Organization for Ethical Source

Organization for Ethical SourceAbbreviation| OES

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Formation| December 2020; 5 years ago (2020-12)[1]
Type| non-profit organization
Purpose| Educational
Headquarters| Switzerland

Region served

| Worldwide

Membership

| Individuals
Leader| Coraline Ada Ehmke
Website| ethicalsource.dev

The Organization for Ethical Source (OES) is a non-profit organization founded by Coraline Ada Ehmke in December 2020, to support the ethical source movement, which promotes that "software freedom must always be in service of human freedom".[2] The organization is dedicated to "giving technologists tools and resources to ensure that their work is being used for social good and to minimize harm". It develops tools to "promote fair, ethical, and pro-social outcomes for those who contribute to, or are affected by, open source technologies".[1]

The organization aims to support the ethical source movement, promoting ethics and social responsibility in open source.[3] The movement has facilitated a new kind of license, the Hippocratic License,[4] inspired by the medical Hippocratic Oath. The license has been criticized as non-enforceable and non-open source,[5][6] including by Bruce Perens,[7] co-founder of the Open Source Initiative and author of the Open Source Definition. The license has triggered debate within the open source movement.[8][9][10][11] The Hippocratic License has been classified as non-free by the Free Software Foundation,[12][13] while the Open Source Initiative stated, on Twitter, that the license is not an open source software license and that software distributed under such license is not open source.[14]

According to the OES, "ethical licenses" are based in 7 principles defined for common goods, open work, accessibility, privacy or also transparency.

During the 2021 controversy around Richard Stallman returning to the FSF board, after his resignation in 2019, the OES issued a statement against it, and was one of the signatory organizations of an open letter with thousands of signatures.[15][16][17][18]

## Contents

* 1 Examples of ethical licenses
* 2 See also
* 3 References
* 4 External links

## Examples of ethical licenses

* 996.ICU
* ACAB
* Anti-Capitalist
* BSD 3-Clause No Nuclear
* BSD 3-Clause No Military
* Do No Harm
* Hippocratic 3.0 (containing a custom license online generator)
* Peer Production

## See also

* Contributor Covenant
* Inclusive language
* Open source movement
* Women in Computing

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Announcing a New Kind of Open Source Organization". Organization for Ethical Source. https://ethicalsource.dev/blog/oes-announcement/.
2. ↑ Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J.. "Ethical-source movement opens new open-source organization" (in en). https://www.zdnet.com/article/ethical-source-movement-opens-new-open-source-organization/.
3. ↑ Schneider, Nathan (host); Ehmke, Coraline Ada (guest) (2021-01-29). Can software handle ethics?. Looks Like New (Podcast episode). Media Archaeology Lab / KGNU. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
4. ↑ "The Hippocratic License 2.1: An Ethical License for Open Source." (in en). https://firstdonoharm.dev/.
5. ↑ Prakash, Abhishek (September 24, 2019). "The Great Open Source Divide: ICE, Hippocratic License and the Controversy" (in en-US). https://itsfoss.com/hippocratic-license/.
6. ↑ Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J.. "You can't open-source license morality" (in en). https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-cant-open-source-license-morality/.
7. ↑ Perens, Bruce (2019-09-23). "Sorry, Ms. Ehmke, The "Hippocratic License" can't work". https://perens.com/2019/09/23/sorry-ms-ehmke-the-hippocratic-license-cant-work/. "It's this one that makes the Hippocratic license not Open Source, not that I am clear its proponents care about that."
8. ↑ Fussell, Sidney (2020-01-03). "The Schism at the Heart of the Open-Source Movement" (in en). The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/ice-contract-github-sparks-developer-protests/604339/. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
9. ↑ Finley, Kint (October 4, 2019). "An Open Source License That Requires Users to Do No Harm". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/story/open-source-license-requires-users-do-no-harm/. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
10. ↑ Doctorow, Cory (2019-10-04). "The Hippocratic License: A new software license that prohibits uses that contravene the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (in en-US). https://boingboing.net/2019/10/04/free-vs-open.html.
11. ↑ Bridgwater, Adrian (January 31, 2020). "Tidelift: Ethical source-available licenses challenge open source". Computer Weekly. Open source licence series (London: TechTarget). ISSN 0010-4787. https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Open-Source-Insider/Open-source-licence-series-Tidelift-Ethical-source-available-licenses-challenge-open-source. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
12. ↑ "Various Licenses and Comments about Them". Free Software Foundation. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#hippocratic.
13. ↑ Robertson, Donald (2020-04-07). "A roundup of recent updates to our licensing materials: November 2019 to April 2020". Free Software Foundation. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/a-roundup-of-recent-updates-to-our-licensing-materials-november-2019-to-april-2020.
14. ↑ Open Source Initiative [@OpenSourceOrg]. "The intro to the Hippocratic Licence might lead some to believe the license is an Open Source Software licence, and software distributed under the Hippocratic Licence is Open Source Software. As neither is true, we ask you to please modify the language to remove confusion.". https://twitter.com/OpenSourceOrg/status/1176229398929977344. Missing or empty `|date=` (help)
15. ↑ Claburn, Thomas (March 23, 2021). "Free Software Foundation urged to free itself of Richard Stallman by hundreds of developers and techies" (in en). Situation Publishing. https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/23/fsf_stallman_outcry/.
16. ↑ Melanson, Mike (2021-03-26). "This Week in Programming: Free Software Can't Exist without Richard Stallman?" (in en-US). https://thenewstack.io/this-week-in-programming-free-software-cant-exist-without-richard-stallman/.
17. ↑ Riggins, Jennifer (2021-04-13). "Why (Almost) Everyone Wants Richard Stallman Canceled" (in en-US). https://thenewstack.io/why-almost-everyone-wants-richard-stallman-cancelled/.
18. ↑ "An open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions". https://rms-open-letter.github.io/.

## External links

* Official website

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