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FOSS programmers, what do you think of horrible people using your software? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by zephyr@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I just learned that Nmap is almost GPL except that they revoked the license specifically for SCO group for their SCO–Linux disputes.

This got me thinking, what do open source programmers think of evil companies or horrible people using their software?

Don't get me wrong, FOSS software by its nature can't be controlled or strictly prevented of being used. But in case of companies like SCO, that is a thing that at least can cause them headache and they risk getting into legal trouble. A programmer for example can modify GPL to make so that his software can't be used by Microsoft or Facebook, but it is GPL for everybody else.

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[–] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 123 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The author of JSLint wrote:
"So I added one more line to my license, was that, "the Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." And thought: I've done my job!
/.../
Also about once a year, I get a letter from a lawyer, every year a different lawyer, at a company. I don't want to embarrass the company by saying their name, so I'll just say their initials, "IBM," saying that they want to use something that I wrote, 'cause I put this on everything I write now. They want to use something that I wrote and something that they wrote and they're pretty sure they weren't gonna use it for evil, but they couldn't say for sure about their customers. So, could I give them a special license for that?

So, of course!

So I wrote back---this happened literally two weeks ago---I said, "I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil." "

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 12 points 4 months ago

Hmmm I would definitely dick them around for a few weeks with questions back like "What is the projected revenue in potentially using the software for evil?" And "is there any specific processes in your company to avoid evil acts?"