Hyperspace
Re-evaluate licensing for Hyperspace projects? #3
Replies: 4 comments 1 reply
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I'll add my personal thoughts as a separate comment to keep things organized. As stated, it's not just the team has these concerns about how our software is used and the fediverse's health. When Gab became a fediverse instance, quite a handful of users reached out to us sharing their concern and recommending using the current license we have. I appreciate everyone sharing their concerns and suggesting ideas to make the fediverse and our software a better place, and we decided to go with it after some internal discussion (that was also in an issue on GitHub). A lot of things have changed since we added that license, and as such, our own personal views are changing. What I considered wrong today differs a bit from what I thought a year or two ago. With our current license, we've pretty much taken on the burden and risk of changing perspectives and ethics in our code. And as much as we can try to ensure that our software is used in good faith, that's a lot of extra work added to the team rather than sharing that work and burden to the rest of the fediverse. Thankfully, the fediverse has such tools to address our initial concerns with domain disallow/block lists, as well as personal server block lists. And since we distribute through the Snap store, Mac App Store, and other places that have their respective ToS, it may be possible that forks of our project that bypass the blocks we put in place get rejected because of said violations. I think we may have over-stepped our boundaries as software developers and over-reacted to the situation when these events occurred, and we should look to alternate means of ensuring our goals. As for license choice, I'm personally a big fan of the Mozilla Public License v2.0 and have used it in a handful of projects. |
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yeah I agree with in that we should prioritise safety over everything else. I guess the problem here is that what is considered ethical can be very subjective and dependent to the person. Just so I understand, the license we are currently using on both hyperspace and starlight allows the modification and redistribution of the code as long as it is not used to cause any harm, which is what prevents users from cloning hyperspace and allowing it to work with Gab instances, right? So if we stop using this license, what would stop users from doing this? I also see that you said:
which is something I don't really agree with. While it is obviously the user's responsibility whatever they decide to do with the software, it is obvious for developers to be concerned about the uses people will give it. I don't know about you guys, but i wouldn't want our code to be used to promote anti-semitism, racism, sexism, or whatever they do on gab. But I do understand that our way of thinking is constantly changing and while something can be seen as wrong by someone, it can be considered good by others, especially due to culture differences If we were to change licenses tho, I would recommend GPLv3, which is what I've been using in all of my other projects |
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Regarding the question about the license, yes, that is what prevents removing our code pertaining to blocking Gab. As per this argument:
This isn't something I necessarily agree with, but I included this in the initial post because this is a common argument I have witnessed when researching this topic. As for using GPLv3, although it would be a great license for this project, I'm afraid this license will prevent us from publishing to platforms like the Mac/iOS App Store(s) because it violates the TOS for those platforms: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement. |
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Also a point from @audmaxwell in our Discord server: idk i think ethical open source might be a better title to go with ultimately like i understand the controversies surrounding it but i do think theres a responsibility to prioritize safety |
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I'd like to thank everyone involved in this discussion, whether it be an upvote or a reply. After careful consideration and further developments on Codename Starlight and its companion library, Chica, we have decided that we will keep our current license as it is. For those with concerns pertaining to FOSS licensing, you are more than welcome to fork an earlier beta of Hyperspace Desktop before the license change or the Classic desktop client. |
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In the fall of 2019, we evaluated our licensing options for Hyperspace Desktop (hyperspacedev/hyperspace#87). Namely, this decision was brought about due to recent events at the time regarding Gab's entry into the fediverse. After careful examination, we decided to use the Non-Violent Public License (NPL or NVPL) for the following reasons:
These changes were merged and have been kept in Hyperspace Desktop since release version 1.0 (excluding the classic desktop code). By extension, project Starlight inherited this license when creating the project.
Why do we need to bring this up?
The Non-violent Public License is a recognized or qualifying open-source license as defined by the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation. Notably, this violates the zeroth freedom:
Our growing user base and those trying out Hyperspace Desktop for the first time have concerns regarding this license and our original usage of the term "open source" on our website when describing the product. We've since changed the wording to resolve any ambiguities about this, but the concern about this license remains.
Why is this an issue?
It is without a doubt that the people that use Hyperspace Desktop as well as the team care very deeply about open source and the world of free software. Providing open source software and investing in that community provides great benefits in technology overall. It is also apparent that we as a whole are concerned about the fediverse's health and issues surrounding free speech and ethics, especially given the events that occurred on January 6, 2021. While we did not foresee those events, we wanted to pick a license that allowed the permissibility of open-source while also ensuring that the people who use, modify, and redistribute it do so in a manner that doesn't harm others or cause violence. Hence, we went with a license that is considered as ethical-source or ethical open-source.
However, ethical source software, and their licenses, respectively, has been taken with much criticism:
At the same time, ethical source software and developers taking on ethical stances with their software have risen. It's clear that some software developers do care about how their software is used, especially when the code is publicly available.
What now?
I want to take this opportunity in this discussion board to raise this issue and decide what we're going to do. Should we keep our stance? Should we change the license again and release a new version?
I'd also like to note two reasons why this discussion is available publicly:
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