An Open Source License That Requires Users to Do No Harm | WIRED
▻https://www.wired.com/story/open-source-license-requires-users-do-no-harm
China uses facial recognition technology to track Uyghur Muslims. The US military uses drones to kill suspected terrorists—any nearby civilians. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which has locked children in cages near the Mexican border—relies on software for communications and coordination, like all modern organizations.
Someone had to write the code that makes all of that possible. Increasingly, some developers are calling on their employers and the government to stop using their work in ways they believe are unethical. Google employees convinced the company to stop its drone footage analysis work and cancel plans to bid on a cloud computing contract with the Pentagon. Microsoft employees have protested the company’s work for ICE and the military, though with little success thus far.
But it’s hard to stop a company or government from using software that it already has, especially if that software is open source. Last month, for example, programmer Seth Vargo deleted some of his open source code from online repositories to protest its potential use by ICE. But because open source code can be freely copied and distributed, his code was soon back online elsewhere.
Coraline Ada Ehmke wants to give her fellow developers more control over how their software is used. Software released under her new “Hippocratic License” can be shared and modified for almost any purpose, with one big exception: "Individuals, corporations, governments, or other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well-being of individuals or groups in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
#Logiciels_libres #Licence #Hippocratic_licence #Coraline_Ada_Ehmke