Hi,
I can respect where this comes from, especially as someone who works in
atmospheric science. I'm glad people are trying to do what they can.
With that said, I am -1000 on this. In my opinion, a software license is a
wholly inappropriate venue for trying to do this. At the top of the home
page for the Free Software Foundation: "Free software developers guarantee
everyone equal rights to their programs". What you're proposing is
essentially "everyone equal rights so long as they aren't working on things
I disagree with". The nobility of the cause in my opinion doesn't justify
compromising the values behind free software.
As someone with some miniscule commits in the numpy codebase, I would not
want them distributed under the modified license. As a developer of other
downstream projects, I would switch to the BSD fork of the project that
would inevitably materialize.
Ryan
On Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 12:35 PM John Preston
Hello all,
The following proposal was originally issue #16722 on GitHub but at the request of Matti Picus I am moving the discussion to this list.
"NumPy is the fundamental package needed for scientific computing with Python."
I am asking the NumPy project to leverage its position as a core dependency among statistical, numerical, and ML projects, in the pursuit of climate justice. It is easy to identify open-source software used by the oil and gas industry which relies on NumPy [1] [2] , and it is highly likely that NumPy is used in closed-source and in-house software at oil and gas extraction companies such as Aramco, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and others. I believe it is possible to use software licensing to discourage the use of NumPy and dependent packages by companies such as these, and that doing so would frustrate the ability of these companies to identify and extract new oil and gas reserves.
I propose NumPy's current BSD 3-Clause license be extended to include the following conditions, in line with the Climate Strike License [3] :
* 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. This includes but is not limited to the companies listed at https://climatestrike.software/blocklist
I accept that there are issues around adopting such a proposal, including that:
addition of such clauses violates the Open Source Initiative's canonical Open Source Definition, which explicitly excludes licenses that limit re-use "in a specific field of endeavor", and therefore if these clauses were adopted NumPy would no longer "be open-source" by this definition; there may be collateral damage among the wider user base and project sponsorship, due to the vague nature of the first clause, and this may affect the longevity of the project and its standing within the Python, numerical, statistical, and ML communities.
My intention with the opening of this issue is to promote constructive discussion of the use of software licensing -- and other measures -- for working towards climate justice -- and other forms of justice -- in the context of NumPy and other popular open-source libraries. Some people will say that NumPy is "just a tool" and that it sits independent of how it is used, but due to its utility and its influence as a major open-source library, I think it is essential that we consider the position of the Climate Strike License authors, that "as tech workers, we should take responsibility in how our software is used".
Many thanks to all of the contributors who have put so much time and energy into NumPy. ✨ ❤️ 😃
[1] https://github.com/gazprom-neft/petroflow [2] https://github.com/climate-strike/analysis [3] https://github.com/climate-strike/license _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
-- Ryan May