
ESR banned from OSI over this email - rurban
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021273.html
======
mikl
ESR is right. Open Source is granting _everyone_ permission to use, copy,
modify, and/or distribute software for _any_ purpose (with or without copy-
left).

There are those who want to co-opt open source for political aims and grant
licenses only to those who agree with them politically, but such limitations
are anathema to Open Source and discussing such ought not even to be
entertained on OSI lists.

Those wanting to deal in “My-worldview-only source” can go find themselves a
different name.

~~~
Certhas
> co-opt open source for political aims

Are they though? I just clicked on the first links on the ESD website linked
elsewhere and landed here:

[https://firstdonoharm.dev](https://firstdonoharm.dev)

This is based entirely on the UN Charter of Human Rights. These are not
political aims in the sense of "you can reasonably be on either side of this".

Society as a whole understands that freedom is one of a handful of fundamental
values that need to be balanced against each other. That's why freedom of
speech is not absolute [1]. The concrete question here isn't even about
restricting freedom, but about the authors of software using their authorship
as a platform for denouncing organizations [2], without actually stopping them
from using the open source project. So it's strictly about how people,
according to ESR, should or should not be allowed to speak their mind.

By refusing to even consider the legitimacy of this, and by harsh ad-hominem
attacks on the other side ESR simply demonstrates in my mind that he hasn't
thought very much about these wider issues.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions)

[2] [http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021237.html)

~~~
mikl
> This is based entirely on the UN Charter of Human Rights. These are not
> political aims in the sense of "you can reasonably be on either side of
> this".

The UDHR is a very broad and vague definition of human rights. The actual
interpretation of it is an extremely legally complex and politically charged
topic. Human rights cases usually takes years of court battles to resolve.

If you see the discussion around “Ethical Source”, people want to ban Amazon
from using their source because they’re doing business with ICE. And BP for
crimes against humanity. Others might want to ban any Israeli businesses, and
again others wanting to ban anyone associated with the Palestinian Authority,
because either or both are in their opinion violating human rights.

Anyone using ESD software would open themselves to insanely expensive
lawsuits. It would be all too easy for anyone to come up with a claim that
your business is somehow aiding in the violation of human rights in some
fashion, and since the legalities are so complex, you can’t easily have the
suit dismissed. You’ll have to spend months or even years fighting the claim
in court, burning hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.

~~~
Certhas
That's a fair point, and I fully agree that there are many political issues
around the UCHR. I am certain a lot of the business world would want to stay
away from code that is licensed in this way, and I suspect that the authors of
code licensed accordingly would be just fine with that.

My overall point though, that there are legitimate issues on balancing freedom
and other values, stands. I think there is a good argument to be made that
licenses are not the place to do this balancing act, but the naive "freedom
maximalists" deny that there even is an issue to discuss here, quoting Paine,
and what have you to take the grandest of stands.

Creative Commons for example allows for at least some of this type of fine
tuning in the license. After all CC NC is a thing, and I haven't heard doom-
sayers predicting the end of liberty because CC blessed the possibility that
authors would want to restrict the use of their work in that direction, even
while sharing it freely otherwise.

Seriously, look at the quoted message by ESR here:

[http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html)

I wouldn't choose ESD style licenses for many of the reasons noted. But I also
support contributors ability to choose how to give away their contributions,
and to actively shape the communities they participate in. I think it's
legitimate that the OSI says that this does not meet their definition of an
Open License.

But ESR is not arguing for that, he is seeing the very existence of people who
don't share his "freedom maximalist" position (or like code of conducts,
or...) as a grave threat that "his" culture needs to be protected from.

------
Russtopia
The whole argument in that thread boils down to a disagreement over whether
tolerance has limits. There is a fundamental paradox contained within the
concept of _unconditional_ tolerance. Does one commit to tolerating the
intolerant beliefs of others?

The 'social justice' movement contains a faction who ironically insist that
the rest of society must tolerate their right to arbitrarily be intolerant of
others ('de-platforming'). The idea of "safe spaces" is often used to
weaponize a supposed requirement for tolerance as a real application of
intolerance itself.

ESR was just being pointed and firm in his assertion that the opposing
position was, in his opinion, no longer worth considering. The way he used the
well-known idiom "to hell with you and the horse you rode in on" contains the
word "you", but was attacking an idea, not a specific person. This tendency to
frame deplatforming, which is intolerance itself, as a perverted way of
supposedly defending tolerance, is very destructive to honest discourse.

------
bonzini
For reference, the ESD that is mentioned in another of ESR's messages (and the
one that some argue costed him the ban):
[https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/](https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/)

I am not sure how that would work. Point 5, "Creators have the right to
solicit reasonable compensation from any commercial entity that benefits from
the software" alone is a huge mess. What does solicit means? Or benefit? Can
the commercial entity just answer "thanks for trying, but no"?

Quoting the movie Trolls, "that's not a plan, that's a wishlist".

~~~
wyoh
This whole thread is referring to the Persona Non Grata clause:
[http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021237.html)

Of course it's not open source but they're still trying to weasel it in.

~~~
bonzini
That is even more ridiculous than the MongoDB license. (The ESD was the
subject of his anger in a more colorful email that might have contributed to
the ban as well).

------
jpgvm
He isn't entirely wrong but his tact could do with some work. This email isn't
that bad but the others in the thread are less savory.

I agree with him in principal however, the persona non grata clauses have no
place in open-source licenses.

IMO the problem with the political correctness debate is your are damned if
you do and damned if you don't.

Even if everyone knows that is the motivation behind such an effort you can't
call it out as such without becoming vilified - regardless how how you reason
your argument. (not saying ESR did a good job here)

This results in many, myself included simply not taking place in such debates
and eventually just not taking part in communities where this sort of
discourse goes on.

There is a big difference between codifying the "don't be a dick rule" and
making normal people feel like they are stepping on egg shells.

