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diff --git a/content/theses/technological/licensing/NESL.md b/content/theses/technological/licensing/NESL.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab33cd8 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/theses/technological/licensing/NESL.md @@ -0,0 +1,115 @@ +--- +title: nesl +weight: 20 +--- +{{% hint %}} +`.txt` found [here](/NESL.txt) +{{% /hint %}} +{{% hint %}} +consider adding a [preamble on your source files](/theses/technological/licensing/nesl_preamble) +{{% /hint %}} + +<h1>Non-Enclosing Software License (NESL)</h1> + +<h4>Version 1.0</h4> + +## -1. Spirit of the License (Interpretation) + +This License exists to prevent the use of software as an instrument of coercion. + +In the event of ambiguity or uncertainty in the interpretation of this License, such ambiguity shall be resolved in the manner that most preserves individual autonomy, the ability to act independently, voluntary action, and the absence of involuntary obligation, and least enables coercion, enclosure, or asymmetric control. + +This section governs interpretation only and creates no independent rights or obligations. + +## 0. Preamble + +This License governs the use, modification, and distribution of the Software. + +By exercising any rights granted under this License, you accept its terms. +No party is obligated to exercise any right granted herein. + +This License grants permissions only. +It does not create any duty of use, labor, service, maintenance, support, security response, availability, or continued involvement by any party. + +Sublicensing is not permitted by this License. Distribution of the Software is not a grant of a separate sublicense. No distributor may impose additional restrictions or transfer the Software under different terms. + +File-level notices are informational only and do not create conditions +beyond those stated in this License. + +## 1. Definitions + +- Software: “Software” means the covered work in source or object form, including any portion thereof, and any modification, derivative work, or combination incorporating the covered work. + +- Distribute / Distribution: “Distribute” or “Distribution” means any act of conveying the Software, or making its functionality available, to another party, whether or not consideration is exchanged, including but not limited to: + - providing copies, + - deploying the Software on devices not exclusively controlled by the distributor, + - providing access to the Software or its functionality over a network or service, + - making the Software available for execution, interaction, or use by third parties. + +- Control: “Control” means the ability to determine, restrict, or prevent the conditions under which the Software may be executed, modified, replaced, or continued in use, whether through technical, legal, or contractual means, including control exercised via software, hardware, firmware, boot mechanisms, or execution environments. + +- Single Party: “Single Party” means one legal person or any group of legal persons acting in concert or under common control, including but not limited to parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, contractors, or agents, regardless of corporate form or jurisdiction. + +- User: “User” means any natural person or legal entity that uses, interacts with, depends upon, or is subject to the behavior of the Software. + +## 2. You May Not Take Away Freedoms You Did Not Create + +Any Distribution of the Software that results in recipients or Users being unable to exercise the freedoms enumerated below in this Section is prohibited. + +In particular, Distribution is prohibited where the distributor or any Single Party retains Control over the Software in a manner that restricts, conditions, or revokes the ability to: + 1. use the Software for any purpose, + 2. study its operation, + 3. modify it, + 4. replace it with a modified version, + 5. or continue using it independently of the distributor. + +Restrictions include, without limitation, technical or legal measures that enforce such Control, including but not limited to digital restrictions management, hardware or firmware enforcement mechanisms, or cryptographic signing requirements controlled by a Single Party. + +The freedoms granted by this License include, at minimum, the right to: + +- use the Software for any purpose, +- study how the Software works, +- modify the Software, +- distribute the Software and modified versions of the Software. + +Any Distributed copy of the Software, modified or unmodified, must include this License in full and remain governed by it. + +## 3. No Implied Rights + +No contributor, assignee, transferee, or distributor may assert any patent claim owned or controlled by them to restrict, condition, or interfere with the exercise of the permissions and freedoms explicitly granted by this License with respect to the Software. + +Except as necessary to give effect to the foregoing limitation, this License grants no rights or licenses under any patent, trademark, or similar intellectual property right. + +The Software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. + +No claim is made that the Software is safe, complete, suitable, or fit for any use. +Use of the Software is at the sole discretion and risk of the user. + +No reliance interest shall be inferred from the use or availability of the Software. + +Nothing in this License shall be interpreted to create any implied guarantee, entitlement, or right. + +## 4. No Implied Obligations + +No author, contributor, or upstream party assumes any obligation by virtue of authorship, contribution, publication, or distribution of the Software. + +The creation, release, or distribution of the Software does not constitute an offer of maintenance, support, updates, security review, coordination, or continued availability. + +Any labor, service, or ongoing involvement related to the Software exists only by explicit, voluntary agreement. +Absent such agreement, no duty—whether contractual, moral, customary, or implied—shall be inferred. + +Requests for labor, including requests relating to defects or security issues, are requests only and create no obligation. + +## 