4 ms·

Removing Some Code

51 points by l2dy 9y ago

yuhong 9y ago
I wonder when Eric Young will leave RSA/EMC, now that RSA BSAFE is dead. As a side note, it is probably worth noting contributors that only made minor changes and are probably not worth sending an announcement email for.
- pm215 9y ago
  I think it's better try to contact everybody no matter how minor the contribution, because (a) it's polite and reduces the chances of somebody getting annoyed and (b) it is easier to tick somebody's name off a list than to go in and look at their change and make a judgement call about how minor 'minor' is in each case. Better to save that extra effort for the cases where you get no response or a negative response. (I worked on getting a portion of QEMU code relicensed -- that had a fairly small number of authors to track down and get permission from, but it was still pretty painful. I'm impressed with anybody with the perseverance to attempt it for an entire large and old codebase.)
igitur 9y ago
Let me guess. One of the obscene replies was by someone called Linus Torvalds.
sandstrom 9y ago
Requiring contributors to sign legal documents before contributing seems arcane and stupid. There are tons of open-source projects that thrive without doing that. Every time I've gotten that question I've simply closed my PR and never attempted to contribute again. I don't think the ostensible benefits weight up for the downsides (fewer contributions). (this is only partially related to the re-licensing, which I don't mind)
- rekado 9y ago
  "arcane and stupid"? Why? It simplifies license enforcement and license upgrades.
  - madez 9y ago
    When you see a group singing in the street and you want to sing the song with them, do you first sign some legal documents or do you just sing? Copyright and patents have become a cancer.
    - izacus 9y ago
      Singing with them - using opensource. Writing new songs with them - contributing to opensource.
    - stan_rogers 9y ago
      Very poor analogy, since you can't force the group in the street to stop singing because you've decided they're singing incorrectly later and somebody's using your riff.
      - sandstrom 9y ago
        Are you sure? https://www.quora.com/Can-I-be-sued-if-I-sing-copyrighted-songs-in-public-but-dont-accept-payment https://www.quora.com/Can-I-be-sued-if-I-sing-copyrighted-so... https://www.unhappybirthday.com/ https://www.unhappybirthday.com/
    - rekado 9y ago
      The fact that copyright is annoying does not mean that we can just ignore it. There are practical advantages (and disadvantages) to copyright assignments. It depends on the project, which weigh heavier.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- pm215 9y ago
  It depends rather on what your aim is. Most projects are only interested in producing good software with a thriving community, and requiring copyright assignment or a CLA gets in the way of that. The FSF has another aim though, which is to uphold the free software movement in general and defend the validity of the GPL in particular -- so they have a copyright assignment policy for FSF projects like gcc which helps in achieving that. You might not care about that FSF goal, and the copyright assignment process is a definite barrier to new contributors, but there are reasons behind it and they're neither arcane nor stupid. Other kinds of contributor agreement I know less about, and some of them can be counterproductive or even one-sidedly in favour of the company, but in general they stem from the organisation having some extra aims or requirements beyond the pure desire to have a thriving project. "If in doubt, don't have a CLA or assignment process" is probably good advice though.
  - sandstrom 9y ago
    Good points, I agree
- majewsky 9y ago
  I sort of had the same problem happen to me: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/19596 https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/19596
jwilk 9y ago
> If there is only one way to write something, then that content isn’t copyrightable. It isn't obvious to me that this is the case.
- delinka 9y ago
  Citation or examples would indeed be desirable. I can't even be convinced that "...there is only one way to write something."
  - a_humean 9y ago
    Well a common example of something that can't be copyrighted in most jurisdictions is lists of things. For example the recipe list for a chocolate cake can't be copyrighted, but the manner it is presented in a cookbook (flavour text, images, typesetting) can. Copyright protects the expression of ideas rather than the idea itself. You can claim copyright to the film 'The Breakfast club', but you cannot make a copyright claim to 1980s teenage rite of passage themes. So if there is a very limited form in which an idea cannot be expressed (a three line for loop), then it probably falls into that category of not copyright-able. -IANAL
    - thephyber 9y ago
      > Well a common example of something that can't be copyrighted in most jurisdictions is lists of things. Collections of things are copyrightable (in at least some jurisdictions). A recent legal case was brought recently by some sports stats website who sued scrapers. They didn't "own" the stats (any sports viewer could have built the collection independently), but they owned that specific aggregation. I imagine the same is for collections such as map data. Also IANAL
  - majewsky 9y ago
    > ...there is only one way to write something There are several such examples in functional programming languages. Consider the Haskell function `map`, that takes a function and a list, and applies the function to each element of the list: map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b] Keep in mind that this function is pure, so you cannot get any values into the function from outside via side effects. So if you have a call like `map f []` (i.e. the list of input values of type `a` is empty), there are no values of type `a` anywhere that you can use, hence you cannot call the function `f`, and hence you cannot have any values of type `b` either. Therefore, literally the only possible result is map f [] = [] By a similar argument, you can see that the alternative case for non-empty lists can only be map f (x:xs) = (f x) : (map f xs) Source: https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Laws https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Laws (contains a citation to the relevant paper by Philip Wadler)

