HN Explorer

Ask HN: What if Open Source Licenses Forbade Broad Surveillance?

2 points by alohamora ↗ HN
Volunteer work engineered the surveillance apparatus (HDFS, GNU/Linux, etc). If such terms were added to even a fraction of the software likely in use, it might have a large impact.

This could also make surveillance illegal if it violated licenses, and would give at least some legal basis for fighting its use. Further, if terms forbidding this use were suddenly dropped from GPL, say, it's like it's own warrant canary.

1 comment

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 10.0 ms ] thread
mindcrime
It annoys me to see F/L/OSS projects like Linux and Hadoop used for ends like "NSA surveillance" but I don't like the idea of adding "Fields of Endeavor" restrictions to OSS licenses. In fact, if you go by the OSD[1], "Fields of Endeavor" restrictions are specifically not allowed. Of course, not everyone agrees with the OSD, but still...

And anyway, how would you enforce this against a group like the NSA? At the end of the day, adding something like this would just make licenses longer and more complicated, and would probably have no impact on surveillance.

[1]: http://opensource.org/osd-annotated