The "Do No Harm" principle, well-established in fields like medical research, healthcare, and humanitarian aid, has significant potential to enhance ethical approaches and reduce the negative effects of open research practices and technology.

As open source/science practices become a norm across different disciplines, it is important to identify, improve awareness of, and reduce its potential negative effects. While efforts like ethical source licenses (like the Do No Harm and Hippocratic License) are yet to become an acceptable legal pathway to enforcing responsible practices in open source, more general adoption and use of the "Do No Harm" will help account for societal and environmental implications of research and technology.

This Birds of a Feather session aims to engage the community in an interactive discussion about the implications of adopting the "Do No Harm" principle within open source projects and practices. I will start by introducing a simple framework designed to identify and develop actionable plans to mitigate the negative impacts of open research practices and technology. This framework examines the development and deployment of technology across four critical areas: the actors involved or affected, the dynamics and relationships within impacted communities, the economic realities faced by researchers, and environmental impact. Additionally, I will highlight practical methods for addressing the potential negative consequences of our work, inviting participants to share examples from their work.

This session is designed to be interactive and will engage participants involved in open source/science, including researchers, designers, contributors, developers, maintainers, and community members who seek to better understand and navigate the ethical challenges of open research and technology. Attendees will gain insights into global disparities in technology and explore how they can share responsibility to ensure their work promotes more equitable benefits by combining open practices with the do-no-harm principle.

Desired Outcomes: 1) Increased awareness of the ethical dimensions of open source. 2) Identification of practical steps for integrating the "Do No Harm" principle into open source products and practices. 3) Formation of a network of stakeholders interested in advancing ethical frameworks in open science.