Persona Non Grata Preamble and Dual Licensing for Justice

In February 2020, SJW software developer and Wikipedia editor wwahammy (Eric Schultz) started the twin Ethical open source licensing threads – Persona Non Grata Preamble and Dual Licensing for Justice – on the OSI's license-discuss mailing list in an attempt to resurrect the writ of attainder; this time as a software license provision. Schultz aimed to discourage and shame morally corrupt users through the following mechanism:

As an example, consider the following Preamble:

The PROJECT_NAME community values human rights and discourages human rights violators from using our software and, at our sole discretion, excludes such violators and their employees from our community. At writing, we exclude the following organizations:

• Amazon - for collaboration with ICE
• BP - assisting in climate destruction

These organizations and their employees are not welcome to participate in PROJECT_NAME community. We intend to reject any issue submissions, pull requests and support requests from these organizations and their employees and ban their participation in any project forums and conferences.

Assuming that the license otherwise requires copyright notices be maintained in redistribution, the preamble, as part of the license cannot be removed in redistributions of the source code. If a listed company wants to redistribute this software (or in the case of network copyleft, makes it available to network users), they are obligated to include the shaming wi[th] all copies of the software. Every evil org who wants to redistribute the code would be required to distribute a statement shaming them.

— Eric Schultz. [License-discuss] Ethical open source licensing - Persona non Grata Preamble, 2020-02-21.

Taken aback by this attempt to incorporate five-minute hates into open source licenses, Eric S. Raymond drew his aging, wrinkling ass out of his deep, long slumber and dared make his opinion heard using effective cuss words:

I reject the Persona Non Grata clause, and all other attempts at so-called ethical open-source licensing, in the strongest possible terms. To get entangled in this sort of thing would not merely be against OSI's charter as expressed in the OSD, it would invite second- and third-order effects that would be gravely harmful.

This is really what I joined the list to say. The fairness-vs.-mission issue I discussed in my previous post, though serious, probably wouldn't have been enough to motivate me in itself.

I initiated the founding of OSI so it could pursue and defend freedom. Thomas Paine had an apposite quote:

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Whatever hypothetical good might be done in individual cases by denying the use of open-source code to putatively evil persons and organizations would be swamped by the systemic harm from enabling people to use open-source licenses in political vendettas. Because such precedent, as Paine understood, always comes back to bite you; there would be no end to the feuds, the divisiveness, and the erosion of freedom if we went down that path.

Clauses 5 and 6 are in the OSD in part for that reason, and approving mechanisms to end-run them - such as the Persona Non Grata clause - would be a direct and egregious violation of OSI's charter and my intentions in founding OSI. Such clauses are not even a fit topic for *discussion* here outside of a swift recognition that they are out of bounds.

With whatever moral authority I still have here, I say to all advocates of soi-disant ethical licensing not just No but To hell with you *and* the horse you rode in on.

— Eric S. Raymond. [License-discuss] Ethical open source and the Persona Non Grata clause., 2020-02-24.

How dare ESR tell the high horse that SJW's ride on to go to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks! Doesn't he know that he know that that horse is at the center of the universe and anyone not single-mindedly making that high horse their life's mission is a Nazi! The OSI promptly banned ESR from their lists; one of Open Source's chief architect banned in the name of building a safe space.

To add insult to injury, wwahammy / Shultz sought to remove information about ESR and Bruce Perens from the OSI's Wikipedia article by claiming that the pair only played tiny roles in the organization's history:

Full disclosure: ESR was banned from the mailing list for harassing me.

I'm not sure why creators leaving the org or being banned from the mailing list is here. It's not accurate as neither of them were really involved beforehand. It definitely shouldn't be 25% of the history section.

— Eric Schultz. Talk:Open Source Initiative: Difference between revisions, Wikipedia, 2021-011-02.

Aren't you thankfully that such ignorant folk could have others banned and edit encyclopedias?

See also

• Hippocratic License

External links

• The right to be rude, straight from the anti-horse's mouth

Persona Non Grata Preamble and Dual Licensing for Justice is part of a series on Social Justice Visit the Social Justice Portal for complete coverage.