Add nominee: Hippocratic license

[lacabra]

This PR continues the conversation started in #114, which was prematurely and inadvertently merged.
Sorry for the confusion.

Cc: @CoralineAda

[jwflory]

I am excited to see this get raised here. 🙂 I was also looking at the Hippocratic License in the context of acceptable Open Source licenses to the UNICEF Innovation Fund.

I am not a committer nor responsible for making a final call on this. But I hope my feedback can provide an interesting conversation and depth to this review.

Purpose / Mission

I believe the Hippocratic License aligns well with the human-rights based approach that is a pillar of the UN and all UN agencies. The Hippocratic License in particular uses the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Global Compact to define what constitutes human rights and human rights abuses.

Failure to Comply

I am curious to play out the failure to comply scenario.

A possible "user story" for a Digital Public Good is a state government using and/or deploying it for nationwide services. What mechanism(s) does the Innovation Team have to ensure compliance with terms of the Hippocratic License? What mechanisms exist more broadly in other UN agencies or UNICEF Country Offices for monitoring human rights abuses?

To continue with this user story of a state government. If there are human rights abuses in a country where Hippocratic License works exist, what happens if (a) the state government is responsible for the abuses, or (b) non-state parties are responsible for the abuses, or (c) more likely, both are responsible for abuses.

I am thinking of this in the context of important digital services or infrastructure that citizens (uninvolved with armed conflict) may depend on. I am cautious over how a well-intentioned license could be manipulated for harm in the right context.

One possible path forward would be to allow this as an acceptable license for DPGs and Innovation Fund projects, but it needs clear documentation and mentorship over its complexities. We (UNICEF) need to be intentional and strategic about how we encourage or proliferate this license in a responsible way to ensure we protect the rights of every child, everywhere.

Feedback

I am curious for feedback, reactions, or your thoughts on what the right path forward is. I'll tag both @CoralineAda (submitter) and @Nolski (a former UNICEF Innovation advisor and member of the Ethical Source community).

[CoralineAda]

Glad to see this conversation here.

In terms of the state actor scenario, when a state is engaged in human rights violations, there is little chance of a legal remedy of any kind being an effective deterrent, and a license will probably not be helpful in a case like this. The Hippocratic License was designed to cause friction when a private party (such as a corporation) uses software to aid in those human rights abuses. Then the enforcement mechanism comes into play, automatically revoking the license unless the party agrees to arbitration under the Hague Rules for Business and Human Rights Arbitration to decide the matter.

An example of this scenario in the real world is the software consultancy Palantir using open source as part of how it provides services to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in the US, responsible for human rights violations at the border. Even then, the license can't outright prevent the abuses— it can only create friction and make material support more expensive for the contractor, while also empowering the developer of the licensed software to prevent their work to be used for unethical purposes.

In a way, this is similar to digital security precautions. We have a variety of tools and techniques that are combined and layered in such a way as to create as many hurdles or obstacles to would-be attackers as possible, without ever being able to guarantee 100% security.

[CoralineAda]

@lacabra Is there anything else you need from me for the review? I'm not clear on what the process looks like from here. Thanks!

[jwflory]

Hi, happy 2022! This nomination is over a year old and seems to be awaiting feedback from the DPG Alliance. Is it possible for this PR to get re-reviewed? It would be great to see the Hippocratic License certified.

[nathanbaleeta]

Following Standard Council discussions, for an open content digital solution to be eligible to become a DPG, it must have several content pieces hence we are no longer accepting single content pieces.

For the moment we will be closing this PR.
You can see all relevant discussions about this here:

• Content > Content Collections DPG-Standard#97
• [Proposal] Sharpening the "Goods" language in the Standard  DPG-Standard#57

@@CoralineAda @jwflory

[Nolski]

Hi @nathanbaleeta - Thanks for the update here.

As I understand, this PR was to accept the Hippocratic License as a DPG and was rejected because it doesn't meet the criteria for being a public good. Do you know if there has been any discussion on the issue 137 where it was requested to add this license as an acceptable license for other DPGs? I believe this is a different issue to this pull request.

[nathanbaleeta]

Hi @nathanbaleeta - Thanks for the update here.

As I understand, this PR was to accept the Hippocratic License as a DPG and was rejected because it doesn't meet the criteria for being a public good. Do you know if there has been any discussion on the issue 137 where it was requested to add this license as an acceptable license for other DPGs? I believe this is a different issue to this pull request.

@Nolski At the moment the DPGA defaults to Creative Commons licenses for open content and is only accepting conformant licenses to the Open Definition from the Open Data Commons whereas for open source-software is only accepting approved licenses from the Open Source Initiative.

Having mentioned that, in order for the DPGA to consider the Hippocratic license, at the moment, my advise would be to submit your license for OSI revision or to the creative commons, this would require from your side to apply and go through the license review process. Once it gets approved, then we can automatically include it as one of the open source licenses we refer to for the future. Thanks.

[jwflory]

For context, the Hippocratic License is not OSI-compliant, partly by design. The ask in DPGAlliance/DPG-Standard#137 is for the DPG Alliance to make a policy decision about ethical source licenses in general.

Cc: @ricardomiron