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Hey, everyone! I'm one of the developers at Facebook who worked on this library since its conception! Really excited to be able to share this library today!
by lozzle 10y ago
Hey, everyone!
I'm one of the developers at Facebook who worked on this library since its conception! Really excited to be able to share this library today! I'll be checking up here periodically and can help answer any technical questions that you have!
- echelon 10y agoWhy does the software license [1] include the following clause: > provided Your Software does not consist solely of the Software Why didn't you guys choose MIT or BSD? It feels like the custom Facebook license is close to the intent of these, but it has that mysterious gotcha. In any case, thanks for the software! It looks really slick, and I definitely have a use case for using it to replace the sprite sheet I used for Donald Trump on jungle.horse. [1] https://github.com/facebookincubator/Keyframes/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/facebookincubator/Keyframes/blob/master/L...
- electic 10y agoYou are misreading it. Software = Keyframes software. Your Software = Whatever you are releasing. So basically they are saying you can't redistribute just the Keyframes software library by itself. Which also means, if I understand this right, you can't fork it and modify it either. I agree however, not a good license.
- echelon 10y agoI'm not misreading it. The license says we cannot fork the software. That's not open source.
- CorpOverreach 10y agoDo you have access to the source? Yes? It's open source. Open Source need not be free as in beer, nor as in freedom.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- detaro 10y agoNo. Call that "source available", "source access" or something, but "Open Source" is pretty much established to be defined by the OSI definition of the term: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
- idbehold 10y agoThe OSI should trademark the phrase "open source". License it for anyone claiming their software is open source (as defined by OSI), and send cease and desists to anyone who is using the phase incorrectly.
- icebraining 10y agoThey can't: We have discovered that there is virtually no chance that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would register the mark "open source"; the mark is too descriptive. Ironically, we were partly a victim of our own success in bringing the `open source' concept into the mainstream. https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/06/17/0213251/esr-on-the-open-source-trademark https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/06/17/0213251/esr-on-the-...
- mioelnir 10y ago> ... but "Open Source" is pretty much retconned to be defined by the OSI definition of the term "Open source" as a term or development methodology is older than both the OSI definition and the Debian manual it is based on.
- andybak 10y agoThey had better start paying their lawyers overtime. You can't do a PR without forking and people fork on Github for a multitude of reasons (I often fork into a group as a lazy form of bookmarking or collecting projects). Hell. I just clicked the 'fork' button. Where's my cease and desist?
- electic 10y agoI would argue that GitHub should remove this software. It just runs counter with their TOS.
- st3v3r 10y agoA PR isn't the only way to contribute. You can also check out the repo and send in patch files.
- tomjakubowski 10y agoJust wondering: for lazy repo bookmarking, why fork rather than star?
- reubano 10y agoFor me, forks are like super stars. I have an order of magnitude more stars than forks.
- lhorie 10y agoIf I understand right, you can fork it and even redistribute it, as long as your software isn't a blatant plagiarism of this repo. So technically, taking this library and putting it together with some other library yielding some meaningful application is enough to satisfy that clause.
- scarhill 10y agoI read it as only allowing you to redistribute unmodified copies, because clause 3 only permits modification "for your own internal use."
- electic 10y agoAlso, even if were to improve on it and release it as a fork, as an example, it still falls into the definition of "software" and is in violation of the terms.
- cosmotron 10y agoIsn't a different interpretation that a fork is, presumably, their software _plus_ your modification(s)? Thus, a fork is not "solely" their software anymore and is allowed.
- izym 10y agoYes, but forking on GitHub means that initially it will be just their software.
- bobwaycott 10y agoThe issue people are (rightly, imo) pointing out is that forking without modifications—say, to remain locked to a particular commit for whatever reasons one may have—appears to directly violate the terms of the custom license (which itself appears to directly violate the terms of Github's TOS.
- LeanderK 10y agowhat is the motivation to release the library on github with such a license? If you can't fork it you can't improve it.
- peller 10y agoThey want the user adoption, without giving up control, presumably.
- LeanderK 10y agothis might be silly, but why? what does Facebook gain by getting this library user adoption (beside some bug-reporting). I would think that for fb user adoption of the open source projects is not the goal, but getting OSS developers attracted and getting fixes/features etc. developed from them. Or is it some kind of pride? Fake internet point for having repositories on github?
- st3v3r 10y agoDev mindshare.
- peller 10y agoMy long-time-range guess is that this is FB's play for becoming a standard replacement/upgrade for GIFs. From the post: "Initially, we looked at common static image formats such as PNG sequences and GIFs, as well as even more compressed formats like WebP. It quickly became clear that these wouldn't work without drastically simplifying the animations for file size, and that we'd have to accept the drawback of static images not scaling up or down very well." So, reading between the lines, they've made what they think is a better GIF. And perhaps it is, and if so, that's big business[1], and so having a first-mover advantage on mobile could be highly profitable. (They're a public A-corporation, after all.) But who knows; I could be reading too far into it or just flat-out wrong, too! [1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a21457/the-gif-is-dead-long-live-the-gif/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a21457/the-gif-is...
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoFrom your jungle.horse "more info" panel: > Word of warning: while I'm not a vampire, I may or may not be a night owl. That totally sounds absolutely non-suspicious... Also, you may or may not be having a HN-driven traffic spike.
- echelon 10y agoOh no, I've been outed. ;p
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoWell it sounds like the MO of a modern vampire: "let's meet for an artistic collaboration -- after the sun has settled" :P
- scarhill 10y agoI find clause 3 of the license bad also, since it says that you can only use changes internally. Taken together, I read the license as saying that you may only release unmodified copies of the code and only as part of a larger project.
