 First of all a disclaimer Number one is I am not a lawyer, right? So we're going to talk about ethics and licensing So that's the first disclaimer and the second one this is as you can see a work in progress, right? So I don't expect to have all of the answers and Also, please consider this as a way of like starting a conversation does it work Wonderful, okay So what are we going to talk about in a very short amount of time now first of all a bit of context I'm going to try to give a different perspective on the open source definition We're going to look very quickly at prior art And what's missing from it? We're going to look at the role of corporations in this whole story And what do we sort of expect to get out of this ethical licensing and the sort of the suggestions I'm making here? If we have time to look at critiques and next steps and we'll probably answer questions in the corridor So first a bit of context Why are we talking about this right now? We're talking about this right now because I'm sure a lot of you started Being involved in software and the open source to some degree because of the positive impact We thought it could provide to the world and we're sort of looking at the space now and I mean at least some of us at least for me and Basically wondering what went wrong along the way and what we can try to do to fix this There's also when you start to see what's happening with technology right now historical and precedent of technology being used in horrible ways in the past and this is also You know for example, I'm thinking about punch cards used by a Nazi Germany to administer concentration camps and so Okay And so this is also a You know obviously a concern, you know what I'm just gonna do it was out slides, but I just will need the notes. Oh I'm just gonna take my phone my What did what did my laptop? I'm just gonna seriously. I'm just gonna take my laptop and you'll have a look at the slides afterwards I think that's just the best Option we have right now So there was a desire to do something about this issue Through This is a joke, right? Toby's talk. It's not cool. No, it's seriously. It's seriously. You know what? Let's just close this and I'll Yeah Seriously Okay, I'm just gonna hold this here All right, so there's been previous attempts at sort of like Bringing so sorry some there has been some attempts to Bring these ethical concerns into licensing And there's also been quite some pushback from what you can call gatekeepers And that's sort of normal because like their function is actually to be gatekeeping what open source is so it you know It's sort of fair to some degree So quickly three definitions OSI is the open source initiative. It's a non-profit. That's responsible for Certifying what is and what is not an open source license the open source definition is a set of ten criteria That the OSI uses to decide whether an open source Sorry whether a license is open source or not and the four freedoms is sort of like the equivalent for free software So the first thing I want to do is sort of like consider that we could actually desacralize the open source definition, right? and for that a Few data points while one it was created sort of like in a hurry 20 years ago It was lifted from the Debian free software guidelines and it has never been updated since right And that's in contrast to for example the free the for freedom Which started at this three right so there's been updates there and there is You know other Seriously drop it There's been you know, there's a precedence here, too For example, we talked a lot about the amendments of the American Constitution and the amendments, right? It's in the name there are like things that were added afterwards and they're making changes to their original document, right? And another one that comes to mind that's closer to home is that was also built in like a like 10 days or something is JavaScript right ECMAScript which has also seen like lots of versions. We're now like I think last year was version 10 Like it's they're even numbered by the years at this point Um The other way of looking at the Open source definition in my opinion is also to consider the privilege position that its authors were and when they actually wrote about it Right. It's a bunch of white male dudes in Silicon Valley was engineering So engineer salaries, right? And I think that's something to take in mind, too If instead the open source definition had been written by say people that were involved, you know Whose ancestors were involved in the Holocaust or and you know on that any kind of different background on this one? It's probable that You know ethical criteria would have been built in from the start and we would not be having this conversation today and I think it's fair to ask also the question as to whether Open source has succeeded because of the open source definition or to some degree in spite of it Right and if you look at you know the proliferation of open source and how people how people actually choose software It's developers that essentially pick software that they want to use and sort of You know the fact it would choose a license so prior arts prior art I want to look at two different projects that Have attempted to look at this on the first one is Douglas Crockford's good and not evil license That was basically the MIT license was Good not evil clause added to it which read the software shall be used for good not evil Obviously the problem was this is it leaves The interpretation of good and evil to the courts Which is you know a legal nightmare that no one really wants to get in and so basically Crockford talks about this in a really nice video where he's basically saying he's getting calls on a regular basis from Attorneys at different tech firms that ask that ask him to You know make change the license or actually make Expect exceptions for like their particular use case The video is online. It's really funny. He actually he's he's a really funny speaker. So it's it's well worth having a look at it You'll have to links in the slides Yeah The second one is the Hippocratic license by Coraline I have to actually check Yes Coraline at a M. K. I didn't want to Mispronounce her her last name and So it does a bunch of things that in my opinion are really right and a really a real progress on the existing Situation first of all it actually solves a problem of defining evil by basically relying on human rights Which is just you know a well understood body of law that's being ratified in a bunch of countries That's being used quite a bit and doesn't have like sort of the definition problems And it also doesn't conflict with the criteria