The Hippocratic License is like all these other non-free social justice
licenses; the Commons Clause, Fair Source, Coopyright, anti-996, and using
CopyFarLeft licenses like the Peer Production License with software. They're
not free code software, because they violate every one of the four freedoms,
placing limits on use, sharing, modification, and redistribution. None of
them are even compatible with the Open Source Definition, so they are not
open source licenses either, as the term is commonly understood.
I want to acknowledge that the people drafting all these licenses have good
intentions. But I'm reminded of GitHub's recent action to ban people from
certain countries from accessing the site. The goal is very different, but
the principle of action is the same. Stallman's comments sum up nicely why
this is a bad idea (thanks Magic Banana for the link), as does Bruce Perens
blog piece on the HL:
https://perens.com/2019/09/23/sorry-ms-ehmke-the-hippocratic-license-cant-work/
.. and this quote from Perens' follow up piece Invasion of The Ethical
Licenses:
https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licenses/
> "The idea behind this was that Freedom meant Freedom for everyone, not just
Freedom for people we approved of ... it meant that the Debian system could
be a common ground for the sharing of software among people who did not agree
on social issues, and just maybe that it would be a way for those various
people to work together and gain respect for each other, and ultimately come
to greater agreement."
https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licenses/
Basically they've picked the wrong tool for the job. Copyright licenses
cannot do what they want them to do here. It would be just as effective, and
less damaging to the software commons, to use a standard free code license,
but attach a project manifesto or values statement that sums up any ways they
hope to see their software used, and ways they particularly don't want it
used.
