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The Katharos License

Katharos is the Greek word for "pure" and, correspondingly, the purpose of the Katharos license is to prevent the licensed work from being used to promote destructive activities or to produce other impure or destructive works.

The Katharos License is not an "Open Source" license: it does not comply with the Open Source Definition. Even still, we want the Katharos License to promote the openness, sharing, and collaboration that is common in the Open Source community, while at the same time protecting the people who may otherwise become victims of the destructive application of our shared works. We want the works that we share to be uplifting and helpful and we want them to be used to benefit people.

To accomplish these goals, this license seeks to put limits on what people are allowed to do with the licensed work. This includes, among other things, disallowing the work to be incorporated in or used to produce sexually suggestive or explicit content which we believe is mentally, psychologically, and spiritually harmful.

The definition of what is "good", though, can be considered highly subjective. Our idea of what is good and pure comes from our interpretation of Word of God, The Holy Bible, and we believe that God is the ultimate authority for what is good and right.

The terms of this license reflect what we believe God has put on our hearts to include in this license, and we acknowledge that our attempt to define its terms will be imperfect, and that human laws cannot flawlessly reflect the will of God. Nonetheless, the fact remains that we believe God led us to create this license and that it is our due diligence to protect what we believe is important.

Many people will not agree with the terms, but it is not our goal to make a license that many will agree with. Our goal is to stand up for what we believe in and do what we believe is right, while being as free and open as otherwise possible.

Open Questions

The Katharos License is a work-in-progress. There have been concerns brought up about the usability of the license and it is worth understanding them before using a Katharos Licensed work for your own project. This license goes into uncharted territory as far as licenses go and we understand that it is non-typical, but as far as we are concerned our only alternative is to close source our works and this license is an attempt to avoid the need to do that.

We don't expect it to be any perfect solution, or think that it will work for everybody, but it is better than not sharing our works at all.

Frequently Posed Challenges

These are common points made in argument against the license and our response to them.

The Terms Are Too Vague

Defining things such as modesty and violence in exact terms that will be interpreted the same by everybody is essentially impossible. We recognize that our terms may not be perfect and are subject to interpretation, but if it comes to disputes on our terms, according to the license, they will be decided by an impartial jury in the Kleros court, not by us, preventing us from introducing our own personal bias on the ruling.

We may release updates to the license terms in new versions of the license if we feel that there is a deficiency in the terms that can be helped.

The License is Non-Inclusive

The license applies equally to all people of any race, gender, religion, etc. and does not make any distinctions in it's terms.

Sharing our motivations for making the license and our intended purpose doesn't exclude anybody from using it, nor does it imply that anybody who does not believe what we do is granted any less freedoms or respect.

The Bible Contradicts Itself

See What About Bible Contradictions by Michael Paul Johnson.

The Bible Wasn't Written by God

See Michael Paul Johnson's Bible FAQ Disclaimers.

The Content of the Bible Itself Would Violate the Terms of the License

The Bible includes accounts of many of the sinful and wrong things that people have done. If you were to produce a movie that showed in detail the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, then it would absolutely be against the terms of this license. Such a depiction would not be beneficial to anybody watching, but would instead be a temptation to further sin.

This does not change the fact that those real events did happen and that God wanted us to know that it happened, that it was evil, and that those people were punished for their sin.

Just because we would not graphically portray all the events in the Bible in detail, does not mean that the Bible our our terms are wrong in any way.

God Himself in the Bible Commanded People to Do Things Prohibited by This License

God is perfect and just. When he commands that evil people be destroyed in the Bible, it was because they were evil, and He did so in justice and righteousness.

Man is not perfect, and we don't want to leave it up to the users of our works whether or not they may use our works to kill others.

Your Beliefs are Wrong

Our beliefs are, what we believe. We have chosen to create this license because of what we believe, knowing that there will be other people who will not agree with the license terms or why we created it.

Everybody has a choice to believe what they want to believe, and we have that choice too.

Our license doesn't take away any freedoms that anybody would have, if we had not granted those freedoms in the first place. If you don't like our license or our beliefs, you can simply not use our licensed works.

Applying The License To Your Work

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

The Katharos License may be applied to your work as you would apply any other license. Common practice is to include the license file in the root of your software source control as LICENSE.md and replace the [year] and [copyright holder] placeholders in the copyright statement with the current year and the name of the copyright holder.

Attribution

The Katharos License was inspired by the the Ethical Open Source movement and has incorporated modified and verbatim portions of the following licenses:

• Hippocratic License Version 2.1
• Do No Harm License
• BSD 3-Clause
• GNU General Public License Version 3 ( GPLv3 )

Disclaimer

The Katharos License is offered for use by licensors and licensees at their own risk, on an “AS IS” basis, and with no warranties express or implied, to the maximum extent permitted by Laws. NONE OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS REPOSITORY CONSTITUTES LEGAL ADVICE.