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Ask HN: Will software license be feasible for labor protection?

3 points by lnyng ↗ HN
Recently a Github repo [0] that shows resentment towards the long work hours (996 style, or 9am-9pm, 6 days a week) in Chinese tech companies is gaining popularity quickly among Chinese programmers.

There is a discussion in the repo [1] (in Chinese) suggesting designing a new clause to existing software licenses for labor protection. For example, (from one of the post)

> the source code is not permitted to use at 996ICU style work environment.

The idea is that, if popular open source projects adopt this clause in their licenses, the work environment in China and maybe other countries will be improved.

I guess it can be more specific about "996ICU" or specify average weekly work hours limit etc. But the question is, how feasible will such license clause be? Will there be any insurmountable limitation that makes it useless in practice?

[0] https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU

[1] https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/pull/15642

2 comments

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arthur2e5
So uh I did the current draft license in the repo, which is meant to be an additional restriction for whatever license a project is originally supposed to use. The idea I mean to show is that to exclude 996-type practice, you should use a more general definition that involves a work week and consecutive hours at work. There is no consideration on whether it will work: bad actors who violate labor laws tend to not care about FOSS licensing either. History tells us unionization and strikes would work better, but again recent Chinese news tells us with those you end up in a jail.

Feasibility aside, I was dumb enough to not include something that says you gotta keep the restriction in modified version. https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/pull/24748 is a fix that should get merged soon. There's also a notes on use section, which basically says:

1. It would not be GPL compatible because it adds an restrictions. Use it on more permissive licenses like MIT.

2. If you do use it, consider dual-licensing with GPL or AGPL so more people can potentially use it. Corps that do care about legal stuff don't like GPL anyways.