The 'Anyone But Richard M Stallman' license serves a minor but important role in the rapidly changing story of complex, specific and potentially invalid or unenforceable #SoftwareLicenses. #copyleft
@kendraserra @cstross was referring to germany with that statement, see s 5.3 here https://academic.oup.com/book/44727/chapter/378966097
@mikarv What purpose is this supposed to serve?
@gay_ornithischians @mike @mikarv eyyy that someone was me
@AmyIsCoolz @mike @mikarv lel i couln't find it
i still find it funny
@mikarv can you help me, a non-lawyer, understand what makes this unenforceable?
Is it not legal to specifically prohibit someone from using your stuff?
@mathaetaes i didn’t say this specific one was unenforceable, but in germany for example open source licenses generally contain terms which are invalid under german law, see s 5.3. here https://academic.oup.com/book/44727/chapter/378966097
@mikarv Thanks for this. I read it and understood maybe 60-75%. It was clearly written for those who already understand the law.
I guess this is a major problem when it comes to open source: the people writing the software rarely understand the law, or even the language of law, that is used to enforce their rights. That seems particularly problematic for developers who only want their work used for "good". Someone who, for example, writes a powerful data processing library for finding patterns in large amounts of scientific data, but wants to prohibit its use by authoritarian regimes (or political parties supporting authoritarian, nationalistic, or racist ideologies), racist purposes, or privacy-violating ad tech, etc. It sounds like adding those provisions would be "unreasonably burdensome" to the licensee, and therefor invalid. Did I get that right?
I suppose the answer is stating clearly that nobody in Germany is licensed to use the software... which in a way is also unreasonably burdensome, but if you're never a valid license holder, it's hard to say you were burdened by the license.