Before write what I am about to write, I would like to be clear that this is a very controversial topic and, for the eyes of many of you, this will be even silly.

I also know that open source means "open for everyone", and any conditional to that automatically makes a piece of software non-open source.

I really feel pissed off to see such effort for brilliant people from open source community being used for terrible things. So I started to nurture the idea of a license that would forbid the usage of a project by totalitarian governments, including its department and contractors, military forces of any country, certain entities like radical political parties, etc. Basically limiting the usage of those projects to any activity promoting human suffering.

Do you guys think that this is utopic? Does it really hurt the essence of open source? Do you think in the same way about this, and if yes, how do you cope with that?

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[–] Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think one has to cope with it the same way the inventor of the ice pick had to cope with Walter Jackson Freeman II. You can't really control what people do with your tools. If you think someone actively destroying lives will bend to the whims of a license, that's cool. I wish I had that level of optimism. Right now it's still pulling teeth to get companies to respect GPLv3.