[scikit-learn] climate friendly software licence

Sole Galli solegalli at protonmail.com
Tue Jun 30 04:26:04 EDT 2020


Hi Olivier, Gabriel, and further team,

Thank you so much for your views.

I understand enforcement is an issue. And I don't have yet an answer on if and how the license could be enforced.

I also think that this is a second step. First would be making the use of the software illegal. This would de-legitimise these companies from using these packages, which would then hopefully prevent these companies from presenting their destructive work in open source meetings like pydata, or openly hosting tech hub communities where they share the use of this software in an attempt to recruit talent, because now the use of the software is illegal. It would also make organisations like NumFocus stop accepting fossil fuel companies as sponsors, as they did in London 2019 and giving them a space to promote their work. Technical people may also ask twice before joining these companies, if now the use of software is not allowed, even at face value.

So I think, even if the license can't be enforced, it does have some power. But, as I said, at the moment I know very little of enforcement and whether package developers could get sued for adding this restriction.

Yes, there is a lot we can do as individuals to decrease our carbon footprint, some of us do, and certainly we should put the right people in power, but individual effort is not enough and electing politicians happens only every so many years. We need to do more than that, because the climate situation is very precarious and very urgent unfortunately.

Art organisations, newspapers, some banks and many pensions are cutting ties with fossil fuel companies. I think tech should take the plunge as well. If this is not the right way, would you have any suggestions?

Cheers

Sole


‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, June 29, 2020 3:50 PM, Olivier Grisel <olivier.grisel at ensta.org> wrote:

> Hi Sole,
>
> I personally support climate change actions very much and I am
> convinced climate change is the number 1 challenge of our time. In an
> attempt to act in a consistent way with that belief, I declined
> several times to keynote at conferences either organized by the fossil
> fuel industry or to conferences that would have required me to fly a
> long distance to give a presentation.
>
> However, I don't think software licensing is a right tool to advance this cause.
>
> How would we enforce it? What would happen if we don't enforce it? Who
> is "we", especially when our library is embedded in 3-rd party
> software product and the end-users are not necessarily aware of all
> the upstream dependencies?
>
> What about gray-cases, e.g. a company that does not fossil directly
> extraction per-se but works as a consultancy with a majority of
> customers in the fossil fuel extraction industry? What if a
> significant part of their consultancy is to help them detect methane
> leaks in satellite data? How would we audit this? With which
> resources? How would we get a consensual decision on those gray cases?
>
> What about the hypocrisy of using or contributing to software under
> that license while regularly using fossil fuel powered transportation
> or in a working or leaving building heated with fossil fuels? Or
> buying goods transported this way over long distances?
>
> Instead, I would rather encourage everyone to vote for legislators and
> governments that progressively set bans on the development and
> commercialization of fossil fuel based technologies and to voice your
> support for such legislations in public debates. I encourage everybody
> to look twice before accepting to work for a company involved in
> fossil fuel extraction one way or another or involved in fossil-fuel
> intensive activities.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Olivier




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