A software license designed to change the world. Everything you create should be build with the intention to save the world. From building a file explorer to some fancy AI. This license is meant to ensure that your work won't be abused for profit or by people with unmoral intentions and will actually help instead of ending up harming people. The HSL is meant to accompany software that empowers individuals, collectives, worker-owned cooperatives, and nonprofits who follow the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while denying usage to those that exploit labor for profit and don't care about the moral consequences of their actions.
- tl;dr The Humane Software License
- How to use the license
- Versions
- Frequently Asked Question
- Credits to the ACSL
- License for the licenses
The Humane Software License is a great fit if you want your software to benefit the world and you're looking for a license that allows individuals and non-profit organizations to use your software and follow your principles with every following edit. The HSL is actually pretty short. Taking the max. 5 minutes to read it should be worth it.
The HSL is right for you if you...
- want your code to empower students, artists, hobbyists, collectives, cooperatives and nonprofits
- reject the status quo, believe better things are possible, and want to act on your beliefs
- carry a new world in your heart, and in your code
The HSL is not right for you if you...
- want cooperations to be able to exploit your work for their own profit and interests
- want people to abuse your work for malicious purposes
- Choose the right version of the HSL for your project.
- Copy the corresponding file to your repository/code base.
- Optional: Rename the file to
LICENSEto follow the typical naming convention.
The Humane Software License comes in different versions/flavors for different kinds of software projects.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| HSL | The default and most general version of the license. Applicable to most projects. |
| HSLFC | The HSL for content is meant to license software that allows people to create, publish or distribute content. It contains an additional paragraph that disallows the usage for i.e. harmful or discriminating content. |
Copyright is easier to apply to how a work is used than to who uses it, and this license has not been tested in court. That said, using HSL software against its terms would open the user to litigation. The Humane Software License may be best considered a strong deterrent, as well as another way to state the moral (and politic) center of your code.
In general, the HSL is a good match for software that would have otherwise been permissively licensed under MIT, ISC, or BSD but with restrictions against unmoral and for profit usage and the requirement to stay that way. Note the Humane Software License is not an open-source license! It does not allow unrestricted use by any group in any field of endeavor, an allowance that further entrenches established powers. It also does not automatically release your project to the creative commons or public domain, nor does it require derived source code to be made available- although you may chose to release your work in this way.
Change it to your hearts content! The HSL is fairly short and you can just edit it to match you and your use case better. Make sure to use a different name though! "The Humane Software License ([version])" should only be the name of exact copies.
The Humane Software Licenses are free to be used and tweaked by everyone without any kind of copyright notice! :)
© 2023 Murphy. This work is licensed under a CC0 1.0 license (legal code).
This software license was inspired by and uses parts of The Anti-Capitalist Software License.