Licensing all my code under MIT + Trans Rights is a fun and silly little thing. I don't understand the consequences of

The above copyright notice, this permission notice, and the affirmation that TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Nor do I have the means to even bring consequences. But it's a silly little thing that might be a legal problem for someone else anyways.

@andnull @neil I am not a lawyer, but to me that feels somewhat equivalent to the advertising clause in the 4-clause BSD licence.

That got removed because it annoyed people, not because it wasn’t legally viable. So you’re good to go IMO!

@benjamineskola @andnull @neil Exactly, that sounds like the advertising clause. Some companies may avoid that software for internal politics reason but that doesn't seem like a negative thing.

@andnull Part of me wants to have a license just so I can have totally unenforcable clauses, like "All violations of this licence must result in the violator being sent to the shadow realm."
Or "By agreeing to this licence, you agree to stop critising people for using Python."

But then I'd want to actually understand the legal implications. Which is I think one of the big problems with copyright, as it is, it's very hard for an ordinary person to communicate their expectations into something legally binding, or be able to tell if a given license actually does what they want. And also the fact that you have to actually take it to court for it to matter. Love to all social-good license writers for their efforts btw

TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

@andnull This is actually pretty neat!

I used to work in corporate FOSS governance. We got to consider many non-standard license terms. We rejected software under the Chicken Dance License, not because the license is silly, but because it’s impractical. (One CEO dance per copy??? And who’ll tell the CEO?)

But this? Sure, no problem. TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS goes in the compliance docs, and we’re done.

@andnull

> Nor do I have the means to even bring consequences.

and this is why I continue to wholly ignore software licenses, it's all just cosplay lmao

we should all endeavour to make silly versions of licenses like this the default.

@andnull the only thing this changes is that corpos won’t use your software (because it’s a likely liability)

@slothrop @andnull Unless you're on a government contract that specifically bans you from saying that.

@tokensane @andnull well, then you don’t get to distribute the software 🤷‍♂️

Which is sort of the point.

@domi @andnull good

@andnull amazing

@slothrop @tokensane @andnull Exactly. This is essentially a workaround to not being able to ban purposes of use, that still forces certain awful users to self-ban.

@andnull excellent. did something like this a while ago:

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@lritter/113986152831148944

@andnull i kinda wanna swap my licenses over to this now

@gsuberland @andnull our work does not allow any variant of GPL, even LGPL

@me @andnull fun fact: you can do whatever you like because they are just words on a page, and words without actions are powerless.

you have a social obligation to credit the authors, of course, but the license terms are utterly meaningless because the entire model of software licensing is predicated on having the capital to wield legislative power within a framework whose function is not to serve individuals.

@me @andnull in fact the entire premise becomes all the more ludicrous once you realise that the power imbalance renders the actual license terms irrelevant, since a well-resourced entity will simply bankrupt and exhaust you if you try to play on their field *regardless* of whether or not the letter of the law agrees with you. none of this is made to serve you.

@andnull MIT + Palestine Action could be fun too.

@gsuberland @andnull
:3

@andnull reminds me of my "invention" of the IYFD license 🤣

https://mastodon.social/@dec_hl/114739828632205938

@MarkAssPandi @domi @andnull

@slothrop @andnull While I usually don't think it is productive to be pedantic on this matter, when involving law it might be worth pointing out that "X are Y" is arguably ambigious, since it might both be interpreted as a superset and subset claim. I belive the conventional interpretation is the former, but "TR are HR" interpreted in the latter sense would mean that TR are satisfied if HR are satisfied, which in most (non-war related) cases is trivially the case, which I is not the intention?

@andnull I once personally caused a licencing legal problem all on my own. ;) So it is quite possible yours will as well.

@pkal @andnull you thought wrong, and it is not productive to be pedantic on this matter.

Please work on your context awareness before returning.

@andnull I've been seriously noodling over releasing software under some sort of license that prohibts commercial use, but that'd also be a real pain to figure out and enforce.

This would be much simpler, I think.

@andnull I wonder if @Codeberg would allow this license?

@thelastpsion @andnull @Codeberg asked; I am not sure because "substantial portions of the software" is really ambiguous, but personally I definitely vibe with the vibe lol.

