Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" prevents it from being used in e.g. militia groups in oppressed countries who may wish to use it to harm humans in self-defense.
A) In self-defense, you don't intend to harm humans, but are only doing so when it's down to your life or theirs. So such a system could be argued to not be designed to harm humans, but instead preserve your own life.
B) In any case, I'm OK with it. Having the software explicitly licensed like this may prevent it from being legally considered a terrorism tool or munition if a bad actor were to be found connected with it, and if that happens, that's going to have much more freedom-restricting consequences with respect to the software.
Thank you very much! I also feel that the impact of software licensing on violent groups behavior might be low.
It is, however, interesting on principle, since it only allows the use by criminals (implicitly), and not by law enforcement. By then making the tool very impractical to use, we can punish bad actors still.
(I think there was a honeypot operation to this effect, something with feds making up a "secure encrypted phone" and then acquiring Cartels as a major customer.)
(On the off chance I just burned this very similar operation: dear feds, I'm so sorry!)
The comment that started this thread is as follows:
> Too bad the Zen of Reticulum is against freedom. Specifically freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Its restrictions preventing it "from being used in systems designed to harm humans" [...]
So if you're a lawful good human-harming person, you are prohibited from using Reticulum by this Zen document.
If, however, you're an unlawful kind of human-harming person, then you likely don't feel the pressure from the Zen document to stop using Reticulum.
(And surely you can't flip the logic like you did right there: "engineers are implicitly allowed to use X" doesn't convert to "users of X are implicitly engineers".)
So no, I'm saying that of all users intending to cause humans harm with this tech, only criminals are permitted (or at least, aren't meaningfully restricted) to use Reticulum. Only in this niche case.
Yep. People wanting to do the right thing and prepare at scale for self-defense won't violate the license but the people it intends to restrict will, because they don't care.
It's such a strange and unfortunate addition to the project. Also, what's the point of assuming every entity is potentially hostile? Can't you just put in the license "you're not allowed to be malicious or hostile on this network"?
GP used intentionally hostile and weird interpretation of "if you intend to subdue, enslave or kill, don't use it", aimed at dictatorships, organisations like Palantir, etc.
What? If I'm in a militia group that resists oppressive governments, I intend to kill people. Therefore I'm not allowed to use Reticulum to coordinate with my mates, even though most people would agree that I'm not killing immorally.
> even though most people would agree that I'm not killing immorally.
They’d only agree in the abstract. As soon as you name the oppressive regime you’re fighting against, suddenly a huge chunk of those people will come up with reasons to no longer support you.
And just because e.g. AI companies violate copyright to train their models and get away with it, doesn't make it right. The same principle applies here.
The exact text is "The Software shall not be used in any kind of system which includes amongst its functions the ability to purposefully do harm to human beings."
This is an example of the HN "Jump to Conclusions Mat" where there is an instant jump to extremely high level politics and philosophy and skipping over the more practical mundane problems.
A more practical issue is the author has zero interest in being sued if my LoRA connected emergency stop button for my CNC milling machine crashes and the machine then hurts someone (possibly myself).
Or my "emergency alert" transponder fails when I'm in the wilderness and someone (maybe me) dies instead of being rescued.
The wildest part of the story which isn't being covered is this is an example of one guy doing all the work to produce something more capable than the entire meshtastic project in about a year. A real life example of 10x or 100x engineers. How can meshtastic accomplish so little if one guy accomplished so much? Historically it was not THAT bad where having more than one person work on a network protocol never killed progress for decnet or banyan vines or SNA or any other old time protocol, but maybe its a mesh network thing that having more than one cook in the kitchen eliminates all progress.
Unfortunately, being a pretty much 1 person project he doesn't have the legal skills to realize the license as written is awful and needs rewriting to achieve his goals, assuming his goals are even a good idea...
I've set this up and used it on my LAN at home. Its a LOT more than just LoRA or just meshtastic and its pretty cool and works well. The app on my phone works well. Being abandonware I'm shutting it down "when I get around to it". The ratio of Meshcore to Meshtastic users/traffic is around 20:1 in my area so I'll be setting up Meshcore to fit in. Mesh LoRA is very local just like cell phone service; I'm well aware there are parts of the world operating at an opposite ratio of popularity where you "have to" use meshtastic to fit in. That is not where I live so I must use meshcore.
Meshtastic isn't used here, so I can't mesh so cross that off. Reticulum works perfectly and is abandonware so cross that off. Meshcore has its ... interesting pay money to unlock features scheme, I can't decide if I like or dislike that, I'd like to cross that off but its the only remaining protocol. I could write my own and GPLv2 it but if a superior system (reticulum) can't get buy in, my better licensed system would also be unused. I think I am stuck having to use Meshcore, I about 95% like that and 5% dislike that.
I do find it amusing that I used ham radio AX.25 packet radio in the late 80s, early 90s, some times this century, I know all about digipeating problems and hidden transmitter problems and all the stuff the "kids" refuse to do a literature search for and seem surprised when it bites them. Really this mesh stuff is just ham packet radio from 1981 except the total cost of a station is like $15 vs back in the day it was oh at least $1000. I had a node running linux AX25 back in the 90s and I'm sure I had a couple thousand bucks in equipment by the time I was done, mostly repurposed later on. I still have several hardware TNCs in some closet or shelf somewhere...
> A more practical issue is the author has zero interest in being sued if my LoRA connected emergency stop button for my CNC milling machine crashes and the machine then hurts someone (possibly myself).
Don't most actual free software licenses include a warranty disclaimer? So said military would have no grounds to sue, since there's no warranty or guarantee of function provided.
Thing is, I want to like Reticulum. It's a great protocol, way better than Meshtastic. It has a great vision. IMO it's not abandonware (yet) but even if it was, I'd probably be willing to maintain it for myself. I just wish it was FOSS.
