nhpl

Copyright (C) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
so, subject to the following conditions:

- The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

- The software may not be used in any context for the purpose of any communication
that disparages or discriminates a person or a group on the basis of some 
trait existing as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute such as race, 
color, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, nationality.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Perhaps include a provision that restricts the use of the Software in warfare or in a manner designed to cause harm or injury.

So I may not use an NHPL editor to write text that criticises the Church of Scientology? Thanks, but I think I'll choose a genuinely Free licence instead.

What an unworkable plan! I mean, I support the basic idea of not wanting your work to be used by, say, the Westboro group. But how could you possibly define "communication that disparages or discriminates" in any meaningful way? Some cases are obvious (see the above example), but what about someone who's disparaging a repressive government? Last year's Arab Spring protestors wouldn't think that they're being discriminatory or hate-driven, but the local authorities had a different view of the matter. For a (possibly) closer-to-home example, consider the opposing sides of the pro-life/pro-choice debate. Either group would be very likely to accuse the other of disparaging or discriminating against their own "religion, or other characteristic".

Furthermore, some overly-sensitive people interpret anything that doesn't actively support them as opposing them. Who gets/has to decide whether a particular instance of communication "disparages or discriminates": the speaker, the listener, or you?

Also, remember that a license is actually a legal document. Do you really want to have to defend these vague terms in court?

The GNU folks considered such things when crafting the GPL. According to their rationale at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html , the very first requirement of a free software licence (freedom 0) is:

The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on
any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to
communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's
purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your
purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you
are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.

While many people disagree with the GNU authors on many finer points, this is a pretty fundamental freedom that many or most free software authors support.

Basically, while I sympathize with the motivation, this just can't work in reality. Nor should it! It sets a very bad example of attempting to impose behaviors on end users and that never ends well.

Concerns about interpretation don't mean that morality clauses are unworkable generally. The terms used in this contract are likely to be well defined in human rights case law. Of course, there are edge cases everywhere. That doesn't mean that the whole trust of this type of licence should be derided. If the net effect is positive, then a few legal cases are not too much to worry about.

Citing GNU probably isn't persuasive here. I mean, the whole intention is to wilfully restrict users' freedom in ways that the copyright owner feels is worth prohibiting.

"a few legal cases are not too much to worry about"

... right up until it's your use case that's the subject of said legal action.

Oh noes! Does this mean you can't write a blog engine (supporting comments) with it?

I have to say, religion is unlike the rest. It's not inherent.