Ethical-source licenses: what are they?

ethical-source licenses

Surely you have ever heard the term licensing ethical code or ethical-source. Some Hippocratic licenses that have not had a strong adoption, although that does not mean that they are not used. However, the truth is that these ethical-source licenses have not had an easy path ...

You should also know YES (Organization for Ethical Source), a non-profit group. It was founded by the leader of the ethical code and creator of the Hippocratic License, and Contributor Covenant, Coraline Ada Ehmke. She starts from the idea that the concept of free and open source software "Freedom Zero" (the freedom to run software as desired and for any purpose) is outdated.

So much Coraline ada As the proponents of these ethical-source licenses, they do not want free or open source software to be used for any purpose, but rather want to limit use to avoid evil ends.

As they well report from these movements, the world has changed since the birth of these open licenses, and has become somewhat more hostile, and now open source is used for mass surveillance, military, government, and other human rights abusing uses around the world. For this reason, in the face of this new course and the new technological, social and political challenges that we face, the defenders of ethical-source licenses intend to take power away for these undesirable ends.

With, for example, the Hippocratic License 2.1, is part of a license similar to MIT, but several clauses have been added. These clauses determine who or what the project under this license can be used for. In fact, human rights are defined as those described in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Global Compact.

Therefore, the software could not be used by any person or entity for any type of activity that violates any Human Rights Law.

Regardless of the opinion of these types of licenses, the truth is that they will not be well received, at least in the most relevant open source projects. The reason is that there are many projects that are currently used for purposes for which many would not agree, with very powerful entities behind. So, I don't think they let these kinds of licenses stop them from doing what they do. What's more, even if they were implanted, I doubt they would be respected ...