I’m in the process of adjusting my use of the MIT license to exclude the public sector and freeloaders.

One of the lessons of Atlas Shrugged is that, if you’re a creator, politicians and cronies will use your creations to torture you (figuratively if not literally). I don’t want to contribute to that dynamic, so I’m restricting my open-source projects so that those people can’t use them.

I am not a lawyer and make no legal warranties, but you are welcome to use this adjusted license. Below are the changes. The two conditions for private recipients of public moneys are from Ayn Rand’s essay ‘The Question of Scholarships’, which I discuss here.

Adjusted MIT License

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 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.

* Exception: no one in the public sector may use this software. That means
no politicians, public-school teachers, police, intelligence services, etc.
Private recipients of public moneys may not use this software either unless
they oppose the welfare state and consider such moneys restitution. No one
doing unpaid work for any government may use this software either.