS stack exchange about GPL, is a very careful perspective I
         | have on this whole licensing debate. And that is, a license
         | should be understood as fundamentally "about" what you are
         | willing to sue over. Like, folks take a very moral view of
         | licenses, what "should" you do with the software, what "can't"
         | you do with it, etc., and the pragmatic statement is: you can
         | do things, you just might get sued. A license is saying what
         | conditions will definitely not brook a lawsuit.
         | 
         | When you start to see licenses-as-lawsuits, the BSD and MIT
         | licenses are just like "look I don't want to sue you and I
         | don't want you to sue me, let's agree to not do that." The GPL
         | is much more "look I don't want to sue you and I don't want you
         | to sue anybody else and I would be willing to sue you to stop
         | you from suing other people," which is why it is much much
         | longer than those other languages, that's a much more subtle
         | point.
         | 
         | This is just saying "look I for the most part don't want to sue
         | you but if I find out that you are promoting things that I find
         | deeply morally offensive, such as {insert list of topics} then
         | I might sue you if you're using my software for that." There's
         | nothing too "not-thought-through" about this, it's just a
         | matter that might have to be litigated where you say "look I
         | don't personally lobby for abortion, just abortion-lobbyists
         | use my platform" and some lawyers make some reasonable cases on
         | both sides and some judge decides on some clarifying line as a
         | result of the argument.
        
           | mytailorisrich wrote:
           | " _excessively gory_ " is open to interpretation but it's a
           | strange concept to allow gory but not excessively gory...
           | 
           | On the other hand, the other point of my previous comment is
           | not open to interpretation: Not the majority of income is
           | fine and because they use 'or' the fact that I lobby,
           | promote, or support is irrelevant and all that matters is the
           | majority of income. So I can use the Work for a free app that
           | promotes abortion, for example. This is permitted although
           | this is contradicting what they seem to want to achieve.
        
             | mannerheim wrote:
             | I would imagine that otherwise if you happened to have a
             | client who derived income from sex trafficking that would
             | present a problem.
             | 
             | Or even a client's client.
             | 
             | E.g., Paypal might be deriving income from sex trafficking
             | if a sex worker takes payment via it.
             | 
             | Not that the rest of the license is unworkably vague, but
             | that limitation at least makes some sense.
        
       | nanoscopic wrote:
       | It is extremely difficult to get adequate funding for open source
       | software. The various "open source" licenses are inadequate to
       | ensure any funding.
       | 
       | The only standard licenses that in any way help to get paid for
       | producing open source are the non-commercial licenses and they
       | are frowned upon by the community. Why are they frowned on?
       | Because companies wishing to use the software to make money don't
       | want to pay for software; they just want to use it for free. They
       | additionally commonly don't contribute back changes.
       | 
       | I have begun shifting the license for all of the software I have
       | created to a custom license because I want to prohibit commercial
       | use by companies that can and should pay for my software, while
       | still allowing commercial use freely by anyone else. As a result
       | I have a license with a list of specific banned companies. It
       | isn't considered "open source" because of this, but I need to
       | make a living somehow.
       | 
       | Giving away software for free doesn't pay my bills.
       | 
       | I dislike these discussions because it usually amounts to a
       | mixture of the following.
       | 
       | 1. "Everyone should only use truly free GPL etc because it
       | ensures everyone can use the software for free!"
       | 
       | 2. Diatribe on how evil custom licenses are, usually quoting
       | Stallman
       | 
       | 3. Anything except discussion of the severe under-funding of
       | heavily used and crucial open source software. Remember all the
       | OpenSSL problems? Did any of you read the comments from the devs?
       | They basically said "please pay us! we are broke!"
       | 
       | 4. Mockery of people with strong religious beliefs. While I agree
       | many/most/all of these people are "out there", I still think they
       | should be treated respectfully and not mocked.
       | 
       | If there is to be discussion about licenses, I'd like to see a
       | serious discussion on how to simultaneously:
       | 
       | 1. Prevent the abuse of licenses ( mainly by large software
       | companies )
       | 
       | 2. Enable free and open usage by all non license abusers
       | 
       | 3. Ensure developers get paid for their work
        
