A while ago, some licenses started cropping up that tried to disallow certain use. E.g. the anti ICE license, anti-996 license and similar.
Bruce Perens wrote about this in late 2019[1][2], specifically focusing on the "hippocratic license", proponents of which IIRC at the time attempted to spark a debate if the Open Source definition needs to be changed, to allow discrimination like this.
I haven't seen any example of such a trend which is why this is a very extreme position if not an irrational position to take.
> I’m aware of efforts to build proof-of-stake models. I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level.
> I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way.
Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by using their deep learning library to train it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centres catch fire? I don't think so.
It's business as usual for them as the author is getting upset over PoW systems to taint all of them under the same brush despite many alternatives that are more energy efficient than others.
> Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by using their deep learning library to train it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centres catch fire? I don't think so.
I believe the original creator of YOLO actually quit for that reason.
I'm not sure if I would call it a trend, but I would say projects released under under "Ethical Licenses" (such as the Anti-Capitalist Software License (ACSL)[1] or the Do No Harm License[2]) might fit the "you may only use this product if you support/disavow $x" description.
Interesting! I think there's a tangible difference between "you may only use this product if you support/disavow $x" (as in, some public statement of views is a prerequisite to being allowed to use something) and "you may only use this product if you do not cause harm in some tangible sense".
While I'm not necessarily saying I agree with either, the first is certainly less reasonable than the second (and the two examples linked are of the second kind).
