[martin-t]

> Not just to the people I agree with, but to anyone who needs to use a computer.

Why not say "... but to the people I disagree with"?

Would you be OK knowing your code is used to cause more harm than good? Would you still continue working on a hypothetical OSS which had no users, other than, say, a totalitarian government in the middle east which executes homosexuals? Would you be OK with your software being a critical directly involved piece of code for example tracking, de-anonymizing and profiling them?

Where is the line for you?

[stravant]

As for me that's a risk I'm willing to accept in return for the freedom of the code.

I'm not going to deliberately write code that's LIKELY to do more harm than good, but crippling the potential positive impact just because of some largely hypothetical risk? That feels almost selfish, what would I really be trying to avoid, personally running into a feel-bad outcome?

[martin-t]

I think it would be most interesting to find ways to restrict bad usage without crippling the positive impact.

Douglas Crockford[0] tried this with JSON. Now, strictly speaking, this does not satisfy the definition of Open Source (it merely is open source, lowercase). But after 10 years of working on Open Source, I came to the conclusion that Open Source is not the absolute social good we delude ourselves into thinking.

Sure, it's usually better than closed source because the freedoms mean people tend to have more control and it's harder for anyone (including large corporations) to restrict those freedoms. But I think it's a local optimum and we should start looking into better alternatives.

Android, for example, is nominally Open Source but in reality the source is only published by google periodically[1], making any true cooperation between the paid devs and the community difficult. And good luck getting this to actually run on a physical device without giving up things like Google Play or banking apps or your warranty.

There's always ways to fuck people over and there always will be but we should look into further ways to limit and reduce them.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford

[1]: https://www.androidauthority.com/aosp-source-code-schedule-3...

[babarock]

> Open Source is not the absolute social good we delude ourselves into thinking.

Historically the term "Open Source" was specifically developed to divorce the movement from the "social good" ideas that were promoted by Free Software.

That's where I stand. I don't do Open Source to make the world better. I do Open Source because I believe that makes my software better.

I'm not an activist. I'm an engineer. Nothing wrong with activism, all the power to the people doing it, but the licensing I chose for my code doesn't take it into account.

[layer8]

I agree with the GP. While I wouldn’t be happy about such uses, I see the use as detached from the software as-is, given (assuming) that it isn’t purpose-built for the bad uses. If the software is only being used for nefarious purposes, then clearly you have built the wrong thing, not applied the wrong license. The totalitarian government wouldn’t care about your license anyway.

The one thing I do care about is attribution — though maybe actually not in the nefarious cases.

[martin-t]

> The totalitarian government wouldn’t care about your license anyway.

I see this a lot and while being technically correct, I think it ignores the costs for them.

In practice such a government doesn't need to have laws and courts either but usually does because the appearance of justice.

Breaking international laws such as copyright also has costs for them. Nobody will probably care about one small project but large scale violations could (or at least should) lead to sanctions.

Similarly, if they want to offer their product in other countries, now they run the risk of having to pay fines.

Finally, see my sibling comment but a lot of people act like Open Source is an absolute good just because it's Open Source. By being explicit about our views about right and wrong, we draw attention to this delusion.

[layer8]

It’s fine to use whatever license you think is right. That includes the choice of using a permissive license. Restrictions are generally an impediment for adoption, due to their legal risk, even for morally immaculate users. I think that not placing usage restrictions on open source is just as natural as not placing usage restrictions on published research papers.

[martin-t]

Tragedy of the commons. If all software had (compatible) clauses about permitted usage, then the choice would be to rewrite it inhouse or accept the restrictions. When there are alternatives (copyleft or permissive) which are not significantly worse, those will get used instead, even if taken in isolation, the restricted software was a bigger social good.