Ask HN: Reputation Based Software License
3 comments
"reputation" meaning what, exactly? A primary concern of mine would be the weaponization of reputation tracking organizations here.
I would never, ever license my software under terms that could outlaw my own contribution or usage. I think you're looking down a dead-end that neither consumers nor distributors are asking for.
I would never, ever license my software under terms that could outlaw my own contribution or usage. I think you're looking down a dead-end that neither consumers nor distributors are asking for.
I think there is appetite for different ways of making software. Open source is hard to make profitable and closed gives the developer too much control. Especially for things like AI. Whether reputation based is the way to go I'm unsure. I'd like to figure out principled ways of coming up with software licenses, that lead to thriving software ecosystems
I'm expecting a market place of reputation tracking systems to be useful and developers would pick and choose which ones they trusted to hand out licenses
How it would work: - Users create an minimal cryptographic identity for a nominal fee (this is not tied to their real identity), registered with an reputation tracking organisation.
- Users then use that identity to request a license for a piece of software of a specific version (git sha or version number) from the reputation provider.
- The software checks the license at start up cryptographiucally comes from a set of providers and also uses the identity included with the license when identifying as a client or server (to allow further reputation checks to be made).
This won't stop all bad actors but the idea is to make it obviously illegal to use the software if the people using it get a bad enough reputation.
I'd be interested in using simulations of software ecosystems to stress test any implementations and see if getting identities should be made harder.
But I thought I would see if there was prior art.