i wrote this software license recently, based on ACSL and a few ideas i’ve been having regarding how these licenses work:

"i'm so tired" software license 1.0 

copyright (c) [year] [copyright holders]

this is anti-capitalist, anti-bigotry software, made by people who are tired of ill-intended organisations and individuals, and would rather not have those around their creations.

permission is granted, free of charge, to any user (be they a person or an organisation) obtaining a copy of this software, to use it for personal, commercial, or educational purposes, subject to the following conditions:

1. the above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or modified versions of this software.

2. the user is one of the following:
    a. an individual person, labouring for themselves
    b. a non-profit organisation
    c. an educational institution
    d. an organization that seeks shared profit for all of its members, and allows non-members to set the cost of their labor

3. if the user is an organization with owners, then all owners are workers and all workers are owners with equal equity and/or equal vote.

4. if the user is an organization, then the user is not law enforcement or military, or working for or under either.

5. the user does not use the software for ill-intentioned reasons, as determined by the authors of the software. said reasons include but are not limited to:
    a. bigotry, including but not limited to racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sexism, antisemitism, religious intolerance
    b. pedophilia, zoophilia, and/or incest
    c. support for cops and/or the military
    d. any blockchain-related technology, including but not limited to cryptocurrencies

6. the user does not promote or engage with any of the activities listed in the previous item, and is not affiliated with any group that promotes or engages with any of such activities.

this software is provided as is, without any warranty or condition. in no event shall the authors be liable to anyone for any damages related to this software or this license, under any kind of legal claim.

here’s a separate page with just the license, and if you’re like me and you wanna use it for releasing things such as games and apps, here’s a no resale version of it as well.

i think the way developers defined “open source” is genuinely bad. the idea of making things for everyone to use is fun in paper (hence why the MIT license is one of the most used ones out there, and one that i used quite a lot in the past), but it honestly sucks to create things before they end up being used by:

• individuals who spread bigotry and fascist ideals
• big corporations who make sure to exploit everyone as long as they get money for it
• the literal military, known for using software to simulate murdering people so they can better murder civilians in real life

for veadotube, i wanted something that could be used by people who labour for themselves (streamers, artists, so on) but that would still be a bit restrictive in how individuals and organisations use the app, for a number of reasons:

• i’m creating this little thing with the help of a few friends, for people like us, not for big corporations or law enforcement. i have no idea how they could use it honestly but i’d rather not risk it (update 2023-03-21): been thinking about that period of time when U.S. troops tried to recruit kids by streaming on Twitch, and vtubing isn’t that far away so yeah AHSDHA
• i think it’s important to cultivate a better community around the app, and make sure everyone knows where the app and its creators stand. making users feel safe is a huge priority for me
• i’m allowed to set some boundaries for myself and the things i make :]

the Anti-Capitalist Software License was a good start – i wrote the original veadotube terms of use page on top of it, but i realised i wanted something that looked less like a loose webpage and more like a license, so that i could just use it with other projects of mine in the future. so yeah!

in practice, this will probably do more as a way to tell people what the software they’re using stands for; i’m hoping i won’t have to enforce this further than just banning people from small online groupchats and stuff like that. in any case, it’s important to have a license, apparently! so here’s one asking the user to do the bare minimum.