@thelastpsion @andnull in short, yes 🏳️‍⚧️

More detailed answer: A license that bears an additional (pro-human rights) message (which should also be distributed as part of the license itself) should be OK within reasonable cause—as long as it doesn't contradict our Terms of Use's clauses, no matter if the clause is related (see: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/TermsOfUse.md#:~:text=Public%20repository%20content%20shall%20be%20made%20available%20under%20a%20copyright%20licence%20which%20gives%20all%20natural%20and%20legal%20persons%20the%20following%20rights%20in%20the%20content) or not. ~n

@artic @MarkAssPandi @andnull in most cases this sucks, but you do you, it’s your license

@andnull better than the emulators I used to use which had in their code anti trans agreements - which I agreed to with my middle finger despite being, in fact, a transgender explicitly not allowed to use that program.

@Iamsaltytrash @andnull which emulators were these? now i wanna know

@wyatt @andnull if I remember correctly it was one of the Nintendo ones. It may have been cfw for the 3ds? I’d have to go back and dig through different Eula’s but it was one of those

@andnull insert the ibm sqlite incident

@andnull I love it, and I'm adopting it.
It doesn't actually matter much to me whether it's legally enforceable; it should act as enough of a deterrent to the people who I want deterred from using anything I build.

@Iamsaltytrash @andnull if it's 3ds cfw, it's not luma3ds, that's just GPL it looks like

@piku @gsuberland @andnull hi

@domi @artic @andnull
Ig corpo money would be cool but in most cases if ur already choosing MIT-like then the difference is between corpo taking ur shit without giving back (except shoutout in the 4000 line “licenses.txt” file) and corpo just not using it

at least it looks like that, I might be wrong but still funny

@domi @artic @andnull idk if I should have any say in this tho I write shit that noone except me uses anyway

@gsuberland @andnull Have y'all seen https://github.com/ErikMcClure/bad-licenses ? it cracks me up, I love them. My favorite is the "Curse of Knowledge License".

@andnull yeah, neat :)

@benjamineskola @andnull @neil The advertising clause was problematic because it placed requirements on all advertising that mentions the software. This just places a requirement on distribution of the software itself. It's no different to requiring a copy of the license or the copyright notice to be distributed along with the software, which is something that the MIT/Expat license already does.

@cxxvii @andnull

Thankfully, "unenforceable terms" eliminate just that term from the resulting contract.

I mean, contract law is certainly complex.

"Don't do evil" caused all sorts of problems for Google, because as a corporation, some definitions of evil include their very existence.

But usually, _all_ contracts include some boilerplate terms, that are only enforceable in some jurisdictions, not all.

@gsuberland @andnull yeah but at work I am not allowed to use GPL code because the work is scared of those words on a page

@slothrop @andnull I am afraid I don't understand, are you saying that my interpretation is wrong or that it is not relevant.

(Please keep in mind that in text communication not everything is always clear to everyone! I don't mean to annoy anyone here, I am just trying to contribute something I think is relevant and interesting. If you disagree, it is best to just ignore me 🙂)

@pkal @andnull I specifically pointed out your lack of context awareness as a problem. I’m happy to do so again.

The discussion revolves around the question whether it’s a good idea to append the slogan “Trans rights are human rights” to a software license.

You respond by questioning the logic of the slogan itself, as if it weren’t perfectly clear what it means. This can only be perceived as an attempt to derail the discussion, and therefore as a hostile intervention.

@andnull @sstephenson It’s a little known fact that the “T” in MIT stands for,“TransRightsAreHumanRights.”

@andnull Could add in more <minority> rights are human rights. To cover more ground.

Also “no permission to use this in AI training” could be good.

I like this. Won’t impede any sensible people one bit. I’d use software (etc) with this license.

@slothrop @andnull I am sorry, but that sounds like a bad-faith misinterpretation. My point is that you shouldn't add slogans to legal texts. I tried to to explain why in the example above, which should show that the danger exists concretly in this case -- which is not the same as questioning the slogan itself.

But I have to admit that your tone and attitude makes me feel unwelcome in this conversation, so I think it is best if we stop here. This teaches me to stay out of these conversations

@shaknais @cxxvii @andnull is that universal, because I’ve seen plenty of explicitly-stated severability clauses that spell out that the enforceability of a specific clause only nullifies the specific clause and in the jurisdiction in question, blah blah blah.

