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The big problem with this is consent of other parties for works that have been forked or are otherwise mirrored on github, from what I can see. If I go and for
by snuxoll 10y ago
The big problem with this is consent of other parties for works that have been forked or are otherwise mirrored on github, from what I can see.
If I go and fork some random open source project off Sourceforge or whatever, I cannot publish it on GitHub as I do not have the original author's permission to grant GitHub these rights.
- pbnjay 10y agoThis was also true before the new ToS though.
- quadrangle 10y agoPlease explain. Did the previous terms also require anything that debatably required getting permissions from copyright holders beyond those granted by, e.g. GPLv3?
- matthewmacleod 10y agoThe new terms do not grant permission to Github to do anything that they weren't already doing. If you take the view that this agreement is not compatible with a particular software license, then publishing the same software on Github prior to the changes logically must have been a license violation.
- quadrangle 10y agoI think that's sorta true, but this formalizes something in a way that at least might change something about it. IANAL
- notzorbo3 10y agoWhat? No. Prior it meant Github was violating your license. Just because they were already doing it doesn't mean they had a right to do so. Now, it means you're granting them a license. I'm not a lawyer, and I have absolutely no clue if it's even legal for Github to change their ToS like this. But I assume if you don't have the right to grant this attribution exception to Github (because you don't own all the code) and you don't remove your code from Github, then you are now also in violation of the rights of contributors to the project that didn't consent to this waiver.
- derekp7 10y agoIn that case, I'd like to see their terms of service re-worded, as "You grant ... rights, or affirm that you will only submit content that is under a license which grants these rights".
- snuxoll 10y agoI mean, they could skip the whole "without attribution" thing as well by just providing a link to the LICENSE/COPYING + NOTICES (if included) file in the repository as well when displaying search results. Overall I feel this was a pretty poor move by GitHub.