5. License Versions + +This Software is licensed under Version 1.0 of the License or, at the option of any recipient, any later version of this License. + +Any Distribution of the Software shall preserve this option and shall not restrict the ability of recipients to apply a later version of this License. + +Later versions of this License shall be revisions that preserve the fundamental principles stated in Section 0 and the freedoms enumerated in Section 1. + +## 6. Non-Expansion and Severability + +No interpretation of this License may be used to create obligations, duties, or restrictions not explicitly stated herein. + +If any provision of this License is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in effect. diff --git a/content/theses/technological/licensing/_index.md b/content/theses/technological/licensing/_index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a707997 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/theses/technological/licensing/_index.md @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +--- +title: licenses +weight: 10 +bookCollapseSection: true +--- diff --git a/content/theses/technological/licensing/nesl_preamble.md b/content/theses/technological/licensing/nesl_preamble.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..10b6e9e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/theses/technological/licensing/nesl_preamble.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: nesl preamble +weight: 100 +--- + +# Long preamble for NESL + +This file is part of a project governed by the Non-Enclosing +Software License (NESL). + +You are free to use, study, modify, and distribute this file and +derivative works under the terms of the NESL v1.0 or any later version. + +No distributor or intermediary may impose technical, legal, or +contractual controls that prevent recipients from exercising these +freedoms. + +No user, distributor, or intermediary may infer, claim, or impose any +obligation, duty, support, maintenance, or continued involvement from +the authors, contributors, or upstream parties by virtue of the use or +distribution of this file. + +See the LICENSE file for full terms. + +-------- +# Short preamble for NESL + +Governed by the Non-Enclosing Software License (NESL), +Version 1.0 or later. + + diff --git a/content/theses/technological/licensing/philosophy.md b/content/theses/technological/licensing/philosophy.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e006311 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/theses/technological/licensing/philosophy.md @@ -0,0 +1,65 @@ +--- +title: philosophy +weight: 10 +--- +<h1>Personal philosophy on software licensing</h1> + +It is well understood that free and open source software (*libre* software) stands for freedom as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". More specifically, free software is defined as any software that guarantees these four freedoms + +- The freedom to use the program for any purpose. +- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. +- The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor. +- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. + +These four freedoms guarantee that the *user* can make a fully informed choice; given they, or someone else, has knowledge of programming, they may study the code, and obtain full knowledge of how the software works. + +This, however, means that the code itself must be accessible, which comes with the implicit consequence that somebody well versed in programming might get the code, and use the software as they may, *without* paying. In this sense a consequence of free (*libre*)[^1] software (or rights-preserving software) is also *gratis* software (or zero-cost software). + +For the above reason, *libre* software has been massively adopted by programming communities; not only does it liberate the user by ensuring that they may make a choice based on full information, it also provides extra securities; rather than needing to place trust on the developer(s), you can trust the product itself. Security bugs and issues are found more easily, because more people are looking over the code, and the project is, in theory, constantly being audited; the project may organically grow because people take a natural interest in it, and become a communal effort rather than a personal one. + +It also is seen as a collectivising movement. Since the implication is that *libre* software has to provide access to the full source code for the four freedoms to be upheld, the implication of the capacity of others to use said code *without providing any financial compensation* means that businesses are typically disincentivised from using or creating *libre* software. Governments and other bad faith actors also typically prefer to make or use proprietary software, since making and using *libre* software would leave their misdeeds exposed. + +For this reason a more "lenient" software movement rose to prominence, that of *open source* software, which is also called *permissive*, because it permits the developer more freedoms, at the expense of the freedoms of the user[^2]. Open source software, although it does provide the user some freedoms, mostly cares for the developer experience, and the end-user is secondary[^3]. + +This in turn allowed corporations to see open-source software in a more friendly light, and reinforced the idea that there is an ideological and political distinction between *open-source* vs *libre* software; open-source is typically seen as corporate-friendly and capitalistic, whilst *libre* software is considered the collectivist/communist/anarchist option. If we look at this from a classical liberal viewpoint however, we might see a different story, and realise that *libre* software is the foundation of a free market of software. + +## legal plunder and lawful defence +In 1850, French economist Frederic Bastiat[^4] wrote a book called The Law[^5], in which he tries to argue that the rule of the Law is to guarantee and preserve the rights of the majority. In his argument, he says that since the government is comprised of people, then the government itself has no more rights than those that people individually have; the rights to life, to liberty, and to property.