Or maybe a catchier name would be a “basic human decency GPL extension”
I can’t help but notice that organisations constantly co-opt free software which was developed with the intent to promote freedom, use it to spread hate and ideas which will ultimately infringe on freedom for many.
The fact that hateful people who use such software may then go on to use it to promote or otherwise support fascism which prevents others from enjoying the software in the way it was imagined, is one potential manifestation of the paradox of tolerance in this respect. I think this is particularly true for e.g. social media platforms and the fediverse.
My proposal to combat this would be the introduction of a “paradox of tolerance” license which says that organisations which use the software must enforce a bare-minimum set of rules to combat intolerance. So anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, etc. The idea is then to make overtly hateful organisations legally liable for the use of the software through the incompatibility of the requirements with their hateful belief system.
This could be an extension to GPL and AGPL where the license must be replicated in modified versions of the software, thereby creating virality with these rules.
Is this a thing already? I understand OS and FOSS have historically had a thing for political neutrality but are we not starting to find the faults with this now?
@CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml we already did this a decade ago with the Do No Evil license in https://www.json.org/license.html and learned the approach is not compatible with FOSS. Projects have added a layer of accountability with contributor agreements, but those only limit your ability to participate in the development of the project directly. They don’t limit your rights to do what you want with the code.