- bobwaycott 10y agoI take it as reading you may only release modified copies as part of a private project, but may not publicly release a modified/improved copy and call it your own project without violating the license. Which is, if right, insanely anticompetitive, and a gross violation of the spirit and purpose of releasing open-source software.
- TD-Linux 10y agoIt's not the first time they've used this license: https://github.com/facebook/transform/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/facebook/transform/blob/master/LICENSE (in that case, they even used it to distribute a patch to ffmpeg, which is LGPL)
- zwegner 10y agoNote that, by publishing this repo publicly on GitHub, there is a right to fork granted by GitHub's ToS[0], which this license seems to conflict with (though IANAL of course...). Not sure what "fork" means in this context, whether it's just duplicating a repository or also modifying it. [0] https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#f-copyright-and-content-ownership https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#f-... Section F.1: "By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories."
- idbehold 10y agoAgreed. I've already contacted GitHub to report abuse. This license seems to directly contradict GitHub's Terms of Service. It says: > [...] you are hereby granted a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to (1) use and copy the Software; and (2) reproduce and distribute the Software as part of your own software ("Your Software"), provided Your Software does not consist solely of the Software; and (3) modify the Software for your own internal use. Facebook reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this license agreement. Where as GitHub's Terms of Service state: > By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories. It seems impossible for me to fork this software without violating Facebook's license. To fork it on GitHub would require that I make the repo public (meaning I would be distributing the Software as "My Software" even though it consists solely of the Software). And any commits I made to the forked repo would violate their license because I am only licensed to modify the Software for my own "internal use".
- gridspy 10y ago(2) only seems to apply if you publish the fork yourself - "reproduce and distribute" "reproduce and distribute the Software as part of your own software ("Your Software"), provided Your Software does not consist solely of the Software;"
- idbehold 10y agoIf you click on the "Fork" button from GitHub's website then that is exactly what you'd be doing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- caxtine 10y agoHello all, I'm on the open source team at Facebook. We're about to fix the license file for the project so stay tuned. - Thanks
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- droopyEyelids 10y agoThis is a huge overpromise. Why not say something like "We're asking the legal team to consider whether we can still publish our projects on GitHub"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- DannyBee 10y agoI'm not sure why it's a huge overpromise. It's the same as when i fix screwups on behalf of Google. You are assuming a lot about the authority structures of the company that may or may not be true :) I generally would assume that if someone makes that comment, and you can verify that they are who they say they are, that they will in fact, be able to accomplish what they say.
- lozzle 10y agoWe've fixed the license for the project and merged it in: https://github.com/facebookincubator/Keyframes/pull/32 https://github.com/facebookincubator/Keyframes/pull/32
- idbehold 10y agoAnd how about https://github.com/facebook/transform/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/facebook/transform/blob/master/LICENSE?
- hackcrafter 10y agoAny plans to wrap this in a React Native Component (either as custom component or a part of the RN distro?)
- Eridrus 10y agoI get grey flashes over the animations/text in my HN reader (Materialistic).
- lozzle 10y agoIs there any way you can share a part of the composition, or something that produces a similar bug?
- Eridrus 10y agoI can only replicate it in that app, I don't see it elsewhere.
- deecewan 10y agoAlso on materialistic. Worked fine on Nexus 6P
- Eridrus 10y agoI wouldn't be surprised if this was perf-related, I have a 5X and it's worse when I scroll.
- ar15saveslives 10y agoSo you got your CS degree, worked for years in IT, passed tough interviews, joined FB, and now you're proud of animating those annoying emojis.
- idbehold 10y agoQuite possibly the most rude comment I've read on HN.
- takdi 10y agoRude but it's the truth. It's not because you work at Facebook that your job is cool.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dom0 10y agoOhhh, you haven't seen a [deleted] comment before it was [deleted].
- reitanqild 10y agoWay to rude, far from the worst IMO. But I too find animated icons REALLY annoying and would have preferred if they were opt-in. In fact I send : ) instead of :-) on Skype because I feel the smileys makes me look like an annoying kid.
- yedpodtrzitko 10y agoNice ad hominem. Just take it as a proof of concept - it animates emojis today, but it can be useful for some other "useful" things in the future.
- echelon 10y ago> So you got your CS degree, worked for years in IT, passed tough interviews, joined FB, and now you're proud of animating those annoying emojis. What kind of work do you do? I'd say this project is much better than your words suggest. It's full of interesting technical problems unique to the domain of animation. That's way more fun than writing a standard CRUD Ruby on Rails web app, at least in my opinion. And hey, some people are janitors and garbage men/women. Any job in engineering beats that.
- bobbyi_settv 10y agoWhat's the rationale behind putting this on github and asking for contributions, but having the code under a proprietary (non open source) license?
- apike 10y agoThe project author and Facebook legal appear not to be in sync. The license does not grant the right to distribute the software as-is (a fork) or publicly with modifications, but the CONTRIBUTING.md file asks potential contributors to do both of these things: > We actively welcome your pull requests. Fork the repo and create your branch from master.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- swipecity 10y agoHi, I'm new to this, does it work with 3d animations ? Like something generated with blender ? Thanks.
- lozzle 10y agoI'm not actually familiar with blender or how that works with AE. I didn't work much on creation of the different compositions, just the end product, so I'm not sure what technologies our designers and animators may have worked with. Presumably, if blender formats the composition in the supported structure and doesn't drift outside what the library recognizes and supports, it should work. https://github.com/facebookincubator/Keyframes/blob/master/docs/AfterEffectsGuideline.md https://github.com/facebookincubator/Keyframes/blob/master/d...
- LinuxFreedom 10y agoI have a question: how do you feel working for a company that actively works on censorship and suppression of information in countries where political opponents have to face death? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/technology/facebook-censorship-tool-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/technology/facebook-censor...