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by purple_ducks 2469 days ago
Wow, that's some license addendum:

> This software should not be used to promote or profit from:

> violence, hate, and division,

> environmental destruction,

> abuse of human rights, or

> the destruction of people's physical and mental health.

6 comments

There is no license addendum. It is explicitly stated that they are asking you to respect this rule.

> The code is released under the BSD-3 License (see LICENSE.txt for details), but we also ask that users respect the following:

The license is in LICENSE.txt and that statement seems to unambiguously confirm that LICENSE.txt is the beginning and end of actual legal obligations.

It is not uncommon for FOSS projects to make requests without legal contract about how users use software. In this case it may simply be SalesForce trying to preliminarily distance themselves from malicious actors, with knowledge that the license would be useless if it attempted to give these rules teeth.

Wouldn't it be better to simply require that all texts produced with this software to be marked as AI-generated? That should rule out many nefarious uses.
Forget for a moment that they don't define what they mean by any of this, what they also do is cloud the license. You called it a license addendum... but I don't believe that it is from my reading... having said that: you can't tell whether you are right or I am clearly.

There's an old saying (that may well be impolitic these days): "you can't be half pregnant". It seems that's what they maintainers are shooting for... I'd urge them to get off the fence one way or the other.

This is the sort of license that effectively says "If you don't really give a damn about licenses, then you're allowed to use this. If you get pedantic about licenses, then you're not."

Similar in principle to AGPLv3 or even WTFPL.

Yes if you read the license itself (which I did).

The issue is there's a license section in the README. There they reiterate that they use BSD 3 clause... and then have something that looks like "but...."

Again, as I read it: they're BSD 3 clause licensed and the README is an expression of their own (ill-expressed) hopes rather than a licensing requirement.... but I could see how some could be confused and indeed... maybe they are, too: and that's what would worry me about this statement.

What are the chances this could actually be upheld as enforcible by a court?
The licence is BSD-3... so completely unenforceable. They're just asking nicely and you can kindly tell them to f off.
So Salesforce could never use it?
Not sure which of those you think they would be violating? And they own it, so the license doesn't apply to them, it applies to everyone else. (Apologies if you're making a joke and I'm ruining it)
You can very easily argue that Salesforce, by dealing with companies who do it, does all of the things that are forbidden by the license.
Pretty much. My question is who would enforce such bizarre terms anyway?
How easy is it for companies to dodge terms like this by claiming not to know what their clients do with their products?

I’d say most social media platforms check most or all of those boxes in some form, but I can also see them claiming not to know how their platforms are being used.