[giraffe_lady]

It's very reasonable to not want your work used by arms dealers, and it is in fact your purview to "ideologically police" the uses your work is applied to.

"If you don't want to help create war machines you can't contribute" is your solution, not mine.

Historically the conventions of open source has been that use is completely without restriction, but there has always been conflict about that. The domain is new enough that I wouldn't consider it settled yet.

[rgrmrts]

But the software licensing explicitly allows your work being used by anyone (as long as they adhere to the license). If you don't want your work to be used by entities you disagree with you can not contribute to the project or advocate for use of a different license.

[ohwellhere]

This is a great point, and perhaps we do need a new popular license or set of variants that exclude certain industries. "MIT-Peaceful" perhaps.

I know very many people who would refuse to work for certain companies and in certain industries — and have rejected certain projects — but would happily contribute to something MIT licensed that would end up in those systems anyway!

[rgrmrts]

There are two licenses that include restrictions like that that I know of:

- https://github.com/raisely/NoHarm/blob/publish/LICENSE.md

- https://firstdonoharm.dev/

[someplaceguy]

> perhaps we do need a new popular license or set of variants that exclude certain industries.

Such a license would not be considered open source or Free Software.

Someone else posted this link about a similar situation in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#Software_lic...

[cycomanic]

The software licencing is also completely irrelevant here, nobody said that Anduril can't use Nix. The issue was that the community largely did not want them as sponsors. There is a very big difference to allowing someone (or some company) to use your software and wanting to participate in a conference where the same company is a sponsor.

[rgrmrts]

I honestly don't understand what objecting to them as a sponsor does. Sponsorship benefits the project for everyone. Is the objection to both the sponsorship and their presence in the conference? Folks who don't want to engage with them at the conference can simply not engage with them.

Also AFAIK one of the conferences objected to their presence, so they weren't able to have a booth there. Individual participants are in their right to make these decisions and act on them (like that one conference did). What exactly is the outcome people want?

[ParetoOptimal]

People don't want Anduril to benefit from the NixOS they work on via publicity or association.

Most wouldn't have a problem with Anduril donating and asking for no sponsorship or other benefits in return.

[joepie91_]

The license allowing for something does not mean you are okay with anyone being part of your community.

[rgrmrts]

Sure, but that's an orthogonal point to the one OP made isn't it? Contributing to open source projects is incompatible with not wanting someone else to use your work based on ideological differences. Perhaps contributors don't think about this until they're faced with a situation that makes them uncomfortable and I sympathize with that and maybe we should start adding disclosures that say "your work may be used by entities you do not want using your work".

[haswell]

I do agree it's reasonable to not want this kind of use.

> it is in fact your purview to "ideologically police" the uses your work is applied to

But this seems like a fantasy to me and directly at odds with the realities of open source.

The reality is that open source code is used for a myriad of purposes that I would consider myself ideologically opposed to. But this is ultimately the cost and tradeoff of open source in the system we currently have. Similar to the argument for free speech, in which we tolerate the fact that people have the right to say truly awful things because we deem that an acceptable tradeoff and better than censorship.

You may also be right that this is a matter that is not yet settled, and I'd be interested in a serious discussion about what some kind of workable solution might look like, but I don't see how what's happening in the Nix community right now moves anyone towards that, and if people are truly this principled, the Nix project itself should be the least of everyone's worries.

[gizmo]

All major open source projects are used by arms dealers. It's a big industry. Any business has customers they ideologically dislike. I get how that's annoying but it is what it is.

[HideousKojima]

>It's very reasonable to not want your work used by arms dealers

One man's arms dealer is another man's defense against death and destruction. I'm no fan of defense contractors for many reasons, but there is a simple reality that you need weapons, and lots of them, to defend yourself and your nation against aggressors, and someone has to build them. Imagine how much worse the war would be going for Ukraine if they didn't have advanced weaponry being provided to them by defense contractors.

If you don't want arms dealers using your work, then don't release it under an open source license.

[anon291]

I mean... if you license your work under nixpkgs license (MIT), you no longer really have the right to police who uses it. Of course, you are free to maintain your own nixpkgs and share your changes with whomever you want under whatever license you want.