Slashdot Mirror
New 'No Military Use' GPL For GPU
Tina Gasperson writes "GPU is a Gnutella client that creates ad-hoc supercomputers by allowing individual PCs on the network to share CPU resources with each other. That's intriguing enough, but the really interesting thing about GPU is the license its developers have given it. They call it a 'no military use' modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The developers told Newsforge why they did it, with commentary from OSI and FSF." Newsforge is also owned by OSTG, Slashdot's parent company.
I don't want to scream "WANKING!" but I find I can't help it. Pure pacifism pisses me off...It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality.
Conflict is a fact of existence. Not even human existence. Just being alive, you're in competition for limited resources, whether it's two elephants fighting over a waterhole, or two countries fighting over an oil field. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be, until we find a magic way of creating unlimited resources.
Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick. Same with pacifism. If you want to die, or be a slave, by all means, refuse to fight. That's Darwin at his finest. We're an agressive species. We evolved to where we are by being agressive. You think you're just going to decide it's time for everyone to be all nice and happy?
Fine. But don't act all surprised when someone disagrees.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I seriously doubt the military needs Gnutella for their supercomputing needs. Nice press release and good job on making the main page of slashdot to promote your project though *golf clap*.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I call it Copyfarleft.
an ill wind that blows no good
...and Iran would abide by this "No Military Use" restriction.
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
Below is what was added to the GPL:
x t
PATCH FOR NO MILITARY USE
This patch restricts the field of endeavour of the Program in such a way that this
license collides with paragraph 6 of the Open Source Definition. Therefore, this
modified version of the GPL is no more OSI compliant.
The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a
ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.
This is Asimov's first law of Robotics.
You can find the full text of the license at: http://gpu.sourceforge.net/GPL_license_modified.t
The government will happily agree... and include a signing statement that says they may not obey/enforce the law if they see fit not to. Then classify the use of the software so you don't find out. Then tap the phones of those who disagree..
Seriously, what teeth does this have considering recent history?
I wonder if they realize that most militaries not only attack, but they also defend.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics
Have any of them actually read I, Robot? I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?
Is it really bad form to suggest such interpretations as a question? Can you hear me now? Where's the bee*whump*. Sorry.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Politically charging you code license is just a bad and stupid idea.
First my making open source closed to some groups because you happen to dislike them breaks the concept of open, It is open just as long as I like you idea.
Second your making opponents where you don't have to. Your trying to get the government to use Open Source for it normal use but you get a huge blocking because the military (part of the government) is opposing this move because they cannot access the software.
Third it won't change anything except you will have to pay more taxes. Stopping your code for a group of people will only cause more money to go to the military because they need it to code their own version.
Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use. Example all this extra features could be used to calculate the safest way to deploy food to 3rd world countries, increasing distribution and reducing risk to troops.
Fifth you just look bad and hypocritical, you are all up for Openness freedom of speech except for when it says something you don't like.
It is a dangerious direction, so I can make code free to use for anyone except for people who are going to use it for making Fast Food, because we all know Fast Food is bad. Making programs as a political statement is just dangerous and will lead to a class based society, where there will be one group who can have some thing, and other who can't just because of their beliefs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If restriction this has any effect whatsoever, it's going to be to kill people. War has gotten steadily less destructive as technology has advanced, because fewer people are needed to fight. Lately, this has accelerated as more accurate weapons have cut down on civilian casualties.
This sort of restriction may get you out of being a indirect participant, but it's never going to prevent any combat from occurring.
No, he doesn't. He actually mentiones military use as something he says that the GPL must support, since we want the best software working for our military, we'd hope they'd use GNU. He says this specificallly in a GPL3 talk.
What he says there is that the license may be legally valid.
The person whose saying he agrees with their goals is the OSI person, Russ Nelson, not RMS.
Free Software must be Free Software for any use. It's a similar argument against commercial use, it's morally unacceptable to prevent anyone from using the software, commercially or militarily, or used in a classroom or by an individual.
Let us focus on the second half of the sentence and you will see my point. "nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed." So in otherwords, this CAN be used by the military if the military is using it for something like the Missile Defense Agency.
...are software licenses/"EULAs" enforceable, not enforceable, or what?
Also, the inclusion of a "no military use" provision presumes that ALL military activity activity, of any type, for any reason, is always negative or undesirable.
I'd hope most sane people are level-headed enough to realize the foolishness of that implied presumption.
And if we want to get into the "ethics" of miltary action, what if the killing of, say, 15,000 can be argued, very convincingly, to have most likely saved hundreds of thousands, or millions, more? How do you measure the benefits of something that has not occurred because it has been prevented? Is there ever any time when a proactive or premptive step can be accepted to have resulted in more overall good than harm, if the only thing that matters is human calculus and bodycounts?
