Re: non military license for ada

[Vinzent Hoefler <JeLlyFish.software@gmx.net>]

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> wrote:

>A dozen years ago, would-be-pacifists liked to make up licenses
>forbidding "military use" or its use by anyone having anything to do
>with South Africa

Funny thing.

Consider a company that sells paint which might be used in painting
military aircrafts... is that "military use" already?

>Today, "everyone" knows that the tobacco industry is bad, evil, and
>such, and so it would be perfectly sensible to forbid use of your
>software by the "tobacco industry," right?

Hmm.

>So Philip Morris and Company shouldn't use the code.

AFAIK, they make quite heavy use of the code which is written in my
company. In binary form, of course but this doesn't really change the
view.

>And if they /are/ boycotted, does this not run the risk of making
>/everyone/ steer clear of your software, thus leading to the software
>being an irrelevant curiosity?

Exactly that.

>That oughtn't be an easy set of questions to answer...

IMO the answer is one of the following: Either define clearly what you
mean with "military use" (this task might even be impossible if you
take all possible interpretations in account) or completely forget
about such a license.


Vinzent.