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In China, open source licenses don't have any legal effect, so it's hard to safeguard legal rights. In recent years some open source organizations have been fou

In China, open source licenses don't have any legal effect, so it's hard to safeguard legal rights. In recent years some open source organizations have been founded and they hope their efforts can change the environment of open source in China. However, there is still a long way to go.

sgroppino 9y ago
Maybe a solution is to add some lines of code with special keywords to get your project blocked by the great firewall?
- edko 9y ago
  Do you know of any project that successfully does this?
  - sslayer 9y ago
    Anybody know of any projects out there that attempt to circumvent the great firewall - I'm guessing those are the ones.
- tajen 9y ago
  Genius. Name a module "Tiananmen" and Chinese won't hear about the project?
- x0 9y ago
  Don't think that works. Added "falun gong" to my SSH banner, have had around 2 million attempts by a single Chinese IP (IIRC).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
oliwarner 9y ago
Could you expand on that? China's laws implement the Berne Convention, making copyright automatic. Open source licenses usually provide conditional exceptions to that automatic and internationally accepted copyright. So if they don't believe in open source licenses, or whatever, "all rights reserved" is logically the default fallback. That obviously doesn't marry with what you said. China is famously awful at upholding IP laws they're party to, but I think that's all this is here. It's still against the law there, but nobody cares if it's not hurting China.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  That doesn't seem to make sense. If "all rights reserved" is the default fallback, why are they using other people's code? By default, they should respect the copyright and ignore that the projects have additional terms to allow use only under certain conditions.
  - oliwarner 9y ago
    That's sort of my wider point. It's not that it's because it's under a permissive license, it's because —being super racist here— they just don't care whether it's copyright or not. The type of license is irrelevant.
    - marcoperaza 9y ago
      There's nothing racist about acknowledging cultural differences, or even making claims of superiority of one culture over another. Racism is judging individual people based on their race instead of more substantive criteria, like culture, values, and actions.
      - oliwarner 9y ago
        "Acknowledging cultural differences" is a too broad a thing to just okay like that. People tend to go over the top. Americans are fat and arrogant, Mexicans are lazy, the Spanish are dirty, and the Irish are drunks. It's very easy to say that China —the country— has a problem with intellectual property, but tarring all ethnically-Chinese people with that brush affects hires and promotions in our own countries. Respecting IP ownership is as much a learned skill as learning to say exactly what you mean when you're accusing a country's governments, police and courts of actively turning a blind eye to IP abuse.
        marcoperaza 9y ago
        Sometimes generalizations about whole groups are true about many or most members of those groups. But even though many or most stereotypes are rooted in some truth, that's doesn't mean we should judge individual people according to those stereotypes. Somehow treating individuals fairly has morphed into this idea that we should ignore reality. That's just silly.

sgroppino 9y ago

Maybe a solution is to add some lines of code with special keywords to get your project blocked by the great firewall?

edko 9y ago
Do you know of any project that successfully does this?
- sslayer 9y ago
  Anybody know of any projects out there that attempt to circumvent the great firewall - I'm guessing those are the ones.
tajen 9y ago
Genius. Name a module "Tiananmen" and Chinese won't hear about the project?
x0 9y ago
Don't think that works. Added "falun gong" to my SSH banner, have had around 2 million attempts by a single Chinese IP (IIRC).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

oliwarner 9y ago

Could you expand on that? China's laws implement the Berne Convention, making copyright automatic. Open source licenses usually provide conditional exceptions to that automatic and internationally accepted copyright. So if they don't believe in open source licenses, or whatever, "all rights reserved" is logically the default fallback. That obviously doesn't marry with what you said. China is famously awful at upholding IP laws they're party to, but I think that's all this is here. It's still against the law there, but nobody cares if it's not hurting China.

JoshMnem 9y ago
That doesn't seem to make sense. If "all rights reserved" is the default fallback, why are they using other people's code? By default, they should respect the copyright and ignore that the projects have additional terms to allow use only under certain conditions.
- oliwarner 9y ago
  That's sort of my wider point. It's not that it's because it's under a permissive license, it's because —being super racist here— they just don't care whether it's copyright or not. The type of license is irrelevant.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    There's nothing racist about acknowledging cultural differences, or even making claims of superiority of one culture over another. Racism is judging individual people based on their race instead of more substantive criteria, like culture, values, and actions.
    - oliwarner 9y ago
      "Acknowledging cultural differences" is a too broad a thing to just okay like that. People tend to go over the top. Americans are fat and arrogant, Mexicans are lazy, the Spanish are dirty, and the Irish are drunks. It's very easy to say that China —the country— has a problem with intellectual property, but tarring all ethnically-Chinese people with that brush affects hires and promotions in our own countries. Respecting IP ownership is as much a learned skill as learning to say exactly what you mean when you're accusing a country's governments, police and courts of actively turning a blind eye to IP abuse.
      - marcoperaza 9y ago
        Sometimes generalizations about whole groups are true about many or most members of those groups. But even though many or most stereotypes are rooted in some truth, that's doesn't mean we should judge individual people according to those stereotypes. Somehow treating individuals fairly has morphed into this idea that we should ignore reality. That's just silly.