We are in the early stages of understanding and developing ethical licenses for open source. This is a time for thoughtful experimentation, global conversation, and open collaboration.
Examples of ethical licenses include:
- 966.ICU. A license that advocates for workers’ rights.
- Atmosphere Licenses. Licenses centered on environmental justice.
- Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) Ethical IP licencing. An overview of IP-related tools for tech workers who care about human rights.
- (Cooperative) Non-Violent Public License.
- The Non-Violent Public License aims to ensure basic protections against forms of violence, coercion, and discrimination which creations are frequently leveraged for in the modern world. This license covers several formats of creative work but has extra terms for software given the power it has as a tool outside of its creative capacities.
- The Cooperative Non-Violent Public License goes further and only allows commercial use of the copyrighted work for individuals and worker-owned organizations. It is a superset of the NPL and contains all of the same terms otherwise.
- Do No Harm License. A license for developers who write open source code to make the world a better place.
- Hippocratic License. A license that prohibits use of the software in the violation of internationally recognized human rights.
- inno3. A trademark-based contract for OSS maintainers.
- ml5. The ml5 approach makes an explicit connection between the license and a code of conduct.
This list is not an endorsement of any particular license.
