Enforceable "Ethical Open Source" license

[mscarey]

What problem are you trying to solve?

Open source software maintainers are concerned that their software is being used for inhumane or unsustainable activities. They could use a template to license their software under terms that make it less likely to be used to cause harm. There's also a need for tools to check compatibility between multiple "ethical" open source licenses.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?

Open source software maintainers are the direct users, but hopefully they're motivated to create indirect benefits to others from causing their work to be used more humanely.

What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?

This idea is directly inspired by the Hippocratic License by Coraline Ada Ehmke. The NoHarm License is similar, but has more provisions attempting to achieve specificity and enforceability.

I think Creative Commons is still the gold standard for content licenses that achieve legal enforceability, human readability, and machine readability. But those aren't for use with code.

It's possible to go beyond what currently exists by drafting specific and quantifiable ethical OSS license provisions, and possibly creating a docassemble interface to configure the license for the user's needs. The goal is to think of license provisions that are understandable, impactful, and enforceable.

Where can we find any research/data available/articles?

The Hippocratic License has a detailed resources page.

What help do you need now?

User research to understand what people need out of their open source software licenses, and how they hope their software will be used. Legal research to discover what license restrictions are appropriate and enforceable, and to check compatibility with existing OSS licenses.

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

Decide whether the project should be a new license, a fork of an existing license, or a tool to discover appropriate licenses and check for compatibility between them. The project needs a website if it's going to move forward.

How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?

Twitter @mcareyaus

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Project management

Checklist for NEW ideas 👶

Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).

• Create this idea issue
• Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
• Start the conversation about this idea on Slack Replace this link to the #general channel with your project's preferred channel.

Checklist for ACTIVE projects 🔥

Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:

• Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
• Take 30 minutes to complete Open Leadership 101
• Create a GitHub repository. Ask for help setting up permissions if you want your repository to be within the Open Austin Github organization.
• Create a README file in your project repository. This file should help newcomers understand what your project is, why it's important, and kinds of help you're looking for.
• Create issues to describe each task that you plan to do or need help with and how a contributor can get started on that task. You might start and stop a lot, so consider issues as your to-do list.
• Create a team for your core contributors
  • This will make it easier for you to manage your github repo access. People on a team have the same level of access. Admin access will allow your trusted contributors to make changes as needed.
  • You can remove and add people to your team as needed.
  • View some of our teams: https://github.com/orgs/open-austin/teams
  • Note: You can also allow collaborators outside of your team and give them more limited access.
• Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your core contributors all at once, without bothering other people who use the Slack channel. You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @Leadership on Slack to get this set up.
• Create a Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage to share larger files. Github and Data.World are good for code and data, respectively, especially when you need version control. But they're not good for very large files, documentation, articles, etc. A cloud storage option will allow you to easily share, create, and collaborate on documents with your team and help organize ideas and thoughts.
  • Doing this early on can help your team stay organized and to onboard new contributors who wouldn't have access to files you all have shared over email.

Checklist for FEATURED Projects 🎉

To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.

• In your README, link to the Open Austin Code of Conduct or write your own code of conduct.
• Create file: LICENSE to give your project an open license, allowing for sharing and remixing.
• Create file: CONTRIBUTING.md so others know how they can contribute.
• Create an easily shareable project management artifact, like a Civic Tech Canvas or Open Canvas
• Create an issue on the open-austin.github.io repo with the title Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project 🎈
• Tell the City of Austin. If your idea is in a shareable format and can benefit people around the city, go to that site and follow the instructions on the bottom of the page to showcase your work there.

If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @Leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.

[mscarey]

I created a draft version of a new ethical open source license. But there's still no way to select a version of the license or make a machine-readable tag for it.