EULAās, permissive licenses (and copyleft) are all (strictly speaking) āethical licensesā. The āethicalā in āethical licensingā points to a small basket of licenses that advance the political preferences of the people that write them is a marketing buzzword. All copyright, copyleft and all licenses, all of them would be better referred to as āpolitical licensesā IMO. I have not yet come across any licensing scheme that can be reliably evaluated/distinguished using ethical criteria. I suspect either all licenses are ethical, or none of them are?
but yeah, i do think thereās something to the idea that even licenses which donāt advertise themselves as āethicalā carry an ethics with them. the GPL, for example, is explicitly a product of the view that it is unethical for software to be non-Freeā¢.
What I notice is applying an āethical licenseā doesnāt seem to feature the kind of specificity that can help licensees clear up contentious use cases. The rude ambiguity in terms like āevilā by my reckoning enlarges the scope for contention, well confusion anyway. So that leaves us with the final branch, meta-ethics, which you conveniently raise:
To my mind, the opposite of āethicalā isnāt āunethicalā (which would be one personās value judgment of another personās ethics?) but ānon-ethicalā⦠an objective absence of ethics?
I would like to take the opportunity of suggesting that āEthical Licensingā is driven almost completely by job market signalling. I donāt think other explanations, like āvanityā contribute as much as this. Also, ethical values are axiomatic, meaning whatever is articulated in the license text as disallowed use cases, the irk-to-capital is in assigning one of their less ambitious lawyers to humorlessly micromanage the perceived risk of litigation? ⦠the famous JSON perhaps being the āgotoā illustration of this heavy-going, unamused treatment by lumbering, skittish institutions⦠oh⦠youāll know of many others thoā?
I have had a good convo with the author of the anti-capitalist license. he admitted to doing a Ctrl H (find and replace) with (from memory) some GPL thing?
My main contention with that license is that it is set up to ALLOW first. This passes a compliance burden on to prospective adopters.
My preference is for a license that places the compliance burden on capital⦠so that requires a license that explicity DISALLOWS capital⦠by definfing what is ācapitalistā and then being permissive for everyone else, both for capital goods (what you call āintra-corporateā) and consumers goods⦠which are like your apps, games and chiz.
i do think thereās something to the idea that even licenses which donāt advertise themselves as āethicalā carry an ethics with them.
Absolutely, I have not yet come across a license that doesnāt import some ethical implications. I find the tendency to argue against a license whose politics we donāt like on the grounds that the author lacks sincerity misses the opportunity for constructive debate. I have no doubt Perens/Devault/Rosen/Raymond et al are all sincere. The problem I have with their work is it extends an intensely unreliable analysis of the political economy:
FOSS is not socialist.
+10
The free software movement is right-libertarian / āanarchoā-capitalist
If it matters any⦠I think itās ātechno-utopian liberalismā at itās core? ⦠and of course has shifted to the right because of the mega-corporate delight in seeking advantage from reducing costs in infrastructure, bundling their own products and so on⦠the libertarian/anarcho elements I tend to see as more ātechno-utopianā⦠itās not that all these crypto fanatics are anarchists or libertarians⦠they havenāt even thought that far yet AFAICT⦠they are just in thrawl to Stallmanism, decentralization/P2P/fosschain etc⦠when they leave their parents house they are more than likely to be pro-business IMO.