Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows

Re:Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows by jessaustin on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @12:11PM (#20516684)

Does that seem like a reasonable license to you? Admittedly, it doesn't matter, because these authors don't have the resources to hire lawyers from abroad, but all this stuff about "illegal activity"? This is a git client. It gives us no functionality that does not already exist in git. What am I going to do, rob a convenience store with it? Why would the author care if I did? Why are the terms more onerous than those of git itself?

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Re:Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows by vintagedave on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @12:36PM (#20516910)

Even in the US, it's common to have clauses about specific illegal activity, such as breaking embargoes or similar. For example, you might be banned from using the software in, or cooperating with someone located in, Iran. You could do both of those with a git client.

This is more generally phrased than the very lawyer-written EULAs you generally find, but it's not unreasonable or unprecedented.

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Re:Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows by jessaustin on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @01:18PM (#20517371)

Assuming for the sake of argument that I'm not supposed to collaborate with someone in some particular place... why again do the authors of these clients care about that? Are the black-bag squad going to disappear them because they didn't warn us to be good? Actually the charitable interpretation is probably that this is a sort of cargo-culted license without much informed decision-making behind it.

Embargoes and sanctions have no ethical force behind them anyway. They are merely a way to harm poor people while ginning up more pretexts for more wars. Anyone who can oppose such monstrosities using git should do so.

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Re:Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows by vintagedave on Friday July 26, 2019 @10:37AM (#20535103)

Rather than protecting themselves, it's more likely that the author of the software desires that their software is only used for legal or ethical purposes, and that clause is their attempt to require that.

It's fair for a software author to not want their software used to make the world worse. I think you have a very different interpretation of "charitable interpretation" than I do.

As for embargoes - sure. It's just an example. There are plenty of other less morally ambiguous things too.

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Re:Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows by nerdponx on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @01:02PM (#20517201)

It seems reasonable because they're within their rights to license their software however they want, subject to the laws of the Czech Republic.

Whether it's enforceable, sure, that might be questionable.

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Re:Fork: A fast and friendly Git client for Mac and Windows by jessaustin on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @01:32PM (#20517514)

It would be within my rights to repeatedly batter my own head with a hammer. It would not seem reasonable, however. Most of the thinking behind this license is of the cargo-cult variety, and these valiant defenses of developers' rights are just silly.

If I cared about a git client for these platforms, I would file a bug about the license. Fortunately that is not the case.

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