search

brightly-salty / peace-license

The Peace Public License
5 stars 0 forks source link

Pacificism is not peace #1

Open Nolski opened 3 years ago

Nolski commented 3 years ago

Hi! I recently encountered this license and wanted to share some thoughts on the following definitions:

  1. "Act of War" means any action of one country against any group either with an intention to provoke a conflict or an action that occurs during a declared war or during armed conflict between military forces of any origin. This includes but is not limited to enforcing sanctions or sieges, supplying armed forces, or profiting from the manufacture of tools or weaponry used in military conflict.

  2. "Coercion" means leveraging of the threat of force or use of force to intimidate a person in order to gain compliance, or to offer large incentives which aim to entice a person to act against their will.

And clauses:

  1. You do not use the Work in an Act of War.
  2. You do not use the Work for the purpose of supporting or profiting from an Act of War.

I think that this invalidates the objective of this license to "protect the basic rights of human beings from exploitation" as these restrictions do not remove the violence done upon oppressed people but rather obfuscates it into more structural and systemic violence. Meanwhile, many oppressed people will be forced into fighting for any chance of freeing themselves from exploitation but under this license will be classified as against the objective of this license under the definition and clauses provided. I think this paper on liberal pacification puts it much better than I ever could have and would recommend giving it a read if you have the time https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/1/199/5363835#186471603

Regardless, I know this is just a software license but would just like to share this as we try to codify our ethics into a legal framework.

Happy hacking!

brightly-salty commented 3 years ago

Thank you for that read, it was very persuasive. I agree that use of the Peace Public License should ideally not encourage liberal pacification but might do so in the current form. I would not like to remove the third and fourth restrictions entirely, as I do want to remove the capacity for violent or militaristic acts. Do you have any ideas on how we can reword the definitions to make it less pacificating?