this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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I'm wondering, is it possible to include that restriction in public license for the software mastodon?
It wouldn't be a free software licence by the FSF definition (rule zero). Of interest the FSF rejects the original JSON licence because it contains the clause “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” Since Mastodon uses AGPL, it wouldn't be compatible.
This is why I hope to see rule zero get shit-canned. It's a naive vestige from a time long before we hit late-stage capitalism. Corporate interests have slithered their way into every facet of our lives and we should be working to make software that we write hostile to their practices as much as we can.
If that means that the organizations that have a stranglehold on Open Source™️ don't like it, so be it. We can follow in the spirit of open source without the naivety or captured interests of organizations that define the arbitrary terms by which we categorize software licenses.
It just means that the decision comes down to the instance owner not the software developer, which I think is right. Everyone should be able to decide what their computer does, that's important to hold on to.