Amnesty International is a good start point to evaluate if a government is violent, authoritarian or perpetrating crimes against human rights.

You don’t deal with extremists. Dialog only works with who is willing to dialog.

Radicals maybe not wrong about their claimings but are wrong about heir methods.

I replied another comment about enforcing the licenses is not the only thing to consider. Secondary effects like making impossible to sell product to other countries that do respect the license, make it difficult to distribut the software to de “sanctioned” countries and even stop to offer support are some consequences that the community can impose.

A good start to define an authoritarian government is recognizing what Amnesty International says. It is credible.

For a totalitarian government, there is no law enforcement. And I would say that you are absolutely right saying that no license will stop the usage in this case.

But there are other implications that could come from a restrictive licensing like make the distribution hard in that country, make it impossible to sell solutions with unlawful licensing to countries that are not totalitarian, make it hard or impossible to obtain support for that.

But in essence, more than everything, is the open source community sending a clear message that we don’t collaborate with monsters.

I think I am old because I liked it a lot and I could see myself using that.

That is the correct answer