       | davidfstr wrote:
       | If you suppress any knee jerk reaction you might have against
       | religious associations in the preamble, the actual restrictions
       | in the "Permitted Uses" section seem fairly reasonable to me, if
       | not with more moral restrictions than usual:
       | 
       | https://github.com/katharostech/ldtk-rs/blob/master/LICENSE....
       | 
       | Most OSes have a license restricting use in nuclear power plants.
       | This license adds similar restrictions like "cannot use in
       | adtech". :)
        
         | JoshTriplett wrote:
         | The main problem with this is that it misrepresents itself as
         | an "Open Source" license, while not actually being Open Source.
         | 
         | People can write and use a license with any restrictions they
         | want; there are plenty of proprietary licenses out there. I
         | hope such licenses don't get _used_ or _propagated_ by anyone
         | else, but people are still free to write them. But it would be
         | especially problematic if people use code under such a license,
         | or worse, put new code under such a license, while _thinking_
         | they 're using an Open Source license.
        
         | jamesrr39 wrote:
         | This reminds me of the original JSON parse/stringify license,
         | which stated
         | 
         | > The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil
         | 
         | This sounds all good and well, and in theory is great, but in
         | practice how does this work? Who defines what is "Good", and
         | what is "Evil".
         | 
         | Admittedly this license is much more targeted but there are a
         | few ambiguous ones:
         | 
         | > sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other
         | media
         | 
         | the understanding of what is explicit varies wildly between
         | different cultures across the world; which understanding is
         | applicable here? Can an art gallery/auction house that sells
         | lots of portraits use this software? Does it depend where the
         | art gallery is located geographically (and what if it has many
         | sites around the world)?
         | 
         | > mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information
         | 
         | What counts as surveillance? For example, can I use my software
         | to track where you as a user go? I guess not. But then what if
         | I then say it's for a "rent a bike" service, that has a
         | partnership with the local city, which uses that data to figure
         | out where to build cyclepaths?
         | 
         | I'm not saying that the objectives the license is trying to
         | achieve aren't worthy goals (and perhaps the example use cases
         | I gave have nothing to do with the project). I just think that
         | the practical situation ends up being more complicated in the
         | end than writers of the license intend.
        
         | vorpalhex wrote:
         | Or used in sexually suggestive content, or used in any way to
         | limit workers, or used for violence (except for public good)
         | or...
        
       | airhead969 wrote:
       | _Every Sperm is Sacred_
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk
        
       | thepangolino wrote:
       | Is that a variation for he Apple iTunes license that prohibits me
       | from using apps to build nuclear weapons?
        
       | lainga wrote:
       | Reminds me of SQLite and the Rule of St. Benedict.
       | https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | Apatheist here. Behavioral rules are fine. I itch when
         | expectations are laid down to sacrifice moral compasses to
         | unseen agenc(ies) and unproven agents.
        
         | pgeorgi wrote:
         | With the difference that sqlite's code of ethics applies to the
         | (more or less closed set of) sqlite developers while that
         | license applies to whoever wants to use the product - and small
         | libraries (such as ldtk-rs) quickly sneak in somewhere,
         | potentially creating lots of pain down the road.
         | 
         | So that "reminder" seems appropriate and package managers that
         | download arbitrary cruft should have a license acceptance field
         | somewhere to reject anything that's incompatible.
        
         | butt_hugger wrote:
         | Wild that software that was developed for guided missile
         | destroyers has " Do not murder. ", " Love your enemies. ", "
         | Hate no one. " etc. in their Code of Ethics.
        
           | HideousKojima wrote:
           | >No one is required to follow The Rule, to know The Rule, or
           | even to think that The Rule is a good idea. The Founder of
           | SQLite believes that anyone who follows The Rule will live a
           | happier and more productive life, but individuals are free to
           | dispute or ignore that advice if they wish.
           | 
           | >The founder of SQLite and all current developers have
           | pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their
           | ability. They view The Rule as their promise to all SQLite
           | users of how the developers are expected to behave. This is a
           | one-way promise, or covenant. In other words, the developers
           | are saying: "We will treat you this way regardless of how you
           | treat us."
           | 
           | Nothing wrong with having an ideal to strive for, even if you
           | aren't always living up to it.
        
