GNU/Debian/Redhat won't consider this license as non-free

[unbug]

Due to there is no universally accepted definition of good and evil, JSON is a non-free license for GNU/Debian/Redhat.

But Suicide is defined.

So SNTS is free for everyone.

[zeehio]

I've had to handle a situation that involved a person who wanted to kill herself. I treat this problem with all seriousness.

Nevertheless, I would like to give my interpretation to why I consider your license problematic and to encourage you to reconsider it.

Regarding the freedom of this license:

The Free Software Foundation states that one condition for software to be free is:

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose

To my understanding, the third clause of your license "keep yourself alive and say no to suicide" forbids me to use your program to support suicide or staying silent about it by "not saying no to suicide" or to use it to trigger a device that kills me. So it's not free software because there are some use purposes that are not acceptable under these terms. I am not sure the clause would be valid in my country since it attempts to restrict my freedom of speech, but I'm not a lawyer.

While I do not plan to use your software for this purpose, to my understanding your software is non-free and therefore your users wouldn't be able to create a derived work that derives from a snts licenced software and a GPL software.

You could address the freedom issue by having a clause like:

The copyright owners would appreciate that you seeked help in case of having suicidal intentions and raised awareness about the suicide crisis our society is facing.

Instead of forcing your users to support your cause, you would be encouraging them to give support to your cause and still leave them an option to disagree with you.

There might be similar issues with your second clause, but I am not a lawyer. Similarly, stating that it's not something you force but rather something you encourage or appreciate would legally preserve the free software freedoms.

Why this license is still troublesome

Even with those changes, your license choice you are unfortunately contributing to the software license proliferation problem (that has also affected me and many others). I encourage you to consider using a more common license, and/or use other means to raise suicide awareness (indeed a very important problem) that do not conflict with the license proliferation problem (a much less important problem but still a problem to some of us).

Thanks

In the end the copyright owners are the only ones with the right to choose the license of their work, so do as you please. I just hope you (and everyone who is considering of using this license) are aware of all the implications of such choice.

Have a nice, long and prosper life

[unbug]

@zeehio

First, sorry to hear your friend's story, how did it go? I believe you'll give me good news.
And, thank you for taking a deep think about this license, it would be great if you can contribute to improving it. I understand it's hard to make any sense of the law, but this is my way to encourage devs to "SAY NO TO SUICIDE".

[zeehio]

It ended well, but it was really tough.

I'm happy to help you improve the license, but in the end you are the one who chooses your license terms, so it is up to you to decide how and what you want to license. If you like, I will give you some tips, my opinions and some suggestions. You then tell me if you would like to change something of your license and in what way and I can then suggest you some wording that I find suitable. I am not a lawyer, so if you decide to use my suggestions or wordings it will be at your own risk (this is my disclaimer to defend me if I make a mistake giving you advice and then you decided to sue me!). 😉

The first advice lawyers give is to NOT write a license yourself. Legal language has its own interpretations, words are chosen for reasons we may not even be aware of and we may unwillingly introduce or miss loopholes. For instance, your license does not enforce that redistributions of the code or binaries preserve the copyright and license contents, so with the current wording I could comply with all your license terms (not committing suicide and saying no to it), then strip the license terms from your code and redistribute it under a different license, so the people who received your code through me could say "yes to suicide". I don't know if that was your intention, but I guess you would rather enforce your terms to redistributions of your code and binaries, so more people are aware of the "say no to suicide" campaign, am I right? (This is an important question for improving your license)

Here are two options:

Option 1: MIT

The first suggestion I would give you is to not use a license to raise awareness of this issue. Just use the MIT license verbatim. Use a README or any other means for your cause, but not a license. You avoid legal loopholes and you don't contribute to license proliferation issues. I understand this option may be too much. Here are the MIT license terms (as a suggestion):

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Option 2: SNTS as the MIT with a preamble

The next option I see is to use an MIT license with a preamble. The preamble is not part of the license terms but is often distributed with the license. See the GPL preamble as an example. You get some more visibility to your cause than when using a README (well... assuming more people read the license than the README 😜) and you address the loophole I was mentioning before. See below my suggestion where I gave an example of the preamble and I slightly modified the license terms to include that the preamble should also be included in redistributions. I also clearly separated the PREAMBLE from the TERMS to clearly define where the terms of the license start.

While this option contributes to license proliferation, its contribution is minimal, since you don't change the license terms significantly.

Say No To Suicide License

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

PREAMBLE

The copyright owners would like to raise awareness about the encourage you and everyone to seek help if you are in despair and talk to someone you trust, someone you love. Get help from your family, your friends, the police, the community, the public. Keep yourself alive and say no to suicide.


TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice, the preamble and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Option 3: Further discussion

If you don't like any of these two options, say so and we look for more options.

Have a nice day!

[unbug]

@zeehio Thank you, as you remind there's a risk here, I'll talk to more friends and find out the best options. Feel free to keep giving your ideas in the comments.