I have been recently asked to prepare a network scanner for association that teaches and lectures about security in information technology (mainly pro bono).I'm thinking of putting it as an open source project on GitHub for others to benefit from it and (probably) for mentioned organization, so that others can learn concepts they teach based on it.My question is: what happens if such project/application is used for commiting a crime?Is there any open source license that I can use to prohibit such usage?AFAIK, scanning ports (or whole networks) is not a crime per se but is a gateway for exploiting potential hosts.If there's a topic that covers it already (which I couldn't find I'm afraid), please feel free to let me know and mark it as duplicate.Note:I'm not asking for a legal advice but for preferred license I could use and open source community approach for such topics in general.
Open Source - what if someone commits a crime with my application
licensing;open source
Nearly all of the reasonably well known open-source licenses contain a disclaimer of liability for the result of anything that's done with the software. For example, the Boost license includes:IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.The MIT license (for another example) contains essentially identical wording: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.You could, of course, include a clause specifically saying that the licensee agrees to only use the software in ways that are legal, but it's probably not going to mean much--if somebody's decided to commit a criminal act, violating a mere license agreement isn't likely to change their mind.In other words, the obvious step would be to use one of the well-known, widely recognized licenses like these that does its best to absolve you of any liability for the results of actions others might take with software you wrote and released.