[^6] + +> *"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense."* + +In this regard, the role of government is exclusively to protect these very rights; anything that the government does that goes beyond the simple task of protecting the rights of the people is a degeneration of the law. + +> *"The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense."* + +We see in the above quote the root of the matter; lawful defence, insofar as it is defence that does not remove from the rights of others, is being subverted, in favour of plunder, so that others may exploit the individual, as well as the property of the individual, and in doing so reduce the capacities of the individual to exercise their liberty. In this sense, legal plunder, as Bastiat calls it, is nothing more than the erosion of the rights of the individual for the benefit of another, and because the law ends up perverted by the very people who seek to erode the liberties of others, lawful defence is seen as a detriment, and oftentimes opposing plunder is made illegal. + +## copyleft +It is on this that *libre* software takes a stand, where the open-source movement doesn't; *libre* software acts as an extension of good law; it protects and reinforces the rights of the user. Meanwhile *non-libre* software aims to plunder the user; it deducts from the user's rights. + +The way the rights are preserved is through a type of license called *copyleft*, called so because it forces not only the developer to provide the entirety of the project in a way that respects user freedom, but also any other developer who might build upon it and make their own modifications and distributions of the software. In essence it forces, in a viral way, all derived software to be as respectful of the user's rights as the original version. It promotes user freedom at the detriment of the developer. + +> *"[...] +>5. Conveying Modified Source Versions. +>You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: +>[...] +>c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it. +>[...]"* + +## example of non-copyleft abuse +In order to see why *copyleft* is so important to the preservance of user freedom, and how *libre* software acts as an extension of the righteous purpose of the law, as per classical liberalism, and why *open-source* and proprietary software permits legal plunder, I need to quote a very strong historical example. + +> MINIX is an operating system first released in 1987 by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, as an open-source clone of the Unix operating system, specifically targeted at low-power devices. Because it was licensed with an open-source license without a *copyleft* provision, a company, namely Intel, copied the code (ie *forked* in the proper terminology) and developed their own derivative operating system. Due to the lack of any *copyleft* clause that would force Intel to respect user freedom, by allowing the users to study and/or modify their derivative work, nobody, apart from the engineers that maintain it, know exactly what it does and how it works. The issue arises from the fact that this custom version of the MINIX operating system is run on the *Intel ME*, which is a small chip that exists in *every* Intel CPU for the past twenty years, and this operating system has *full* access to everything that happens inside of a computer that includes it. This includes the capability to control the computer; even if the computer is turned off, as long as it is connected to a power source (e.g. an outlet or a battery), it may even turn the computer on *without* user knowledge or consent. This control over the user system, alongside the inability of the user to study the MINIX operating system running inside of Intel ME, is enough of a reason to call it *malware* or *spyware*. It is a piece of code that is running without the user being able to give explicit and informed consent, and most of the time without even the user's knowledge. It is legal plunder.[^7] + +It is exactly this form of plunder that *copyleft* in *libre* software prevents, and in doing so creates a unique and interesting dynamic. + +## the free market of software +Exactly because it allows the user the maximal freedom, i.e. the ability to make fully informed consensual decisions concerning the software they wish to use, it forms the foundation of a free market of software; the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In classical liberalism, the term *market* is not restricted to use only in the exchange of goods for currency, but also includes any voluntary exchange of ideas and services, in a non-interventionist, fully decentralized manner. Besides, the concept of a free market does not axiomatically carry a preferred method of transaction; monetary exchanges, cryptocurrencies, barter, donations, everything is appropriate, with the only prerequisite being that an exchange is conducted on a voluntary premise for all participants, which necessitates transparency and full knowledge of the good or service provided; a free market of software *requires copyleft* in order to exist, and *copyleft* cannot function outside of a free market. + +[^1]: *free* software is an extemely poor choice of wording in my opinion, because it confuses the notion of freedom, with the notion of zero monetary costs. The distinction is why *libre* software has historically been used to denote free software as in freedom, and why *freeware* has been associated with zero-monetary cost. +[^2]: Because of this, I tend to call "permissive" licenses "restrictive". They restrict the user's freedoms. +[^3]: The difference is mainly ethical/moral, however there is open-source software that is *not* libre. +[^4]: 1801-1850 +[^5]: You can find a free copy [here](https://cdn.mises.org/thelaw.pdf) +[^6]: I am slowly compiling my own notes on the subject matter; you can find part of my viewpoint [here](https://notes.aethrvmn.gr/metaphysical/interpersonal/abilities) +[^7]: This specific example is the most egregious one *that we know of*, and has given rise to the term [*cuck license*](https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses/) for non *copyleft*, open-source licenses. |