Over what timeframes do you measure? Is there only moral relativism, in that since anyone holding any philosophy can always be argued to be doing what they themselves believe is the "right thing", no one has any moral authority to make a decision that may end lives to save more? Do nation-states and alliances have any value in the global political system? Can free Western nations decide to initiate defensive or offensive military actions to protect their interests, from which presumably the happiness, well-being, and continued existence of many hundreds or millions of people is created? Is any system of government worth protecting? These are very real questions that seem to be ignored. The cynics among us who believe that some particular nation's government is literally already a 1984-style police state in action, bent on ensuring its own power continues to grow at all costs[1], will not be able to answer any of these questions in a reasoned fashion.
Try not to read anything into what I'm saying or assume that I'm talking about a particular event. Just try to imagine a scenario where deadly force may need to be used to prevent more harm, i.e., there is a distinctly net positive effect.
It's all well and good to talk about doing no harm. Just keep in mind that it's sometimes necessary to "do harm" to prevent more of the same.
That's not a warmongering view, an American view, nor a Republican view. That's just a very simple fact of reality that would be discovered by an application of common sense. Anyone who might fall back on the refrain of "but we don't know what really would have happened otherwise, do we?" when presented with an example event is quite frankly choosing to delude themselves, and has chosen the path of willful ignorance under a very thin veil of righteousness.
[1] Completely off-topic aside: it is stunning to me how many well-educated, supposedly intelligent people have let their own political feelings cloud their view to the point of literally believing that 9/11 was a plot hatched out of the US government itself. So many of the claims are simply outrageous:
- The planes that hit the trade center towers were military aircraft made to look like commercial jetliners, but the trade center towers were also actually rigged with explosives; the planes hitting them was merely a diversion. It is apparently not plausible that commercial jetliners could cause the buildings to come down; steel doesn't need to get to its melting point to begin losing an incredibly significant amount of its integrity.
- WTC 7 was also rigged with explosives: it must have been, because the damage to it was only superficial. This ignores the fact that two over-100 story buildings collapsed within ridiculously close proximity, making the entire building structurally unsound. Also, why did WTC 7 need to be destroyed? If the whole idea was to rig buildings with explosives and then fly planes into them as a "diversion", making people incorrectly think that it was planes that brought them down, why would WTC 7 be a part of that conspiracy?
- Even though planes, either unmanned or perhaps the actual jetliners piloted by pa
"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."
That second part means that, if you don't use it, you're not allowed to use it. Such non-usage is to be considered strictly unauthorized non-usage. Dumb.
What do you think a phase conjugate tracking mirror is used for, Kent?
The quote is "What do you think a secret phase conjugate tracking system is FOR? A big mirror makes a big beam."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Software developer: HEY ARMY GUYS! I said you can't use this software.
Army Guys: I have a big gun.
Software developer: I'm going back to my cube now.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
Seems to me it dishonors the spirit of the GPL.
In any event. So what now? Someone gets a hard on against "pick your religon" or "pick your style of government" or "I don't like x political party" and and inserts a similar clause? This whole idea is asinine. So I have to ask these guys if they're so against violating human rights and war certainly does that, why did they not add China to their "ban list"?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Just out of curiosity, how would you feel if a product you produced was being used to kill others? This is of course assuming that the primary purpose of your product is not Military use, like GPU (which appears to be a distributed computing product). What if it was being used in a war you don't agree with?
I'm just assuming you to be a reasonable human being that doesn't actually want to kill or harm others and will only do so at the last resort...
Personally, I would not want anything I made to be used to harm others, and if I found out that this was happening, I would probably feel like the character Chris Knight in "Real Genius" when he realized what the laser was for.
I am curious about your views of this.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Pacifism only works when there are non-pacifists to protect the pacifists.
Because nothing says "free" (liber, not gratis) like imposing seemingly arbitrary limits upon what one can do with the "free" software in question.
As for pacifism, I defer to Mr. George Orwell's thoughts on the matter: "Pacifism. Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that 'according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be "objectively pro-British".' But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious 'freedom' station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U." from Pacifism and the War by George Orwell, 1942.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I feel the Free software/open source community should vigorously discourage any restrictions on usage, rather than distribution, of the software. The authors of GPU, according to the article, admit their restriction "contradicts the original intention of the GPL". Indeed it does.