       | hermitcrab wrote:
       | >The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66
       | books of the Holy Bible are 100% true
       | 
       | Even the bits that contradict each other?
        
       | davidfstr wrote:
       | Seems reasonable to me that if a prospective dependency has a
       | license that isn't automatically tagged as a common license type
       | that you be expected to actually read the license. This seems
       | like basic standard of practice.
        
       | loloquwowndueo wrote:
       | Lol. " The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full
       | 66 books of the Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and
       | that He alone is the ultimate authority for what is good and
       | just."
       | 
       | Are there legal implications of this premise being false? God is
       | imaginary https://godisimaginary.com/.
       | 
       | Also the bible is ok with stuff such as slavery, can I use the
       | software to promote slavery?
        
         | airhead969 wrote:
         | Slavery is explicitly excluded. It doesn't say anything about
         | indentured servitude or underpaid/overworked wage slavery
         | though.
        
       | 1123581321 wrote:
       | Can the title please be changed to something descriptive like
       | "The Katharos License v0.1.0"?
        
         | serverholic wrote:
         | I don't want people to think I wrote the license. Also, the
         | purpose of this post is more general than this specific
         | license. I feel the current title is appropriately general.
        
       | Raed667 wrote:
       | I would love see someone build a pornographic themed game using
       | this project just to see if such a licence can be enforced.
        
       | faho wrote:
       | So this claims the bible as the source of truth yet can't be
       | allowed to produce it as it contains sexually suggestive
       | material.
       | 
       | "Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts
       | satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her
       | love"
       | 
       | (proverbs 5:19)
        
         | grawprog wrote:
         | Which is really odd, because then it gives the full list of
         | prohibited uses outlined in the license and none of them really
         | have anything to do with the bible at all save one that tends
         | to be pushed by bible folks and in fact, bans many things
         | advocated by the bible, like slavery.
         | 
         | >sex trafficking - human trafficking
         | 
         | - slavery
         | 
         | - indentured servitude
         | 
         | - warfare
         | 
         | - weapons manufacturing - war crimes
         | 
         | - violence ( except when required to protect public safety )
         | 
         | - weapons of mass destruction
         | 
         | - sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any other
         | media
         | 
         | - excessively gory and/or violent images, artwork, or any other
         | media
         | 
         | - abortion - murder - mass surveillance and/or stealing of
         | private information
         | 
         | - hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender
         | identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality
         | 
         | >The Work shall not be used by any person, entity, product,
         | service or other use that (i) lobbies against, discourages, or
         | frustrates the following activities or (ii) that derives a
         | majority of income from actions that discourage, or frustrate
         | the following activities:
         | 
         | -peaceful assembly and association (including worker
         | associations)
         | 
         | -democratic processes
        
           | Robin_Message wrote:
           | Not a supporter or otherwise of this particular license, but
           | I think I could give Bible references for most of these (not
           | giving chapter and verse but trust me if you don't recognise
           | it!):
           | 
           | - sex trafficking
           | 
           | Sodom and Gomorrah
           | 
           | - human trafficking
           | 
           | - slavery
           | 
           | - indentured servitude
           | 
           | Neither slave nor free in Christ Jesus.
           | 
           | - warfare
           | 
           | - weapons manufacturing - war crimes
           | 
           | - violence ( except when required to protect public safety )
           | 
           | - weapons of mass destruction
           | 
           | They will beat their spears into ploughshares and swords into
           | pruning hooks.
           | 
           | - sexually suggestive or explicit images, artwork, or any
           | other media
           | 
           | And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out
           | 
           | - excessively gory and/or violent images, artwork, or any
           | other media
           | 
           | - abortion - murder
           | 
           | Thou shalt not kill
           | 
           | - mass surveillance and/or stealing of private information
           | 
           | ??? The Bible does say little on mass surveillance for some
           | reason.
           | 
           | - hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender
           | identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality
           | 
           | Has no-one condemned you? Then neither do I.
           | 
           | -peaceful assembly and association (including worker
           | associations)
           | 
           | Every day they continued to meet together in the temple
           | courts. (But I can't give a reference for unions!)
           | 
           | -democratic processes
           | 
           | Give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
        
       | hannob wrote:
       | This is why some people have fought hard to have some standards
       | what is an acceptable FOSS license.
       | 
       | Things would be much harder if we wouldn't have such standards.
       | Imagine a software ecosystem with a wild variety of licensing
       | terms with all kinds of crazy clauses.
       | 
       | Remember that the next time some company with a deceptive "it's
       | not open source, but we surely want it to sound like open source"
       | license comes along. I was downvoted plenty of times trying to
       | argue for more honesty from those players.
        
