skip over ASCII art AntiRacist Ethical Source License
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This Ethical License for Open Source, created by At The Root
- 🔗 AntiRacist Ethical Source License
- 🔗 Draft Status
- 🔗 Usage
- 🔗 Methodologies
- 🔗 FAQ
- 🔗 Press Coverage
- 🔗 Contributors
- 🔗 Adopters
- 🔗 Contributing
Ethical Source Licenses empower Open Source Contributors to know that the derivative works of their intellectual property will be used to build a world in which we are all comfortable. It is with great imagination and determination that we present The AntiRacist License (also known as the ATR License) in earnest.
This is a draft version, pre 1.0 of the AntiRacist License. We are accepting contributors for the first release. To learn more about how to contribute check out the Contributon section below. This license has been adapted from the Hippocratic License 3.0
Copy the license into the root directory of your project, add your copyright information and use the abbreviation ATR where necessary to describe your choice of license. Add badge to the README.md of your project.
The Hippocratic License (v. 3.0) developed by OES served as the starting point for both the language and scope for the Antiracist license. To ensure that this license addressed the most pressing severe areas that racist tech aversely affects marinalized people of color, we looked to the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). By combining the perspectives and on-going social justice efforts of these progressive organizations with our personal experiences and research, we crafted the ethical standards of the license.
Of course, the ATR license is intended to be a living document that adapts and adjusts to the needs of the groups and communties negatviely affected by racism in tech. It is our hope that through real-life testing and community input that the ethical standards of the license become more comprehensive and protective as time moves forward.
Q. Why create this license?
A. This is but one of the many tools we can use to demand equity, consideration, humanity within the Open Source community. All of the derivative works that include this license will be subject to the ethical requirements listed.
Q. Can I add/remove parts to this license?
A. Yes, but you must use a modified name of the license.
Q. Is this license enforceable?
A. Yes, we and the legal counsel we've worked with at The Corporate Accountability Lab in partnership with Organization for Ethical Source think so. The way the mettle of any license is tested is through court system. We look forward to keeping community apprised of its performance. If you'd like to learn more about how the Hippocratic License and The AntiRacist License both work toward an enforceable Ethical Source License, check out this video of Sameeul Haaque discussing it in more detail
Q. Why not use the Hippocratic License?
A. There palpable gap in protections for people marginalized by race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, phenotype or genotype in software. Every day more stories are reported describing how technology fails our community. This license values experiential data and puts the needs of the most marginalized first.
Ultimately, the goal of the Hippocratic License is different than that of this license: The HL3 sets to communicate a widely accepted standard of human rights and demand its equal application over open code, while The AntiRacist License (ATR) seeks specific and thoughtful protections for people marginalized on the basis of race or attribtues commonly conflated with race and its application to open code.
Interested in writing about the AntiRacist License? email contact@theroot.dev
- Leland Gill, lead contributor
- John Soto, press and communications guru
- Dawn Wages, ATR founder and contributor
- Sameeul Haque, legal counsel
Submit a PR! Add yourself to our adopter's repo.
We have weekly meetings on Tuesdays! Please email contact@theroot.dev to be added to the working group.
skip over ASCII art "Radical simply means grasping things 'At The Root'" -- Angela Davis
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-- Angela Davis