Open source software is bound to be used in ways that the authors find unappealing to some extent. Still, there are a variety of reasons why any restriction on usage are inappropriate. First, the licenses and restrictions of open source software ought to be as clear as possible. This allows people to reasonably abide by the licenses and probably (IANAL) helps in their legal enforceability. Second, if the community begins to accept these usage restrictions, it may be a "slippery slope". Criminal usage might be prohibited, but in what jurisdiction? Then, behavior various authors find objectionable (pornography, as an example) might be prohibited. Then perhaps you'll have development tools (IDEs, etc) with restrictions that they may only be used to create open source software.
One of the greatest benefits of open source software for end users is that you only need to be familiar with the terms of a few licenses and they are nearly impossible to violate if all you're doing is running the software. Restrictions on usage destroy this freedom for users. Thus, I believe advocates of OSS should reject any such restrictions and continue their focus on the abilities to modify and redistribute the source code.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
The GPL is only legal to use without change. If you patch it or change the terms, it's violation of the FSF copyright or most likely invalidate the licensing altogether. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. It doesn't matter if you change the middle, end or beginning. Part of the license is the nonchanging of it. This is very important because if everyone added patches, the meaning of the GPL would become diluted. On top of this, the GPL is a freedom giving license, you can't patch away these freedoms by adding restrictions. This causes direct conflict between the license and the modified patch in the begining. This mostly likely causes the entire license to be ruled invalid These people should have written their own darn license. You didn't see Netscape put in a preample modifying it, they made their own.
That he sympathizes with their goals is probably why he fails to mention something blindingly obvious: that the new "modified" license doesn't qualify as open source, according to the OSI's own definition:
And that is a bunch of amateurs writing SW licenses.
"The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a
ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."
Doesn't even say anything about any "Military". What if one reads "RIAA" for "Military"?
Pretty half-assed legalese if you ask me.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
What's funny, is that I wish most of the MIL-STD specs were freely available and open to the public. While some aren't *classified*, many are under export control. Anything other than a MIL-STD describing how soda stored in a ships magazine should be entered into a database is pretty much classified or under export control. You know, operational protocols... yes, there is a MIL-STD for everything, even the types of screws that can be used for assembling certain parts; which, for all the technology that might exist in launching an F18 off the flight deck of a carrier, to Air Force radar data streams...
I think it would be most optimal, and a great benefit for any military, if much of these protocols, specifications were public. I would *love* to develop OPEN SOURCE applications for military and aviation/aerospace applications. While there is a great deal of a myriad application in the field running on top of Open Source software such as Linux, or working with Open Source Software; it is all proprietary either developed "in-house" from within the branch of the military or agency, or directly contracted out to a private enterprise defense contractor.
I think, the only detrimental part of infrastructure that is widely known and specs available to the public is the phone system. Much of all other technologies, are kept hush hush as for specifications and standards; air traffic control, power-grid, nuclear reactors, etc.
While I WISH I could write applications in the Open Source realm FOR the military, FOR the government, FOR the state, FOR the city... we have others that wish their applications were NOT available for military/government etc.
The Ironic part is... apparently, either "their" ego has inflated to ridiculous height, width and depth, or they are truelly stupid as for how MUCH of technology that we enjoy and take for granted was directly FUNDED or RESEARCHED by the military. Computers were initially designed for the sole purpose of simulating nuclear explosions; or so we say, but one thing is for certain, it was military interest that is to thank for all the peaces making up this "Internet".
Perhaps military application, inherently holds such a repulsive connotation, that we tend to forget the driving force and clout that enabled tons of money to be "wasted" on the R&D required for such projects. Who has the money for such large scale projects? Yes, the Government. What is the most useful application? Sadly, military applications... not pet shampoo or a more efficient espresso machine.
Becuase of this. I feel, that any person wishing to lock the government/military out of technology is only really biting the hand that fed them. Kinda like turning their back on their own parents in regards to their interests. It's not the best recognition to give, nor is it a decent "Thank You". I also think that becuase of how much research and development the military and government does for new technologies... locking them out will only increase the odds to say your idea will not have longevity whenever the government makes public a new technology to capitalize and market with.
Just my thoughts... but, to each his own.
Ca. 2003, David Wiley at Creative Commons was pushing an idea for a CC license for educational use only. I participated in the discussion on the mailing list, and tried to persuade them that it was a bad idea. AFAIK it never happened. Part of the motivation seems to have been that some people were interested in preventing use by the military.
One of the things I think is wrong with this kind of idea is that it becomes becomes hard to define. For instance, I have some textbooks I've written that are free on the web, and I often hear from homeschoolers who are using them. Does homeschooling count as educational use, and if so, where do you draw the line between educational use and use by just about any individual who wants to learn something? The wording of the GPU license is also going to create problems, for all the same reasons that generated good plots for Asimov's stories involving the laws of robotics.