~~~
CydeWeys
I agree with him in principle too, but he's actively hurting his cause by
coming off as so unreasonable. There are better ways to make the case.

------
jjgreen
According to this, the offending mail has been deleted from the list.
[http://techrights.org/2020/02/29/getting-banned-
osi/](http://techrights.org/2020/02/29/getting-banned-osi/)

~~~
wyoh
You still can read it in this reply:
[http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html)

~~~
kodachi
Thanks. This 'under attack' and 'us vs them' really sucks. It would be unwise
to form an opinion of the whole thing without actually reading all of the
emails. Yes, there are ad-hominem attacks in the email you quoted, and even if
ESR was right in everything, probably not the best way to express it.

Anyway, at least this outrage brought the issue into attention, now I'm super
curious about this matter.

I'm reading his side first here:
[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609)

------
CydeWeys
ESR posted a long string of emails, many worse than this. Saying this one is
the reason he was banned is cherry picking things in his favor.

~~~
iforgotpassword
This one isn't bad at all. Would you mind pointing me to one that actually is?

~~~
plorkyeran
[http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html) quotes the email from
him that apparently finally got him banned.

------
cfv
ESR clearly blew a gasket and banning him, however temporarily, is a necessary
thing.

He does, however, make a couple goodish points:

\- Zero tolerance CoCs are a disgrace for software because the friendly-or-
else atmosphere they help create makes horrible-but-personable people thrive
in places where they'd otherwise be laughed out of the room. Politicians excel
at this game; see Congress' CoC forcing reps to call each other "my good
friend" instead of (for example) "this baby murderer over here" no matter how
horrible a proposal they made is.

This is a Hard Problem to solve though.

\- The ESD is a terrible, unusable license that shouldn't be called Open
Source, for various reasons like how its "freedom" functionally depends on how
litigious the creators of a software piece woke up that day waaay more than
traditional OS licenses, giving authors a direct link between their personal
values and their actual, inanimate work product.

Imagine being able to buy a yoga book, then getting sued because the author
required you to be a vegan first.

Give ESR a couple days rest, knock on his door and have a proper chat? Maybe
this can actually be resolved with actual honesty for one.

------
motohagiography
This is an important issue that is critical for the future of FOSS and the
sustainability of the tech ecosystem in general.

At a basic level, the ESD group represents bureaucracy, and the
bureaucratization of FOSS. It is importing an intolerant minority into the
FOSS community to hijack it for other purposes.

They should fork their own distributions and produce things people need, and
when nobody wants them, they should consider whether they are in fact just or
virtuous at all.

------
notRobot
As someone who has no idea about the context and doesn't know about ESR, can
someone explain what's going on here?

~~~
Phylter
I think the goal here is to prevent a toxic atmosphere in Open Source
communities. The problem is that to enforce this it may remove freedoms that
some Open Source advocates feel is important. Thus we have heated
conversations between those for and against the Personal Non Grata.

I could be wrong on the whole thing. I'm not well versed in what is going on
but based on what I see this is my understanding.

[https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists...](https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021237.html)

~~~
teilo
ESR is right, and his banning, ironically, proves his point. To hell with the
sanctimonious bastards in the OSI who did this.

------
bb88
I feel the cause is worth fighting for, but this is surely the wrong solution.

This is because:

1\. It doesn't prevent subcontracting out. Amazon can merely push the
egregious behavior to a spin-off or a contractor who likely will not have as
many qualms about it.

2\. Easy forking. It's not clear that a PNG clause will help. Given the
resources of Russia/Iran/China/Amazon/Microsoft/Google, it's likely the most
popular projects could just be forked anyway with a more compliant license.

3\. Not everyone in Amazon/Iran/etc. are evil. Only certain people are.

4\. Do we really want to encourage "Fuck You" licenses by naming names? It's
the scarlet letter of licensing.

------
wyoh
Why the hell these important discussion are always "flagged"?!

~~~
Certhas
Maybe because the link is highly misleading. The linked email is not very
offensive, and was not the reason for the ban, apparently. The EMails that
were, were removed from the list.

------
fit2rule
"You may have freedom, and you may have freedom - but _you_ may not have
freedom!"

vs.

"You have freedom, I have freedom, and that means I'm free to call you a
<pejorative> if I want to."

The issue seems to be that some people want the freedom to remove the freedom
of those who use <pejorative> to express their freedom...

------
forkexec
Cancel culture at it again. They could've told him to knock it off and that
other people are on the other end of email privately, at least. Ban everyone
and create a useless safe space where nothing happens.

~~~
Tomte
He has been told that many, many times, over the course of years.

The problem isn't that nobody told ESR to knock it off, the problem is that
ESR believes this style is perfectly okay and there's no reason to change.

~~~
forkexec
Okay. Thank you for elucidating. _Sigh._ Perhaps he needs a different
forum/community for misfits where necessary roughness is permitted and similar
folks can violently agree or disagree in their own way.

~~~
Tomte
I don't think you understand the extent of the problem.

He regularly argues things like that blacks have too low an IQ to be taught
things like correct handling of weapons, he posits the existence of honey
traps, where activist women try to seduce him and other leading Open Source
figures, in order to accuse them of sex crimes. It goes on and on.

"Roughness" or being a "misfit" is not how I would characterize the problem.

I'm sure he knows how to admin his own mailing list with other people like
him. But I wouldn't expect any mainstream project or club to tolerate garbage
like that indefinitely.