         | bjt2n3904 wrote:
         | > Imagine a software ecosystem with a wild variety of licensing
         | terms with all kinds of crazy clauses.
         | 
         | People are dunking on trying to figure out what is considered
         | "excessively gory".
         | 
         | What does "welcoming and inclusive language" mean?
        
         | davidfstr wrote:
         | No license is going to satisfy everyone in all contexts.
         | 
         | For example I cannot use GPL at work (based on my own rules as
         | team lead) but am open to it in personal projects.
         | 
         | And other folks would consider having something NOT GPL
         | licensed to be suspect.
         | 
         | It is not possible to provide a uniform license that will be
         | acceptable to all in all circumstances.
        
           | jpmoral wrote:
           | I don't think they meant that there should be One True Open-
           | Source License but rather that open-source projects should
           | pick one of the 'standard' ones (GPL, MIT, etc.) instead of
           | writing their own.
        
             | davidfstr wrote:
             | Well, if by "open source" you mean broadly any software
             | available whose code is viewable on the internet, you're
             | essentially advocating for no projects that use
             | "nonstandard" licenses to exist.
             | 
             | That seems like a waste if there would be otherwise be
             | projects around with a nonstandard license that was
             | acceptable to a subset of users.
             | 
             | For example the CPython interpreter (the official
             | interpreter for the Python language) does not use a
             | standard license. Would you not want Python to exist?
        
               | mannerheim wrote:
               | Any permissive software license (which it seems CPython's
               | is) is broadly interchangeable with any other, and can be
               | used with both other permissive licenses and copyleft
               | licenses like the GPL. That can't happen with any license
               | that places restrictions on what it can be used for.
        
           | mannerheim wrote:
           | Even the hardest core Stallmanites aren't unwilling to use
           | BSD/MIT-licensed software, nor Stallman himself. In contrast,
           | these sorts of licenses that restrict what the software can
           | be used for are unequivocally condemned by the FSF.
        
         | HideousKojima wrote:
         | Stallman put it best many years ago:
         | 
         | >I've stated some of my views about other political issues,
         | about activities that are or aren't unjust. Your views might
         | differ, and that's precisely the point. If we accepted programs
         | with usage restrictions as part of a free operating system such
         | as GNU, people would come up with lots of different usage
         | restrictions. There would be programs banned for use in meat
         | processing, programs banned only for pigs, programs banned only
         | for cows, and programs limited to kosher foods. Someone who
         | hates spinach might write a program allowing use for processing
         | any vegetable except spinach, while a Popeye fan might allow
         | use only for spinach. There would be music programs allowed
         | only for rap music, and others allowed only for classical
         | music.
         | 
         | >The result would be a system that you could not count on for
         | any purpose. For each task you wish to do, you'd have to check
         | lots of licenses to see which parts of your system are off
         | limits for that task.
         | 
         | >How would users respond to that? I think most of them would
         | use proprietary systems. Allowing any usage restrictions
         | whatsoever in free software would mainly push users towards
         | nonfree software. Trying to stop users from doing something
         | through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective
         | as pushing on an object through a long, soft, straight piece of
         | spaghetti.
         | 
         | His words are just as valid about this license as they are
         | about the various "ethical open source" licenses that have
         | proliferated in recent years, whether they be of the "don't let
         | Amazon host our code" variety or the "totally not a thinly
         | veiled vehicle for injecting social justice politics into
         | software" sort.
        