Another problem with this type of license is that it works against reuse. It balkanizes the world of free information so that you can't use information in new and crative ways.
Anyone can apply any license they want to their own work, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that it's easy to define or enforce the conditions.
Find free books.
The military people will probably laugh at this (should they even encounter it). First, there are very few High Performance Computing applications that can use this type of computer (For those that need some background please see Linux Cluster Urban Legends pay attention to the latency part -- there is a shower scene)
Second, if the military had some use for this type of computing, they would either build their own software, hire someone to write it for them, or just buy a cluster. The administration and security headaches of a "open network p2p computer" certainly outweigh any advantages they would gain from this software.
But, your software - your license.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
If you feel you need to go into someone elses territory to destroy weapons they may use against you, then you feel defending will be insufficient, and you feel you need to attack them before they attack you.
You may even be right.
If you want to convince me you are right, you'll do better saying "We need to attack first because..." If you start by calling it "defensive", when it's clearly "offensive", then I'm going to be predisposed to assume the rest of your arguments are BS too.
Also, I hope that they don't use TCP/IP or the Internet, because the basic idea of packet-switching, the TCP/IP protocol, and the basic Internet architecture were all funded by the military (through DARPA/ARPA). Using TCP/IP to distribute or implement this thing would be hypocritical, so I'm glad they aren't doing that :-).
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
They're controlled forms of conflict. Codified warfare where males go out and prove their fitness to breed to females. The resulting wealth, cars, planes, yachts are all simply peacock feathers shouting look at what I've got, my progeny will be successfull.
(Yeah and btw, that's also why females are extremely unlikely to ever have full equality in the workplace. Sorry gals, you're not really competing for what you think you're competing for).
Deleted
Pacifism does NOT equate to doing NOTHING in the face of a violent threat. It only rules out a VIOLENT response.
All manner of creative, non-violent responses are possible. Civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, culture jamming, etc.
While you may want to debate the efficacy of a pacifist response to violence, you at least need to understand that pacifism is not equivalent to surrender. Lots of thought-provoking info at:
http://www.nonviolence.org/
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."
That obligates the program (by some unknown mechanisim) to jump to the defense of all people everywhere and anytime. To do else would be an inaction permitting humans to be harmed.
Since no one has managed to encode Superman, or [insert favorite action hero], this essentially says that the software can't be used at all, and I hereby call upon the authors to scrap the entire project and erase all source code.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
> at least they are doing something to curb war and destruction you war mongering fucknuckles.
You say that like violence and war are bad things. All things being equal I think we can all agree that a peaceful solution to a problem is better than a violent one. But all things are not equal and all problems do not have peaceful solutions. And for the fucktard who said "Violence doesn't solve anything." I have just one question:
Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem. You might not like the solution, but violence does solve problems. Just look at American history and count how many times violence solved the problem of the day. Start with the colonies dispute with the King of England.
We talked and pleaded our case until we were blue in the face. In the end though, we stopped talking and started shooting and the problem was solved. Then about eighty years later we had a big dispute about federal vs states' rights with abolition vs slavery all muddled in the middle. Again the problem festered for years until violence resolved the problem. (Personally I think it was resolved the wrong way but again in that they destroyed the principles the Republic was based upon in the effort to preserve it, but opinions are like assholes in that everybody has one.) They solved the problem though and it hasn't recurred in over a century so I think we can all agree it is pretty much solved.
Nazi problem? Solved with lots of ultra violence, on both sides of the argument.
Imperial Japan? Solved with even more ultra violence, culminating is a really big spasm of overkill. But it solved the problem.
The only major foreign policy dispute of the 20th century solved with little (if you can discount the dozens of 'brush wars' like Vietnam) violence was the Cold War, it was solved by the speaking of but a single sentence. Of course the struggle to get the right person in the right place to speak it was a major undertaking. Which proves words aren't totally useless.
And actually, I firmly believe the current GWOT could be solved in a similar fashion. But it probably won't, instead culminating in another few years in a global spasm of violence that will make WWII and the mass graves of Communism pale in comparison. And since the War will begin at a time and place of the barbarian's choice our only hope is that they miscalculate and believe they can win a little too early.
Democrat delenda est
Had it been the Dutch in the 18th century rather than the Brits in the 20th, you better better believe Gandhi and his followers would've been been shot and dragged off immediately.
Speaking of the Dutch, or at least people of largely Dutch descent: Before Ghandi had his success in India he tried the same tactics in an attempt to end the repression of blacks in South Africa. This was a resounding failure. South African blacks remained repressed throughout Ghandi's carreer and for decades after his death.
He also had advice for the Jews of Germany under the rising Third Reich: Commit mass suicide as a peaceful protest of their oppression.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way