I think this is not exactly the point. I never thought that license would fight rocket. Nor I thought that an authoritarian regime would respect license.

The first point affects more countries and companies that still keep ties with those regimes.

The second point is to have a clear position. For me it is hypocritical to say “open source for a better world” at the same time that we say “how my contributions are used is not my problem”.

I bet with you that commo libraries like slf4j, junit, poetry, fastapi, etc. are being used by those regimes and their associates very often. Make a license more restrictive would create legal problems for any legitimate foreign entity to buy from those regimes. If they opt to re-inplement those libraries, it’s fine as well: tons of resources and money expended by those jerks.

Even commercial licenses are problematic to enforce, I know. But send a clear message seems a point where our hands can reach and worth to pursue.

Amnesty International is a good start point to evaluate if a government is violent, authoritarian or perpetrating crimes against human rights.

You don’t deal with extremists. Dialog only works with who is willing to dialog.

Radicals maybe not wrong about their claimings but are wrong about heir methods.

I replied another comment about enforcing the licenses is not the only thing to consider. Secondary effects like making impossible to sell product to other countries that do respect the license, make it difficult to distribut the software to de “sanctioned” countries and even stop to offer support are some consequences that the community can impose.

A good start to define an authoritarian government is recognizing what Amnesty International says. It is credible.

For a totalitarian government, there is no law enforcement. And I would say that you are absolutely right saying that no license will stop the usage in this case.

But there are other implications that could come from a restrictive licensing like make the distribution hard in that country, make it impossible to sell solutions with unlawful licensing to countries that are not totalitarian, make it hard or impossible to obtain support for that.

But in essence, more than everything, is the open source community sending a clear message that we don’t collaborate with monsters.

It is naive to believe that Trump didn’t command this himself.

My friends, we are watching how US will never be the greates again in anything.

I think I am old because I liked it a lot and I could see myself using that.

That is the correct answer