> Who defines what 'marginalization of people' means

The software creators, which seems very reasonable to me. This isn't some arbitrary judge deeming what is marginalizing or not. This is the creators of the software saying "We don't want to build something that complete dickweeds can use for evil."

Don't like their definition of "dickweeds" or "evil"? Fine, build your own shit then.

For one piece of software, maybe. Now imagine what happens when a lot of open source software does the same thing. It would become impossible to use open source software of that kind because there is no way that you will be able to satisfy many different groups of people each with their own points of view on what is moral or not, at the same time.

On top of that, even if all the groups shared the same views you’d still need to suddenly spend a lot of time understanding each group before you used their software, and you’d need to continue to keep an eye on their views to ensure you are complying.

Thanks but I will stick to the plain old open source licenses like ISC, MIT, GPL, and Apache.

If you are writing a license, which is a legal document, then its meaning is determined not by you but by "some arbitrary judge", because you are not the only party bound by this license. If some other developer starts using your product based on the license that you published it under, then you don't have the right to change the license terms retroactively. Best you can do is change the license for the future releases.

That’s reasonable, but don’t call it open source, because it isn’t.

I mean, it's not the same thing as an entirely unrestricted license, but then again, neither are open source licenses entirely unrestricted.

I understand that people want to look at this like a kind of slippery slope (if you can define one kind of restriction, why not define another and another - until you have closed source software by any other name) - but just because arbitrary restrictions mean something isn't colloquially "open" doesn't mean that certain specific restrictions might not still reasonably be compatible with something described as "open".

Certainly we should not accept a formalized definition of any language term like this; i.e. just because an OSI or other group wishes to claim the definition of open source doesn't mean we all need to use that definition. Specifically, let's not accept https://opensource.org/docs/osd as a kind of gospel truth. It's a fine initiative, but not necessarily the only possible one.

I'm not convinced that allowing a few restrictions would be a great idea, but then again, I'm also sure it would be dramatically different from the status quo, nor that is makes sense to no longer call such software open source.

This has nothing to do with open source. I think that is the issue.

Not everyone needs to agree with your "One True Scotsman" decree.

Correct. There’s no need to listen to me because we have the OSI definition, which is widely accepted already.

>> Who defines what 'marginalization of people' means

> The software creators

I don't understand how that could work. Would "marginalizing people" have any concrete legal definition at all or would it literally be anything the creator decides now or in the future?

Software creator says I'm marginalizing people, I deny it and refuse to stop using their library. How would a court sort that out?

>Fine, build your own shit then.

Sure. Do what you want but don't try to claim that this is a good license. It's the opposite of a good license. It's ambiguous, capricious, and arbitrary.

> The road to hell ... something something ... good intentions.

That could be applied to *anything*, it doesn't have any substance.