Civil Software Licenses

This websites presents a set of licenses referred to as Civil Software Licenses. Civil software licenses are characterized by containing the following Civil Clause, which prohibits the use of the licensed software in the development or construction of any type of weapon:

Civil Clause v1: This work is provided under the condition that it and any derivatives may not be used in or built into weapons and may not be sold to or used by entities legally authorized to initiate force against persons. Any derivative work’s license must include this clause and may not conflict with it. This clause applies to all sublicensees.

The civil cluase states that software distributed under these licenses may neither be sold to nor utilized by entities or institutions that possess the legal authority to employ weaponry, including, but not limited to, military organizations. The Civil Clause further permits the creation of derivative works through a copyleft mechanism, whereby any such derivative work must be distributed under a license that includes the Civil Clause in its entirety and excludes any provisions that contradict or undermine it.

Licenses that incorporate the Civil Clause and otherwise conform to the criteria established for open source software are herein referred to as Civil Open Source Licenses. We propose two instances of such licenses, the Civil-M license, which constitutes a civil adaptation of the MIT License, and the Civil-A license, which constitutes a civil adaptation of the Apache 2.0 license.

This website discusses the rationale underlying the development of these licenses, the guiding principles of their design, and a answers a range of related questions, including the mechanisms through which these licenses may be enforced.

The content of this website is also available as PDF:

📄 Civil Licenses PDF

Motivation

Software developers who publish software are required to incorporate a license that delineates the permitted uses of the software and specifies the conditions under which such uses are authorized.

Developers who do not intend to monetize their software and instead seek to contribute to the public good typically employ free/open-source software licenses. Such licenses generally impose no restrictions on usage, typically requiring only attribution as a condition of use. In certain instances, these licenses employ copyleft provisions to ensure that derivative works confer the same rights to users as those granted by the original work.

Where a software developer seeks to restrict certain lawful uses of their software, these licenses are inappropriate as they expressly prohibit such restrictions by their definition.

This website examines the specific circumstance wherein a software developer wishes to restrict the dual-use of their software or other applications that utilize the software to inflict lawful physical violence upon other persons.

Currently, no suitable standardized licenses exist for developers' use, requiring them either to draft custom licenses, which creates legal overhead for themselves and others, or to permit dual-use through open source licenses despite their intention to prevent such applications.

We propose a set of licenses designated Civil Software Licenses to address this problem. We define a software license as a Civil Software License if it incorporates the Civil Clause above within the license terms and contains no conflicting provisions.

Autonomous Weapons

Modern software, particularly software utilizing artificial intelligence, has the potential to render weapons fully autonomous, capable of lethal action without human oversight. Such weapons are ethically questionable and have the potential to become an existential threat to humanity in the long term. There is growing concern about such autonomous lethal systems and several political efforts to halt or impede their development. Civil software licenses may contribute to these efforts by rendering open software unavailable for weapon construction, thereby increasing costs and consequently impeding the development of autonomous lethal systems.