Clarification of the anti-violence rule

[realpixelcode]

• violence (except when required to protect public safety)

The anti-violence rule is, in my opinion, unclear and incomplete. What about self-defence? If I am attacked and simply have to defend myself (which has nothing to do with public safety), I would be in breach of the licence. Therefore, I would suggest the following change:

• unlawful wilful bodily injury

[chrisjensen]

Honestly, since we first drafted this, I'd be even less inclined to offer exceptions for violence (including the existing provision) as (as I think you are referring to), the argument of "necessary" for public safety is a subjective one.

References to law are problematic as the law is defined differently in different countries and often permits a whole range of nasty behaviours.
In this case violence by police or military forces to suppress dissent is lawful in many places.

[realpixelcode]

I totally understand your point, but I would somehow distinguish between violence in individual cases, possibly in self-defence, (difficult to assess as immoral) and systematic violence (easy to assess as immoral), because after all, these restrictions are supposed to affect the right actors. Perhaps "systematic violence" would be a better term?

[tommaitland]

We still have violence (except when required to protect public safety) as the wording in the current license. I'd be interested in some more discussion on this issue.

Speaking practically, this exception would allow a police force or an army to use software under this license provided they were protecting public safety. In the case of an army, that may be through peacekeeping operations or military activity justified under the international community's Responsibility to Protect

There are of course problems with both of those examples. Police may shroud violence in a guise of "public safety" and states may invade claiming to "protect" with intentions instead to dominate and extract.

Usually a justified case of responsibility to protect would be to protect rights defined in the UDHR, which is already included in this license. What if we updated the wording to:

violence (except when required to protect access to the rights set out in the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights](https://github.com/raisely/NoHarm/blob/publish/documents/UDHR.md) and the [Convention on the Rights of the Child](https://github.com/raisely/NoHarm/blob/publish/documents/CRC.md))

Is that a better exclusion?

[realpixelcode]

Yeah, that sounds great!

[ghost]

How about:

* unprovoked violence

Simple enough, right?

[tommaitland]

I think we've got suggested wording above. I just need to run this by more in the Raisely team before we decide to incorporate as it's a more substantial change. We will address once we've done that, we tend to look at the whole of the license annually.