           | tehjoker wrote:
           | Stallman is right but also he betrays his liberal leanings in
           | that he accepts that it is okay for private profit makers to
           | exploit whatever resources you produce. If licenses were only
           | useful for personal, school, or research without a specific
           | license from the publisher, that's not the end of the world
           | and comports with the value system of the publisher. Removing
           | the means of production from the marketplace is an
           | anarchist/socialist idea.
           | 
           | However, for something as fundamental as an operating system
           | (so long as it is a commodity), it does make sense to have a
           | liberalized base of restrictions on use.
           | 
           | Injecting social justice politics is fine. Politics are
           | present everywhere. People should express their opinions and
           | live their lives in accordance with them. The US in
           | particular has an obsession with pretending there is such a
           | thing as apolitical when it comes to economic activity.
        
             | HideousKojima wrote:
             | >Stallman is right but also he betrays his liberal leanings
             | in that he accepts that it is okay for private profit
             | makers to exploit whatever resources you produce. If
             | licenses were only useful for personal, school, or research
             | without a specific license from the publisher, that's not
             | the end of the world and comports with the value system of
             | the publisher. Removing the means of production from the
             | marketplace is an anarchist/socialist idea.
             | 
             | Which leads to fun situations where you have to determine
             | what is or isn't "commercial use." Truly free and open
             | licenses make that a non-issue, meaning software using them
             | are more likely to become widely adopted, which is the
             | entire point of the FOSS movement.
             | 
             | >Injecting social justice politics is fine. Politics are
             | present everywhere. People should express their opinions
             | and live their lives in accordance with them.
             | 
             | People are free to believe whatever they like, but creating
             | (largely legally unenforceable) licenses to do so only
             | hurts the adoption of free software (and helps large
             | commercial entities developing proprietary software). See,
             | for example, Bruce Perens's comments on the Berkeley SPICE
             | license, which explicitly disallowed use by the police of
             | South Africa. Even after Apartheid ended the police of
             | South Africa were barred from use:
             | 
             | https://perens.com/2019/09/23/sorry-ms-ehmke-the-
             | hippocratic...
             | 
             | Any license that places restrictions on what software can
             | be used for makes the entire free software world a
             | minefield.
        
               | tehjoker wrote:
               | I would agree with that. I guess that's the actual
               | struggle: get people to agree that preserving the
               | ecosystem as a whole is more important than anything
               | else. I love free software but I 100% can understand
               | differing perspectives.
               | 
               | Commercial use is pretty easy to understand though: are
               | you making money in excess of costs and are not non-
               | profit? Commercial use.
               | 
               | I suppose there are cases where a non-profit can violate
               | the spirit of the law. That's for the courts to decide or
               | you can make it clear by saying non-profits are okay no
               | matter what.
        
               | mannerheim wrote:
               | Ignoring the ambiguity of commercial use for which CC-BY-
               | NC licenses have long been criticised for, there are very
               | obvious reasons why they don't work for software.
               | 
               | Let's say we have a non-commercial photo-editing
               | application, call it NCIMP. You're a hobbyist
               | photographer, so your buddy wants to pay you to take
               | wedding photos for him. That's a commercial use, right?
               | Better get that commercial license... which you might not
               | be able to get if there are hundreds of contributors to
               | NCIMP and they don't have any organisation to whom
               | they're assigning copyright.
               | 
               | So from the end user perspective, either you're paying an
               | organisation for a commercial license, in which case it's
               | not that different from just getting a license for
               | Photoshop (sure, you'd have to pirate Photoshop to get it
               | for free, but they only really go after commercial users
               | for copyright infringement anyway and they mainly rely on
               | employees to snitch), or you've sunk time into learning
               | how to use a photo-editing application to develop skills
               | you can't even accept compensation for... At which point,
               | you may as well just have learned how to use Photoshop to
               | begin with; if you're starting to learn photography even
               | as a hobby, why choose to either limit yourself to never
               | being able to take a photography gig or have to relearn
               | new software for the same task? Even if you don't plan on
               | doing any paid work, it doesn't make sense to use it
               | unless the software is much better, which it probably
               | won't be if it's being developed by exclusively hobbyist
               | photographers who themselves can't use it for any
               | professional work.
        
       | mmastrac wrote:
       | Cargo should have an "acceptable licenses" field in the project
       | toml with a sensible default. I had to do a license audit in a
       | past role and it was a pain.
       | 
       | Mark licenses that "require further attention".
        
