[Numpy-discussion] Proposal to add clause to license prohibiting use by oil and gas extraction companies

[Andrea Gavana]

On Wed, 1 Jul 2020 at 21.23, gyro funch <gyromagnetic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I greatly respect the intention, but this is a very slippery slope.
>
> Will you exempt groups within these companies that are working on
> 'green' technologies (e.g., biofuels)?
>
> Will you add to the license restrictions companies who make use of oil
> and gas extracted by these companies (automotive, chemical/polymers, etc.)?
>
> Will you follow the chain from extraction to consumption and add the
> links to the license 'blacklist'?
>
> -gyro


Thank you for injecting some sense and a few reality checks into the
discussion.

Andrea.



>
>
> On 7/1/2020 12:34 PM, John Preston wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > The following proposal was originally issue #16722 on GitHub but at
> > the request of Matti Picus I am moving the discussion to this list.
> >
> >
> > "NumPy is the fundamental package needed for scientific computing with
> Python."
> >
> > I am asking the NumPy project to leverage its position as a core
> > dependency among statistical, numerical, and ML projects, in the
> > pursuit of climate justice. It is easy to identify open-source
> > software used by the oil and gas industry which relies on NumPy [1]
> > [2] , and it is highly likely that NumPy is used in closed-source and
> > in-house software at oil and gas extraction companies such as Aramco,
> > ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and others. I believe it is possible to use
> > software licensing to discourage the use of NumPy and dependent
> > packages by companies such as these, and that doing so would frustrate
> > the ability of these companies to identify and extract new oil and gas
> > reserves.
> >
> > I propose NumPy's current BSD 3-Clause license be extended to include
> > the following conditions, in line with the Climate Strike License [3]
> > :
> >
> >     * The Software may not be used in applications and services that
> > are used for or
> >        aid in the exploration, extraction, refinement, processing, or
> > transportation
> >        of fossil fuels.
> >
> >     * The Software may not be used by companies that rely on fossil
> > fuel extraction
> >        as their primary means of revenue. This includes but is not
> > limited to the
> >        companies listed at https://climatestrike.software/blocklist
> >
> > I accept that there are issues around adopting such a proposal,
> including that:
> >
> > addition of such clauses violates the Open Source Initiative's
> > canonical Open Source Definition, which explicitly excludes licenses
> > that limit re-use "in a specific field of endeavor", and therefore if
> > these clauses were adopted NumPy would no longer "be open-source" by
> > this definition;
> > there may be collateral damage among the wider user base and project
> > sponsorship, due to the vague nature of the first clause, and this may
> > affect the longevity of the project and its standing within the
> > Python, numerical, statistical, and ML communities.
> >
> > My intention with the opening of this issue is to promote constructive
> > discussion of the use of software licensing -- and other measures --
> > for working towards climate justice -- and other forms of justice --
> > in the context of NumPy and other popular open-source libraries. Some
> > people will say that NumPy is "just a tool" and that it sits
> > independent of how it is used, but due to its utility and its
> > influence as a major open-source library, I think it is essential that
> > we consider the position of the Climate Strike License authors, that
> > "as tech workers, we should take responsibility in how our software is
> > used".
> >
> > Many thanks to all of the contributors who have put so much time and
> > energy into NumPy. ✨ ❤️ 😃
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/gazprom-neft/petroflow
> > [2] https://github.com/climate-strike/analysis
> > [3] https://github.com/climate-strike/license
> > _______________________________________________
> > NumPy-Discussion mailing list
> > NumPy-Discussion at python.org
> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> NumPy-Discussion mailing list
> NumPy-Discussion at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/attachments/20200701/4aeaf4b4/attachment.html>