Quoting Russ Allbery (2022-04-06 01:44:43) > Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> writes: > > Quoting Steve Langasek (2022-04-05 22:36:02) > >> On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 02:39:31PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > >>> No we don't - we care about our users, and our users include those > >>> who do evil. > > >> I think this thread has largely petered out, with many people > >> having laid out the reasons why Debian taking a public position on > >> this is not necessarily a good idea. > > >> But I don't think it should go unadddressed that it's quite a > >> bizarre twist to go from "our priorities are our users and Free > >> Software" to "we care about evil users". > > > Please note the word "include" in my sentence above. > > > Point is we do *not* care about our users doing evil. > > I think there's an unfortunate confusion here between "care," which is > a mental state or a moral position, and some form of action. Ah. I think you are right - and I can see now how my choice of words upset others. > I do, in fact, care about our users doing evil, so I'm apparently not > part of your "we." However, in most cases I don't think Debian should > *do* anything about our users doing evil, for a whole bunch of reasons > ranging from the tradeoffs inherent in free software principles to the > law of unintended consequences. There are unfortunately many > instances where something bad is happening in the world but a specific > person or organization is not in a position to do anything effective > about the bad thing without causing more problems. > > I suspect that you (Jonas) are largely arguing for the same thing, and > much of the disagreement is just over terminology. I think I do agree, yes. > > Debian rejects software licensed with the following clause: > > > "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" > > This is an excellent example of the tradeoffs of free software principles. > The problem with such a license, at least from my perspective (which, from > previous discussions on this exact topic, appears to be common) is not the > general idea that we would prefer people not do evil things with software. > It's the practical specifics, which include such things as the murkiness > of "evil" (including different and incompatible effective definitions for > every piece of software with such a license), the problems with enforcing > such a license in a legal system that exists in the real world, and the > lack of clarity and thus legal uncertainty for our users who may be doing > something that the author of the software may consider "evil" but that > many other people in the world would not. > > In other words, I don't think we rejected that license because we don't > care whether our users do evil. I think we rejected that license because > the harm is greater than the benefits. Right. I do not want anyone to do evil - be that our users or anyone else. It is just not so simple to define or agree on what is evil, so we provide Free Software for everyone - including evil war makers, and evil capitalists, and evil squirrel tamers, and evil fuel burners, etc. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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