The Feasibility and Enforceability of Ethical Software Licenses

Developers are increasingly exploring ways to align their software with their personal ethics, leading to questions about creating source-available licenses with political or ethical stipulations. For instance, can you create a license that prohibits use by specific political organizations, their supporters, or for military-adjacent activities? The short answer is yes, but the long answer is far more complex, revolving almost entirely around the challenge of enforcement.

Can You Write a Custom License?

You can put whatever terms you want into a software license. A license is a form of contract, and you are not required to use a boilerplate template like the MIT or GPL license. You can take an existing license that you like and simply append your custom restrictions to it.

The Core Challenge: Enforceability

While creating the license is straightforward, making it stick is another matter entirely. The strength of a license isn't its popularity or the number of people using it, but your ability to successfully enforce it in a court of law. This presents several major obstacles:

• Hostile Legal Systems: In a scenario where an oppressive political party is in power, the judicial system will likely be aligned with that party. Any attempt to sue the regime's supporters for violating your license terms would almost certainly fail.
• Unfavorable Precedent: Even in a more liberal and functioning legal system, a judge might be hesitant to uphold a license that is seen as discriminatory. A clause prohibiting use by people with certain political beliefs could be viewed as an attempt to strip away civil rights, and a court may refuse to enforce it.

The License as a Political Statement

Despite the slim chances of legal enforcement, many see value in using a license as a form of protest or a statement of values. Even if it can't be immediately enforced, it serves several purposes:

• It clearly communicates the author's intent that their work not be used to cause harm or support ideologies they oppose.
• It creates a public record of dissent.
• It could form the basis for future litigation if the political landscape changes and a more sympathetic legal environment emerges.

An Alternative View: Embrace Openness

A counter-argument is to accept the nature of open and source-available software: once it's out there, you can't fully control who uses it. Proponents of this view argue that the good of making a tool available to the world outweighs the risk of it being used by "bad actors." By creating and maintaining useful software with a positive intent, you occupy a niche that might otherwise be filled by someone with a more harmful ideology. In this view, the positive contribution to the ecosystem is its own reward, regardless of who benefits.