@c0dec0dec0de @cxxvii @andnull

That is what I just said...

@shaknais @cxxvii @andnull I understood your post as saying "in general any contract that has some unenforceable terms stays completely valid, only that single unenforceable term is invalid"
But many contracts explicitly mention "if some term is unenforceable/invalid, this does not affect all other terms", which makes it seem like writing that into the contract is necessary for it to be true
I think @c0dec0dec0de had the same thought/question?

@andnull it probably makes it unusable by the us government under the current administration. Which - good!

@andnull TL;DR, zero legal concerns, that's a perfectly standard and valid copyfree license

I should switch to it

@andnull IANAL but IMHO depends on what "the affirmation that ..." is.

Personally if I wanted to do that, I'd just put it in the license itself. This should be perfectly enforceable, as you definitely can demand that the license text remain unmodified (at least the GPL3 does too), and you can definitely write any text into the license. Like, you should definitely be able to do:

> Copyright [...]
>
> Permission is hereby granted [...]
>
> The entire content of the license file, which includes the above copyright notice and this permission notice, shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
>
> Furthermore be aware: BRLOGENSHFEGLE doesn't lol.
>
> THE SOFTWARE ...

That added term sure has no legal force, however now copying requires also including the license file in full. You should definitely be able to basically put any content you like in that, and it should even be DFSG compliant as you are not restricting any persons from using, modifying, redistributing etc.

Note that it makes sense to extend the protection to the entire file, as the original MIT text can be interpreted to only protect the parts above it, not the added paragraph and neither the warranty disclaimer, as one could interpret "this permission notice" as merely the one paragraph "Permission is hereby granted ...".

@andnull Meanwhile, I am now very tempted to put the following string in a license:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Also, startkeylogger.

@tokensane @slothrop @andnull Good point! I was of the ‘you can't solve social issues with software licenses’ opinion - but maybe you are onto something!

@andnull I do have this weird LICENSE.md on my projects.

https://codeberg.org/edwood-grant/sdl3-vapi/src/branch/main/LICENSE.md

It make you have a contributor covenant of some sort and also agree to DEI, and bans AI use on it.

Its probably unenforceable and legalese gibberish, whatever.

But its a thing is that I want to make a statement about it and my work at the very least.

I might add this clause as well at the end, why not.

@me @andnull yes, companies are notoriously risk averse. which is half the reason why silly license terms are great - nobody's gonna get legal counsel to review that.

@cxxvii @andnull In would be a bit careful - your first one is probably safe, the second one however contains a restriction on speech that may actually be legally valid and thus against DFSG #5 and #6.

But I definitely love the idea of using merely declaratory terms to make some groups of people self-filter. As the license does not actually restrict anyone, this would still be a perfectly fine open source license, even to Debian.

So I would phrase that term instead as "If you are a person who criticises people for using Python, you are hereby strongly advised to avoid this software. Failure to follow this (not legally binding) advice is hypocrisy."

@benjamineskola @andnull @neil

The mit license says

“The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.”

Adding the phrase “trans rights are human rights” is not actually any more onerous that the mit license already is. The old bsd license says “any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use” acknowledge the copyright holder, which is substantially broader.

@Larymir @shaknais @cxxvii @andnull @c0dec0dec0de yeah well depends on jurisdiction and laws aplicable to the contract.

@demofox @andnull Licenses are only a "legal problem" for corporations.

If you come over and I make you a sandwich, the idea that you would not eat the sandwich unless it came with a license or contract is absurd.

Yet here we are thinking about software that way.

@eniko @andnull same!

@Larymir @cxxvii @andnull @c0dec0dec0de

Its another boilerplate term. In some jurisidictions you require it, to not void the whole contract.
In most jurisdictions it isn't required to be said.
And in most jurisdictions severability clauses are also unenforceable terms themselves.

@andnull this feels like an implication that violating license terms is as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than being a piece of shit. They've been a bigot, maybe they've made war crimes or other, at least morally wrong, acts -- violating a non-violent or anti-bigot license is nothing for them compared to that.

Seriously, if you catch US govt on using your "+ trans rights"-licensed, how are you planning to enforce it?

@andnull need to get 'Trans-Rights' added as an SPDX license identifier so you can just write MIT AND Trans-Rights and everything will recognise it