Open Source Software Community - it's about ethics in Code of Conducts

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dec05eba said:
Oh thats duckstation lol. The dev hates wayland because he needs to make a billion workarounds for it. He has even considered removing linux support partly because of it.
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let me guess.
GNOME specific issues?
 
volatile puar said:
Finally, someone may just feel quirky and want to use a license of their own making or a funny license like the Beerware license
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There's a repository full of those: https://github.com/ErikMcClure/bad-licenses
I'm quite fond of the this one, seems perfect for a lot of projects that people work on, but nobody actually uses:
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 copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, but NOT including the right to run, execute or use the
Software or any executable binaries built from the source code.
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I use exclusively the ISC license (aka effectively BSD 2-clause) on my projects. I want other people to use my code, if those people are companies that's fine, because it means my software is being widely used. If I wanted to not be cucked (i.e. if I wanted other people to not use my code) I would use a proprietary license and nobody would ever see my code (or use it), thereby being safe from cuckdom.

Meanwhile, there's millions of lines of GPLv3 code out there that is being ripped off by AI models to create new, non-GPLv3 code. As a matter of fact, that probably applies for Tartarus, Kiwiflare, and any other project the ooperator is currently working on with Claude assistance. That GPLvX code harms only 1 group of people: humans with no AI assistance that want to use the code without being looped in the shitshow that is the GPL.
 
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Max Weber said:
This is why (A)GPL is seen as an infection, once a piece of code licensed under it enters your project, your project in its entirety must be shared under (A)GPL.
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Is this actually true? I'm sorry if I offended someone with this question.
 
Battlefield42 said:
Is this actually true? I'm sorry if I offended someone with this question.
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I'm sure I'm oversimplifying things as this is just my understanding, and there's probably some fuckery with split licenses and what not. ffmpeg, for example, has flags for free and non-free modules, and the assumption is that if you compile it with free features enabled, the resulting binary is under GPL.

From a corporate, closed-source point of view though, yes. GPLed code will not be touched with a 10ft pole.
 
Battlefield42 said:
Is this actually true? I'm sorry if I offended someone with this question.
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Yes, if a program contains any file that is licensed under the GNU GPL or AGPL, or any file derived from such software, then the whole program by law must be licensed under the same license or a later revision of the same. However, software distributions can contain programs licensed under GNU licenses without every program in the distribution becoming GPL, for example MacOS is a non-free software distribution of Apple Inc. that includes some GPL software, some non-GPL free software, and some non-free software.
 
geckogoy said:
Thats what lgpl is for
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To be clear, GNU LGPL is a license only for libraries, and if you license a non-library program under the LGPL you have accidentally licensed it under the GNU GPL with an extra license file attached with no real legal significance. If your intention is to have a weak copyleft license so that it can be used in nonfree software, you should use the MPL. I'm not sure how that would benefit you compared to using a permissive license like MIT, but you're free to make your own choices. MPL is of course very useful to you if, like Mozilla, you intend to make software that is partly free and partly nonfree.
 
volatile puar said:
However, software distributions can contain programs licensed under GNU licenses without every program in the distribution becoming GPL, for example MacOS is a non-free software distribution of Apple Inc. that includes some GPL software, some non-GPL free software, and some non-free software.
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macOS includes some GPLv2 software. It includes precisely zero GPLv3 software, because it has a herpes-like clause that theoretically could invalidate Apple’s patents.
 
volatile puar said:
To be clear, GNU LGPL is a license only for libraries,
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This isn't true. You can license any code under the LGPL, it's just that libraries are the most obvious use-case for it. A piece of software licensed under the LGPL can be modified with proprietary bits without the license being breached.
 
Battlefield42 said:
Is this actually true? I'm sorry if I offended someone with this question.
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Yes, thats why its one of the only licenses not allowed at google: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy. In principle they would allow gpl code as long as its just used in one product. The gpl license stops at the executable (file) level so other projects aren't affected by the license. You can use gpl licensed code from proprietary code by executing the gpl binary or using it over the network. You can even take gpl code and use it at a company and then provide a proprietary service (over the internet) with it and not give the code to users. AGPL on the other hand spreads like cancer affecting the licensing of everything, even if it touches it over the internet.
 
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dec05eba said:
In some cases yes but not always. Some things are undefined behavior in wayland so it may just happen to work in some wayland compositors unexpectedly. Some workarounds are needed for every wayland compositor.
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Holy crap i just realized you're the guy from the tech over tea episode with brodie.

I can understand what your issues are with wayland, however in terms of specs, are there any particular ones you're actually eager for in order to stop working around hacks?
 
mango_reseller said:
Meanwhile, there's millions of lines of GPLv3 code out there that is being ripped off by AI models to create new, non-GPLv3 code.
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The same people who spent decades pearl clutching about the sanctity of "intellectual property" have realized that the judicial system doesn't care about it because of any consistent ideal or principle of law, rather, they care about it because they're whores to moneyed interests.

I know that you know this, because you're not suggesting that copyright laundering could be equally used to create GPLv3 code from proprietary code. Sure it's not source code, but with enough training does it even matter? The point is getting it in some form or another without having to abide by the license terms. But we all know that the same people gleefully vacuuming up the wealth of human creative output would sue you for it, and likely win.

How mask-off do we think the courts would go with it? My personal doomer theory is that they're going to conclude that the benefit to society of training LLMs outweighs the interest of copyright, but as a "compromise" with copyright, only large corporate "state-approved" entities that can be "well-regulated" should be allowed to train LLMs on copyrighted works.

Why make a living off selling your own crappy work when you can make a living off of selling everyone else's work?
 
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