On the weaponisation of open source

Thank you to @veritunda

Excellent article, it’d appear MongoDB has decided to go the extra mile and Terraform AWS modules is no longer an open source project according to the Open Source Initiative.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

The Open Source Definition – Open Source Initiative

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I have vague memory of noticing many, many years ago that Fedora distribution was restricted due to US sanctions against Iran. I guess governments get to over-rule the licensing if they have to. I think Mint started off with political differences against Israel too, quite early in its history but again, can’t remember if I read that on their site or elsewhere.

Geez, is it time to make a list of project to avoid due to the inclusion of politics?

I can’t quite wrap my brain around the amount of damage and loss of trust that this just caused to open-source.

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GPL does stop people from doing this stuff…
Another reason to use GPL ig :slight_smile:

Yes and it still does. It also counts for Cuba, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. I guess we might see Russia on that list, too. I cannot even imagine what that would mean for the Russian Linux community being used by politics. We will not only lose Russian users but also Russian contributors.

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