Last night at the Software Passion Conference in Gothenburg, we heard from "Swede of the Year" Christopher Kullenberg, who as part of Telecomix provided IT support to people involved in the Arab Spring, helping them to stay connected and to share their stories with the world.

Kullenberg told us that systems that were intended for DRM enforcement are being used to identify dissidents, and that the regime in Syria was using open source software in its efforts to track down and murder anyone with the courage to oppose the evil government.

My very, very, very small part in this is that I include The software shall be used for good, not evil in my licenses. It is not effective at all, but it at least states my intention. It is quite controversial in the open source community because it is claimed that it restricts a specific field of use (specifically, evil), and that software cannot be considered free unless its license permits it to be used in the investigation, torture, and murder of patriots who dare to resist tyrants.