51 points by l2dy 9y ago

I wonder when Eric Young will leave RSA/EMC, now that RSA BSAFE is dead. As a side note, it is probably worth noting contributors that only made minor changes and are probably not worth sending an announcement email for.

pm215 9y ago
I think it's better try to contact everybody no matter how minor the contribution, because (a) it's polite and reduces the chances of somebody getting annoyed and (b) it is easier to tick somebody's name off a list than to go in and look at their change and make a judgement call about how minor 'minor' is in each case. Better to save that extra effort for the cases where you get no response or a negative response. (I worked on getting a portion of QEMU code relicensed -- that had a fairly small number of authors to track down and get permission from, but it was still pretty painful. I'm impressed with anybody with the perseverance to attempt it for an entire large and old codebase.)

igitur 9y ago

Let me guess. One of the obscene replies was by someone called Linus Torvalds.

sandstrom 9y ago

Requiring contributors to sign legal documents before contributing seems arcane and stupid. There are tons of open-source projects that thrive without doing that. Every time I've gotten that question I've simply closed my PR and never attempted to contribute again. I don't think the ostensible benefits weight up for the downsides (fewer contributions). (this is only partially related to the re-licensing, which I don't mind)

rekado 9y ago
"arcane and stupid"? Why? It simplifies license enforcement and license upgrades.
- madez 9y ago
  When you see a group singing in the street and you want to sing the song with them, do you first sign some legal documents or do you just sing? Copyright and patents have become a cancer.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Singing with them - using opensource. Writing new songs with them - contributing to opensource.
  - stan_rogers 9y ago
    Very poor analogy, since you can't force the group in the street to stop singing because you've decided they're singing incorrectly later and somebody's using your riff.
    - sandstrom 9y ago
      Are you sure? https://www.quora.com/Can-I-be-sued-if-I-sing-copyrighted-songs-in-public-but-dont-accept-payment https://www.quora.com/Can-I-be-sued-if-I-sing-copyrighted-so... https://www.unhappybirthday.com/ https://www.unhappybirthday.com/
  - rekado 9y ago
    The fact that copyright is annoying does not mean that we can just ignore it. There are practical advantages (and disadvantages) to copyright assignments. It depends on the project, which weigh heavier.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
pm215 9y ago
It depends rather on what your aim is. Most projects are only interested in producing good software with a thriving community, and requiring copyright assignment or a CLA gets in the way of that. The FSF has another aim though, which is to uphold the free software movement in general and defend the validity of the GPL in particular -- so they have a copyright assignment policy for FSF projects like gcc which helps in achieving that. You might not care about that FSF goal, and the copyright assignment process is a definite barrier to new contributors, but there are reasons behind it and they're neither arcane nor stupid. Other kinds of contributor agreement I know less about, and some of them can be counterproductive or even one-sidedly in favour of the company, but in general they stem from the organisation having some extra aims or requirements beyond the pure desire to have a thriving project. "If in doubt, don't have a CLA or assignment process" is probably good advice though.
- sandstrom 9y ago
  Good points, I agree
majewsky 9y ago
I sort of had the same problem happen to me: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/19596 https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/19596

jwilk 9y ago

> If there is only one way to write something, then that content isn’t copyrightable. It isn't obvious to me that this is the case.

delinka 9y ago
Citation or examples would indeed be desirable. I can't even be convinced that "...there is only one way to write something."
- a_humean 9y ago
  Well a common example of something that can't be copyrighted in most jurisdictions is lists of things. For example the recipe list for a chocolate cake can't be copyrighted, but the manner it is presented in a cookbook (flavour text, images, typesetting) can. Copyright protects the expression of ideas rather than the idea itself. You can claim copyright to the film 'The Breakfast club', but you cannot make a copyright claim to 1980s teenage rite of passage themes. So if there is a very limited form in which an idea cannot be expressed (a three line for loop), then it probably falls into that category of not copyright-able. -IANAL
  - thephyber 9y ago
    > Well a common example of something that can't be copyrighted in most jurisdictions is lists of things. Collections of things are copyrightable (in at least some jurisdictions). A recent legal case was brought recently by some sports stats website who sued scrapers. They didn't "own" the stats (any sports viewer could have built the collection independently), but they owned that specific aggregation. I imagine the same is for collections such as map data. Also IANAL
- majewsky 9y ago
  > ...there is only one way to write something There are several such examples in functional programming languages. Consider the Haskell function `map`, that takes a function and a list, and applies the function to each element of the list: map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b] Keep in mind that this function is pure, so you cannot get any values into the function from outside via side effects. So if you have a call like `map f []` (i.e. the list of input values of type `a` is empty), there are no values of type `a` anywhere that you can use, hence you cannot call the function `f`, and hence you cannot have any values of type `b` either. Therefore, literally the only possible result is map f [] = [] By a similar argument, you can see that the alternative case for non-empty lists can only be map f (x:xs) = (f x) : (map f xs) Source: https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Laws https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Laws (contains a citation to the relevant paper by Philip Wadler)