         | jacobmischka wrote:
         | Would be nice if built in, but cargo-deny is a neat project by
         | Embark that can do this:
         | https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny
        
           | mmastrac wrote:
           | Ah yeah, that seems useful, thanks.
        
           | JoshTriplett wrote:
           | I would love to see the functionality of cargo-deny built
           | into cargo, and a sensible set of defaults added that prevent
           | people from accidentally using proprietary code like this
           | (while still allowing people to use proprietary code if they
           | knowingly choose to, as well as allowing local first-party
           | code by default so this doesn't stymie people's own internal
           | development).
        
         | ComputerGuru wrote:
         | It already effectively does by having well-known identifiers
         | for acceptable values for the license field (eg "MIT") while
         | these off-the-beaten track licenses require a path to a
         | license. On crates.io, the license would be displayed as
         | "other" instead of Apache, MIT, etc.
        
       | revskill wrote:
       | There should be a short summarization of a LICENSE file, like
       | RECAP_LICENSE, then all users will read and understand it
       | thoroughly.
       | 
       | All of LICENSE file i've seen so far is lacking of a short recap.
        
         | robocat wrote:
         | https://tldrlegal.com/ is pretty good at summarising licenses.
         | It doesn't have a summary for this one yet though.
        
         | rurban wrote:
         | But then you would miss the bible is truth part.
        
           | airhead969 wrote:
           | I honestly thought I was reading the side of a Dr. Bronner's
           | soap bottle in the shower.
        
           | revskill wrote:
           | Just like every book/chapter has a
           | summarization/table_of_content ?
        
       | altgans wrote:
       | Doesn't this license defeat itself?
       | 
       | > The Katharos License is based on the premise that the full 66
       | books of the Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and
       | that He alone is the ultimate authority for what is good and
       | just.
       | 
       | vs.
       | 
       | > hate speech or discrimination based on age, gender, gender
       | identity, race, sexuality, religion, nationality
       | 
       | Just think about "Thou shalt have no other gods before me".
        
         | Chilinot wrote:
         | That's not the only contradiction either, the bible contains
         | plenty of rules on how to manage your slaves as well. And a
         | plethora of other stuff in direct violation of the license
         | rules. Like stoning women for example.
        
         | vesinisa wrote:
         | The Bible also contains passages calling homosexuality
         | "shameful", among others. And it's hard to think of a book more
         | discriminating by gender:
         | 
         | "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over
         | a man; rather, she is to remain quiet."
         | 
         | -1 Timothy 2:12
        
         | spijdar wrote:
         | Well, you _could_ argue that was directed at the Hebrew people
         | under Moses, and not a directive to everyone everywhere. It 's
         | not contradictory to say not to discriminate against people's
         | different religions while forbidding polytheism within your own
         | religion.
        
           | HideousKojima wrote:
           | Plenty of modern Christians believe the Law of Moses was
           | superseded by Christ. Acts 15 even has a list of the parts of
           | the law that the apostles told members of the church that
           | they were still expected to follow, but even this isn't
           | straightforward thanks to stuff like Paul's comments on
           | eating food offered to idols.
        
       | actionowl wrote:
       | I can't help but be reminded about this open source software
       | license comic: https://burntsushi.net/stuff/wtfpl-strip.jpg
        
       | snicksnak wrote:
       | This is totally not usable for any serious project.
        
       | alexfromapex wrote:
       | Especially at startups where you don't know if they were ever
       | truly vetted
        
       | quickthrower2 wrote:
       | Poe's law applies. A software licences job isn't to encode
       | "morality". It just there to specify what rights are being
       | granted.
        
       | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
       | > _With the Katharos License we want to promote the openness,
       | sharing, and collaboration that is common in the Open Source
       | community, while at the same time protecting the people who may
       | otherwise become victims of the destructive application of our
       | shared works. We want the works that we share to be uplifting and
       | helpful and we want them to be used to benefit people._
       | 
       | So adtech, spam farms, and extortion are A-OK, but no genitals.
       | Channeling my inner Olsen, "You got it, dude."
        
         | WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
         | > violence ( except when required to protect public safety ) >
         | abortion
         | 
         | I mean, if a cop kills someone, isn't an abortion of their
         | children. I'm pretty high right now so I'm not sure.
        
           | tehjoker wrote:
           | The "except when required to protect public safety" clause
           | renders that section inoperative because every political
           | movement, army, and police force that uses violence will
           | always characterize it as defensive and necessary no matter
           | how obscene and criminal it is. That said, defensive struggle
           | is a real thing, but difficult to enforce via license or even
           | via Article II of the UN Charter.
        
         | mannerheim wrote:
         | The first two could qualify as 'mass surveillance and/or
         | stealing of private information' depending how liberally that's
         | interpreted. Extortion is already illegal, anyway (but then
         | again, so are many of the prohibited activities in this
         | license, although I suppose it's not illegal to simply
         | 'support' them as this license prohibits).
        
           | satokema_work wrote:
           | its not stealing if people are giving that information out
           | for free or if it's just metadata, nothing immoral there
        
             | airhead969 wrote:
             | Isn't that the Office Space crime rationalization?
        
             | mannerheim wrote:
             | Could be mass surveillance, depending on how liberally
             | that's interpreted.
        
             | AlexandrB wrote:
             | > its not stealing if people are giving that information
             | out for free
             | 
             | If I leave a pie to cool on my windowsill and you take it
             | it's still stealing even if there was no formal agreement
             | or security measures in place to protect the pie.
             | 
             | Adtech is kind of like that. If I give a calendar app
             | access to my contacts I certainly don't expect it to take
             | that information and use it for tracking, targeting, and
             | marketing purposes as well. For me to "give" you that
             | information for free, you'd have to ask for it honestly.
             | And yet Facebook - an ad tech company - has been fighting
             | this kind of consent in the next iOS patch tooth-and-nail.
        
               | a1369209993 wrote:
               | > If I leave a pie to cool on my windowsill and you take
               | it it's still stealing even if there was no formal
               | agreement or security measures in place to protect the
               | pie.
               | 
               | This is a excellent analogy, thank you.
        
           | vkou wrote:
           | Extortion is illegal, and yet, 'mugshot' businesses continue
           | to operate in the open.
        
             | gambiting wrote:
             | Not to mention all sort of "review" websites where your
             | company is suddenly flooded with extremely negative reviews
             | and you get a helpful call from the website owner being
             | like "hey, I see you got a lot of bad reviews, but don't
             | worry, for only $5000 you can get our premium membership
             | that lets you get them removed".
             | 
             | Ask me how I know.
        
               | stareatgoats wrote:
               | How do you know?
        
               | gambiting wrote:
               | Because it happened to my company. A "review your
               | employer" website went from having few reviews of us to
               | literally having few thousand reviews in a week(which in
               | itself was a dead giweaway as we had maybe 50 employees
               | total with 100 over the lifetime of the company), all
               | extremely negative, but very simple and vague in content
               | so you couldn't make a legal case against any one of
               | them.
               | 
               | We took it to a lawyer but he said that it's clearly
               | blackmail but it would be extremely hard to get any kind
               | of judgement against it. We just ignored it and that
               | company eventually folded and disappeared and the website
               | with them, but I'm pretty sure it made hiring somewhat
               | more difficult for a while.
        
         | tomxor wrote:
         | I think it's meant as a joke... you need to read a bit further
         | before you hit the "oh this is _supposed_ to be complete BS"
         | part:
         | 
         | > The definition of what is "good" can be considered highly
         | subjective [...blah blah] the definition of what is "good" and
         | "pure", come from the Word of God, The Holy Bible. The Katharos
         | License is based on the premise that the full 66 books of the
         | Holy Bible are 100% true and inspired by God and that He alone
         | is the ultimate authority for what is good and just.
         | 
         | Says it all really.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | ViViDboarder wrote:
           | It's not. This is on their website linked from the GitHub
           | profile:
           | 
           | > Katharos Technology is a team that wants to make video
           | games and other content and technology to the glory of God.
        
           | serverholic wrote:
           | Not a joke actually. Here's their About Us page
           | https://katharostech.com/about-us
        
       | rebuilder wrote:
       | It's going to be an interesting day in court if this license ever
       | gets litigated over.
        
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