five and six of the open source definition by really narrowing down What actually is not permitted and making it like specific to actions and not people groups or feel of endeavor, right? And my argument is like genocide is not a feel of endeavor Which I think like you know everyone should pretty much agree with this The problem though is that it leaves the definition of human rights violation to the courts Which obviously is a problem when it's a government that's actually making the human rights violation, right? If it's also the government's courts that are making that decision so that's like Sort of you know, not really enough And the other part which I think is actually a deeper problem is it doesn't have a good strong adoption story And so, you know if we look at actually what's missing well one of it is the reliance on an Internationally recognized and respected body that defines actual violations of human rights, right? There are such Bodies in Geneva the problem is they're kind of staffed was representatives of countries that have a terrible terrible track record was human rights violation So, you know that that's sort of a problem. That's so needs to be solved And then like what's really missing is community buy-in and multi-stakeholder support so The idea here is that you know if you want to change the way Licensing is done. You can't just do that on your side You have to engage with the community get maintainers on board get projects on board get nonprofits like the OSI the Apache Foundation, etc. On board and also get corporations on board The third thing that's missing is a clear path from existing licenses to ethical ones Because again like having and you know having the option of ethical licenses on the side Is good, but making sure that the industry moves Together towards a more ethical future is much better. So you need actual tooling you need You know to figure out the legal aspects you need education around these issues to actually make this transformation right and the fourth point is that as a community we need a mindset shift to redefine The norm of how we build open-source as being respectful of human rights and it's not just the idea of Basically allowing a few projects to have such licenses. It's Reconsidering how we work And so it's really to me what's important is that that mindset shift between this is a you know a fringe Issue that a few people care about to this is the norm of how open-source software is built So I mentioned corporations and corporation approval and I'm sure a lot of you were like, you know What the fuck why like why do we care? Why is this important? And well the truth is if corporations Can't use the licenses of open-source There's just never going to get traction, right? And the other interesting aspect to me is that a lot of corporations are in somewhat of a prison as dilemma here In which they would gladly Stop having to actually provide software to a particular organizations You know government organizations that are doing something really evil But if they do that they risk losing like the rest of the contracts that the government does right and so Providing them was sort of like a get out of jail car at a joker right where they can say Well, we'd love to be able to give you that too, but we're not allowed to Is actually something that kid that they might really welcome So quickly what do we actually hope to get out of this? Well four things first is putting human rights back at the heart of open source and software development The second thing is human rights trained IP lawyers and corporations, which you know would be a great thing Give up corporations an excuse to reject certain projects And potentially actually reduce the pool of available software for human rights violation There's been a lot of critiques of this I'm going to go through five of them really quickly One of them is there were other better ways of doing this. Oh, I'm sure why don't we try all of these different ways at the same time? Right doesn't you know can't hurt The second one is there's a risk of ethical license proliferation and we see this already, right? And frankly if we actually built this notion into open source itself that would actually reduce the risk of proliferation not increase it Third and fourth that often come up together, which is kind of funny is that's going to be a compliance nightmare Or it's not enforceable. So not worth it, which is it's one or the other right? I mean, it's either going to be a compliance nightmare, or it's not and You know and and and and as such it would not be enforceable, right? Or I mean it like it doesn't make sense to have these two things together my belief is From a compliance perspective If it's actually channeled to like human rights only and not like a gizzle in other things It's actually rather simple and this could actually help against proliferation of other issues You know, it's like the slippery slope argument Well, if we do if we allow like human rights, what about like, you know pro life for bed use was like abortion and there's a really good answer to this which is Get it into the human rights, right? If it's if like, you know, if like it's white supremacy that you want to like You know, is that your thing? Well, make sure that you get that into human rights And you're gonna get by default and every other license, right? So it like really scopes The actual sort of like ethical boundary to a body of law that's really well accepted worldwide And the last bit is it's in violation of the open-source definition and the four freedoms. I actually think that It's it's possible to do this was within the bounds of the open-source definition It would clearly be in violation of the first freedom of the force of the four freedoms And I actually think that that is an acceptable trade-off and we can actually change those as a community to reflect the norms that we have today And I think oh two minutes, so Well next steps this is a huge multi-year effort And like the idea here is to kickstart this conversation And to see if this interest and then to start discussing well, how exactly would we go about this? Is an existing organization like OSI ready to take the lead on something like this? Would this need like a different organization to step up? Basically like is there interest from maintainers is there interest from corporations? Let's basically start a conversation about this and see if as a community we can move towards considering ethics, you know as as a sort of fundamental part of software and Was this I will yield the floor and take questions outside. Thank you. Thank you, Toby Thank you, Toby. We really appreciate it