
Bigotry via Software License - lolo_
http://www.treefinder.de/
======
voidr
If this is bigotry, then what would we call the Russian and Iranian sanctions?

I would suggest researching the definition of the word before using it.

As far as I'm aware the software is free, it's in the developers right to
choose who he/she awards his software to.

We see a lot of women-only or ethnic-minority only projects in tech, yet
nobody is calling those bigotries.

Having said all this, I don't agree with the developer's world views, however
this is like free speech, you have to allow it, wether you like it or not.

------
venomsnake
Bigotry - top contender for the 2016 most watered down word in the English
language award.

I think that the licence is perfectly reasonable.

~~~
informatimago
Indeed.

It's a higher level of consciousness to take into account the consequences of
your acts and of your work.

Commercial developers just go as far as the money paid by their customers, and
don't care what their software is used for.

Some commercial developers restrict some use of their software (but more for
their own protection, because they know the limits of the "quality" of their
products, than for moral reasons). For example, you're not allowed to use
Apple software to develop nuclear power systems.

cf.
[https://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.htm](https://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.htm)

    
    
        C. Except as and only to the extent permitted in this License and by applicable law, you may not copy, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, or create derivative works of the Apple Software or any part thereof. THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE. 
    

In addition, corporations under USA jurisdiction must restrict the use of
their products to authorised countries only.

If a country feels threatened by another country, it's understandable that it
wish to avoid providing this other country with any help that would heighten
the thread.

Similarly, if an individual feels threatened by another country or by other
individuals, it's understandabel that we wish to avoid providing them with any
help, most notably when it's in the form of gratis software.

Of course, this contradicts the ideal of free(dom) software.

But we have to take into account the circumstances, we don't live in an ideal
world.

You have also to take into account the fact that you cannot in general control
the application of your free software license. Those using BSD or MIT and
similar license basically abandon all control on their software use and
distribution (or non-distribution).

In the case of GPL, the copyright owner keeps control of the distribution if
his software, under the terms of the license (which mandates the derived works
authors to distribute the sources along with their derived works).

But in practice, GPL software owners don't have the means to control what
corporations in the USA do with their software and whether they respect the
terms of the license or not, and even if they detected license violations,
they don't have the power to do anything about it. We're counting here more on
the self discipline of the potential users of the software than on anything
else, and this means that it can be abused easily.

Therefore beyond the restrictions the license may put on the use or users of
the software, the questions of the distribution of free(dom) software itself
must be considered, in each case.

It's probably better to distribute widely and indiscriminately software whose
success is based on network effect. For example, things like GNU or Linux.

But for more specific software, one should ponder whether even its users
wouldn't be better served by a more restricted distribution.

In practice, we know that most open source software is not read by a lot of
people, and not used by a lot more either anyways.

Distributing the sources of the software you sell to your customers or give to
your friend still seems to be a very important act of software freedom.
Distributing it to the whole wide world, doesn't seem so important. The GPL
itself clearly distringuishes this point: you can use, read and modify a GPL
software, keeping your derived work entirely private, as long as you don't
_distribute_ it. This covers use of derived work inside some artificial
boundaries (one would have to revise the legal definition of "distribution"
IANAL), such as corporation, family, and why not friend circles. I think it
can be argued that if you got diner at your friends' and install some derived
work of some GPL software on his computer, this won't consitute a
distribution. And while the GPL spirit would have you give your friend the
sources of your derived work, nothing in the terms of that license imposes you
to distribute them to the public at large.

The corporations are so greedy that in general they won't be using GPL
software as the basis of their products (they may still use it internally, and
this is questionable, as we've seen from the scandal of the openssl and bash
bugs that remained undetected for decades); so this provides some indirect and
implicit limitations on the distribution of GPL software. But we cannot depend
on it.

I think the argument should be made for a more direct control, and given the
current spirit of free software and the current terms of the GPL family of
licenses, which doesn't distinguish human individuals from corporations and
political (ie. armed) entities (eg. countries or "rebel" groups), the
individual author of powerful tools should definitely consider and explicitely
control the distribution of his works, instead of pushing it naively to the
whole world.

Now, TreeFinder is not distributed under a free software license (the sources
aren't distributed), but the new terms "I do no longer permit the usage of my
TREEFINDER software in the following EU countries: [...]" restrict the
execution of the software geographically. As a programmer, I understand that a
program runs on some computer hardware that is localised geographically; the
presence of a human user is optional, and therefore the location of this
optional human user cannot be used to determine the geographical location of
the "use" of the program. Only the position of the hardware running this
program. Therefore, as a French citizen, currently present in France, and
currently under the domination of the EU oligarchy, I could install this
software on a server located in Cameroon and have it run there, in Africa.
Honestly, this doesn't represent much of a restriction, and not even an
inconvenience, I already routinely use computers located in different
countries.

This restriction is not really effective to advance the goals of the author;
the buzz around it does more. (And definitely, the publicity is nice,
TreeFinder seems to be a nice program).

One could design better license terms.

To begin with, we would have to distinguish different entities, such as human
beings, for-profit corporations, political entities, etc, and classify them on
the wanted criteria (is, belongs, helps the oligarchy, or not). A human being
who's salaried by a corporation who wants to have immigrants to lower the
salary, shall he be discriminated against for working to that corporation? Or
shall he be helped in his human endeavour? How will we distinguish use of the
software at home, for personal purposes, from a use that would eventually
benefit the corporation, and therefore lower his salary (and everybody
else's)? We can assume that all employee of corporations making a profit,
being willingly exploited and willingly contributing their share of the profit
to the oligarchs are parts of the enemy, so they could be distriminated
against. The point here is that there is some information available about the
relationships between corporations, and with some parts of the political
system, and some of those high up individuals, but you might need even more
information, eg. about employees, about customers of free lances, etc.

[http://theyrule.net/drupal/topics/watching%20them](http://theyrule.net/drupal/topics/watching%20them)

[http://api.littlesis.org/documentation](http://api.littlesis.org/documentation)

On the other hand, you may discover that everybody is enslaved and
contributing. Why not exclude the Chinese? They definitely contribute to the
decadence of Europe thru delocalizations. And why not the Africans who provide
cheap minerals to the Chinese factories?

[http://www.amazon.fr/L%C3%AAtre-contre-lavoir-Francis-
Cousin...](http://www.amazon.fr/L%C3%AAtre-contre-lavoir-Francis-
Cousin/dp/2355120471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443611550&sr=8-1&keywords=francis+cousin)

------
sorrino
Wow! I guess writing scientific software doesn't prevent you from being a
profoundly ignorant twat. Bigotry is an understatement. Have a nice day,
Adolf!

~~~
datalist
Already a Godwin that early into the "discussion"?

------
fortytw2
Even more bizarre -
[http://www.treefinder.de/downloads.html](http://www.treefinder.de/downloads.html)
\- the author seems incredibly butthurt that he hasn't been made rich off this
piece of software (at least, that's the vibe I'm getting)

~~~
datalist
There is definitely a certain frustration on the author's side (justified or
not, I can't tell), but I wouldn't necessarily attribute that to him not
having been made rich by his software in particular.

