A question on the impact of adopting this license

[Lucas-C]

As a foreword, I find your idea and project very interesting ! I will try to spread the idea, and maybe use such kind of license for my own projects in the future.

Now, quoting the license terms:

The Software may not be used in applications and services that are used for or aid in the exploration, extraction, refinement, processing, or transportation of fossil fuels. The Software may not be used by companies that rely on fossil fuel extraction as their primary means of revenue

I am not well-versed at all in law, and its very different applications around the world.
However I wonder how "strong" and "legally binding" is such a license.

What about it's use in software for cars, that consume fossil fuels ? What if such license ends up in some very "generic" software (on cell-phones, laptops...), that could be used by employees of companies working to extract fossil fuels ?

I guess no-one will really know until there is a first lawsuit. And for such lawsuit to occur, someone will have to sue a company using software under this license. In the past, with existing FOSS licenses,
it seems to me that it happened when a company using an open source license for their products tried to defend themself and their buisness model, from abuses in using their software against the terms they established.

Then (and this is my main question), who do you think will fill a lawsuit against a company not following this license terms ?

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Now, a side comment: I had the chance to be at Tobie Langel "Bringing back ethics to open source" talk at the recent FOSDEM conference: https://chezsoi.org/lucas/blog/minutes-of-the-fosdem-2020-conference.html#sunday-1255-bringing-back-ethics-to-open-source---tobie-langel
Among the ideas he developped there was the suggestion to forbid a software usage for activities against human rights, through its license.
If I support both stances (fighting against fossil fuels exploitation and for the defense of human rights), which license should I choose for my software ?? A custom one ?

[wcerfgba]

A few thoughts on your comments @Lucas-C 🙂

I wonder how "strong" and "legally binding" is such a license.

What about it's use in software for cars, that consume fossil fuels ? What if such license ends up in some very "generic" software (on cell-phones, laptops...), that could be used by employees of companies working to extract fossil fuels ?

I agree that the 'no fossil fuels' clause may be legally vague -- I am also not a lawyer. One way this could be remedied is to make the clause more specific. For example, there is a system called the Standard Industrial Classification or SIC [1] which is used in UK and USA to categorise registered companies by their primary business activity. For example, SIC major group 13 covers "oil and gas extraction", major group 29 covers "petroleum refining and related industries", group/code 4612 specifically covers "crude petroleum pipelines" and so on. Thus the clause could be rewritten as:

The Software may not be used by companies whose primary business activity falls under SIC major group 13

This would make it very clear in some jurisdictions if a company is prohibited from using the software: in the UK a registered company has to declare their primary business activity.

I guess no-one will really know until there is a first lawsuit.

I think just having the clause in the licenses of major projects would be enough to discourage companies from adopting those softwares, which is where I think this repo has made a significant contribution: the authors have identified major projects who should be lobbied to adopt such clauses. Take numpy for instance: it is very popular, and powers a lot of other very popular libraries. Including such a clause in numpy may be enough to make companies like ExxonMobil unwilling to use it purely because of the increased legal complexity created by the possibility of a lawsuit, as such a license would have to be vetted by their Legal department, and probably put a hold on using that library until those checks were cleared.

If I support both stances (fighting against fossil fuels exploitation and for the defense of human rights), which license should I choose for my software ?? A custom one ?

I think the future development in this area of software licensing is dependent on developing the clauses, not the licenses. Ideally I think a project author should be able to take whatever base license they want (BSD, GPL, MPL, ...) and add additional clauses to tailor the restrictions as they see fit. As you point out, there are many activities software authors may not want their code to be used for and we should be able to any or all of these activities from any license.

[1] https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/sic_manual.html

[RehanSaeed]

This is a good idea. I applaud it and am thinking of using this license.

Have lawyers looked over this license? If so, what countries were they from?

[frnsys]

Thanks for this discussion. The ambiguity of the current license is definitely a concern, but using SIC codes is a great idea. We can also use NAICS codes, and additional criteria such as Nasdaq/NYSE industry classification. I imagine that would give us pretty comprehensive coverage. One possible loophole, however, is that this is a self-determined classification, companies could just change it...I imagine there are other downsides or complications to doing so, but just something to keep in mind.

Including such a clause in numpy may be enough to make companies like ExxonMobil unwilling to use it purely because of the increased legal complexity created by the possibility of a lawsuit, as such a license would have to be vetted by their Legal department, and probably put a hold on using that library until those checks were cleared.

Exactly, companies are often very cautious about this.

I think the future development in this area of software licensing is dependent on developing the clauses, not the licenses. Ideally I think a project author should be able to take whatever base license they want (BSD, GPL, MPL, ...) and add additional clauses to tailor the restrictions as they see fit. As you point out, there are many activities software authors may not want their code to be used for and we should be able to any or all of these activities from any license.

That's our vision too. Most of the major licenses make this straightforward because they do not prohibit modification or the introduction of additional restrictions. The GPL however does prohibit these and we don't really know how to get around that.

Have lawyers looked over this license? If so, what countries were they from?

We've only had lawyers from the US look it over, but their primary concerns are more or less covered in the issues people have raised in this repo. It would be great to have lawyers in other countries look it over too if you know of any.

[Lucas-C]

It would be very interesting to have feedback on this license from an organization like the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC)