Announcing the Release of The AntiRacist License v0.6 on Juneteenth 2022

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A personal note from Dawn Wages written calling friends to action.

Sometimes, I get embarrassed at what I don’t already know.

At The Root was founded in June of 2020, as our FAQ describes, in response to “[t]he increased interdependence of software on people’s lives, the need for the internet to be viewed as a utility, and the context of the politics in 2020.”

To give a little more background: I was an incredibly depressed freelance software consultant. I recorded ~20 hours of work for the month when my goal was at least 6 times that. I continued to feel helpless in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner and so many others. Each story hitting me in parts that I thought had hardened; each story creating a new way to feel unsafe that I had yet to evaluate. I felt small and even after creating At The Root, I didn’t feel much bigger. I had a crisis of confidence through several levels of my life which made me question my personal and professional relationships. At the risk of learning something new, and revealing that there is much I still didn’t know how to address, I dared to dream of a world where the material works of my field were held accountable for the damage they caused to people marginalized by race or attributes commonly conflated with race. The answer will never be more code, or to “just be good” — the answer was community. It started from experience and grew to be something more. I aimed to materially change the lives of people who interact with software, and in it’s pursuit this cause has materially changed my life.

Q. What is the difference between an Open Source License and an Ethical Source License?

A. Open Source Licenses allow code to be freely used, modified and shared, but describes the limitations of its derivative works in the realm of capitalism. Ethical Source Licenses also allows for software to be freely used, modified and shared, but describes the limitation of its derivative works with Ethical Standards.

To learn more about Ethical Source Licenses, visit https://ethicalsource.dev/principles/

One of the core tenets of At The Root, is our commitment to honoring lived experience.

Each of the Ethical Standards in the AntiRacist Ethical Source License stem from instances we’ve seen software facilitate or directly impact people’s lives. We have 52 lines dedicated to ways we know software intersects our day-to-day experiences. We, at At The Root, measure our impact in the depth and breadth of legal recourse we can provide to software users and empower Open Source contributors to share Intellectual Property, as we’re used to, knowing the derivative works will not contribute to a world further entrenching systemic oppression.

3.1 The Licensee SHALL NOT, whether directly or indirectly, through agents or assigns:

3.1.13. Be an individual or entity, or a representative, agent, affiliate, successor, attorney, or assign of an individual or entity which conducts military activities that discriminates against individuals on the basis of on the basis of race, ethnicity, caste, nationality, phenotype or genotype or perpetuates state-sanctioned violence;

We wrote section 3.1.13 with conflicts in Palestine, Myanmar and the United States in mind. “ ‘State-sanctioned violence’ is defined as all forms of fear or intimidation violence or physical harm produced, promoted, and/or institutionalized by the state to the detriment of a people, their families and communities;” (Section 1 subsection 11. Definitions, ATR License) — addressing the need to protect people being persecuted internationally at the intersection of fascism and racism. It has been our core mission to specifically protect Black and Brown lives, because that was at the root of this cause’s inception; it is our ardent belief that linking arms internationally and holding space for the ways racism, racial capitalism, colonialism and state-sanctioned violence affect our communities uniquely and pervasively.

We freed ourselves.

Juneteenth is important to me, a Black queer woman, seeking freedom; dreaming of “freedom”. It is a day celebrating Black people freeing Black people. The movement building since 1865 has and will continue to employ tools to address systemic struggle on the ground — some of which are joy, song, dance and protest as descendants of chattel slavery explore today. We, at At The Root, have staked a flag in the ground in critical resistance against the way that capitalism and software exploits, damages, dismisses or causes material harm to people “on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, phenotype or genotype” (AntiRacist License). We reject the neoliberal idea that technology can be neutral, because in each step of its iterative and growing influence humanity measures it’s impact and audience without demanding the safety (impact) of Black, Brown and Indigenous people (audience). The AntiRacist License addresses that current experience. Open Source Licenses define “Open Source” in response to capitalism, but fail to address how race and capitalism are inextricably linked because of the discriminatory institutions that have been perpetuated for centuries and deny Black people, for a timely and salient example, equal access to the wealth created through their labor. As other licenses limit use but remain Open Source Software, we ascribe to a definition that also takes into account ethical use of a project’s derivative works.

3.1. The Licensee SHALL NOT, whether directly or indirectly, through agents or assigns:

3.1.17. Perpetuate inequality in healthcare services for people on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, phenotype or genotype, including, but not limited to:

3.1.17.2. Using race-adjusted or “race-norming” formulas that put patients at undue risk or result in insufficient standard of care;

This sub-clause was created in response to instances technology has intervened in Black patient’s standard of care detrimentally. In our work to create timely and observant tools, we focused on areas of impact and can be read in more detail in the Methodologies section of the license repository.

There’s more work to be done.

We released version 0.6, pre version 1.0, with the help of our Lead Contributor, Lee Gill, our Press and Communications Lead, John Soto, our Legal Advisor Sameeul Haque of the Corporate Accountability Lab in partnership with Organization for Ethical Source, and Coraline Ada Ehmke its founder. We created this license starting with The Hippocratic License version 3.0 and have edited to address the missions of At The Root. The pre-first release was the result of substantial work from our team and we believe is an enforceable document as is. However; this still serves as a call to action because there is much work do be done for the version 1.0 release of the AntiRacist License — a task that will require more than legal and engineering expertise. At The Root also has other initiatives. We are currently working on the AntiRacist Software Developer Kit, still in it’s fledgling stages, which will begin as a Python software package aiming to distill technical subject matter expertise from many engineering disciplines to help make more inclusive technology systems. Please watch this space, we will be sharing more in the coming months. At The Root is also a community. Join us on Twitter, donate to our Open Collective, sign up for our forthcoming At The Root Newsletter, jump into an Open Volunteer Position or adopt ATR License for your project, email for invitation to our Tuesday meetings, and stay tuned for more ways to get involved.

Peace, Love and Data,

Dawn Wages
Founder and proud steward of the At The Root community