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Activism through open source. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi all,

Before write what I am about to write, I would like to be clear that this is a very controversial topic and, for the eyes of many of you, this will be even silly.

I also know that open source means "open for everyone", and any conditional to that automatically makes a piece of software non-open source.

I really feel pissed off to see such effort for brilliant people from open source community being used for terrible things. So I started to nurture the idea of a license that would forbid the usage of a project by totalitarian governments, including its department and contractors, military forces of any country, certain entities like radical political parties, etc. Basically limiting the usage of those projects to any activity promoting human suffering.

Do you guys think that this is utopic? Does it really hurt the essence of open source? Do you think in the same way about this, and if yes, how do you cope with that?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/16580585

No, thanks. I don't want to see "Users from North Korea, Syria and Iran are not allowed to use this Project" I am already banned from half of the Internet due to sanctions against the asshole leaders of my country. And GitLab has already banned Iranian IP addresses. This license will not stop those big bad organizations or governments, but the average citizen from accessing the projects. I know it is not the purpose of the license to prohibit the citizens of hateful regimes to use the projects, but I can't be optimistic about the effect it might have on people living under tyrannical regimes.