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The three20 dev admitted it was a mistake and took immediate corrective action. http://developers.enormego.com/view/what-happened-common-courtesy-facebook#comm

The three20 dev admitted it was a mistake and took immediate corrective action. http://developers.enormego.com/view/what-happened-common-courtesy-facebook#comment-70135140 http://developers.enormego.com/view/what-happened-common-cou... The majority of developers don't understand the nuances of copyright law; and, so OSS code is often mis-integrated and mis-attributed. I hazard most times an honest developer is informed of their missteps, they handle it similar to how we're seeing here. Simple. No drama. Honest. Let's not blow this out of proportion.

halostatue 16y ago
"The majority of developers don't understand the nuances of copyright law; and, so OSS code is often mis-integrated and mis-attributed. I hazard most times an honest developer is informed of their missteps, they handle it similar to how we're seeing here." What you just said, if it's true, is a problem. The basics of copyright aren't hard (if you didn't write what you're including, you have to have permission to include it). Even dealing with the basic software licensing options (NewBSD/free-for-all/CC; OldBSD/free-with-attribution/CC-BY; GNU GPL/free-share-alike/CC-SA; etc.) aren't that hard (the CC folks have done a good job of coming up with easily understandable terms that capture the spirit). It's not until you get into the real esoterica (largely in music and movies, IMO) that you have to really understand things at a weird level (I still don't quite understand where things went wrong for Sita Sings the Blues). While this may be an easily fixed error, what should we be doing to make sure people "get" basic copyright law as part of the software development profession? More than that, what do we have to do to get people to think in terms of simple fairness: I should give credit to others for their work.
- quadhome 16y ago
  Of those licensing schemes, which are compatible? There's the spirit and there's the complex reality. This code, on my screen is copy-paste'able. And it's 'open source.' That means I can use it! If it's an education issue, do we hit 'em in university? Primary school? Make a slick website: canicopyit.org? wrt. to the "simple fairness," it's striking the number of people who have chimed in with (paraphrased), "How do we know it's copied? There can only be so many ways to write this!" That says to me the speaker doesn't write code, but rather puts it together. And that's a group with very different motivation than you and I.
- btilly 16y ago
  The basics are less simple than you indicate. What does it mean to have permission? Who has the right to give that permission? What happens if you include something because someone told you it was OK, and that person was mistaken? When is borrowing fair use? To take an important example, are you allowed to copy the user interface to someone else's program? What about copying someone's data structures if that is necessary to interact with their file format? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland and http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/IP_Articles/Baystate_Holding.pdf http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/IP_Articles/... for the answers. It isn't just in music and movies that the weird stuff starts cropping up. (And that is before you get into the license debates. Or such subtle questions like whether it is better to treat the GPL as a copyright license, or to take steps to get a contract instead.) No, there is nothing simple about this invented notion we call copyright.
  - halostatue 16y ago
    I disagree. The basic rules for copyright are fairly simple. (If you include something because someone told you it was OK, but didn't do at least some minimal work to verify that it was in fact OK, then you have erred.) Start from 'no' (that is, you don't have permission to copy something you didn't write). Even if you do have permission to copy something[1], you probably don't have permission to claim that you wrote it. Even if you do have permission to claim that you wrote it (because it's in the public domain), you would be a first-class jackass to do so. The cases you point out are subtle, and were attempts to expand what copyright covers. (This is similar to the discussion some months ago about the copyright-ability of one's tweets, with the general consensus being that they cannot individually be copyrighted, but one's "tweet-oeuvre" would be. Single words and short phrases are too short to be individually unique.) Yet, neither of these cases change the basics (assume you don't have permission, don't try to claim what you didn't write as yours). Fair use is a more subtle item because it's based on case law instead of regulation or explicit law. I never said that copyright law wasn't hard, or that copyright issues couldn't get complicated quickly. But getting the start of things right? It's not hard at all.
    - 16y ago

halostatue 16y ago

"The majority of developers don't understand the nuances of copyright law; and, so OSS code is often mis-integrated and mis-attributed. I hazard most times an honest developer is informed of their missteps, they handle it similar to how we're seeing here." What you just said, if it's true, is a problem. The basics of copyright aren't hard (if you didn't write what you're including, you have to have permission to include it). Even dealing with the basic software licensing options (NewBSD/free-for-all/CC; OldBSD/free-with-attribution/CC-BY; GNU GPL/free-share-alike/CC-SA; etc.) aren't that hard (the CC folks have done a good job of coming up with easily understandable terms that capture the spirit). It's not until you get into the real esoterica (largely in music and movies, IMO) that you have to really understand things at a weird level (I still don't quite understand where things went wrong for Sita Sings the Blues). While this may be an easily fixed error, what should we be doing to make sure people "get" basic copyright law as part of the software development profession? More than that, what do we have to do to get people to think in terms of simple fairness: I should give credit to others for their work.

quadhome 16y ago
Of those licensing schemes, which are compatible? There's the spirit and there's the complex reality. This code, on my screen is copy-paste'able. And it's 'open source.' That means I can use it! If it's an education issue, do we hit 'em in university? Primary school? Make a slick website: canicopyit.org? wrt. to the "simple fairness," it's striking the number of people who have chimed in with (paraphrased), "How do we know it's copied? There can only be so many ways to write this!" That says to me the speaker doesn't write code, but rather puts it together. And that's a group with very different motivation than you and I.
btilly 16y ago
The basics are less simple than you indicate. What does it mean to have permission? Who has the right to give that permission? What happens if you include something because someone told you it was OK, and that person was mistaken? When is borrowing fair use? To take an important example, are you allowed to copy the user interface to someone else's program? What about copying someone's data structures if that is necessary to interact with their file format? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland and http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/IP_Articles/Baystate_Holding.pdf http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/IP_Articles/... for the answers. It isn't just in music and movies that the weird stuff starts cropping up. (And that is before you get into the license debates. Or such subtle questions like whether it is better to treat the GPL as a copyright license, or to take steps to get a contract instead.) No, there is nothing simple about this invented notion we call copyright.
- halostatue 16y ago
  I disagree. The basic rules for copyright are fairly simple. (If you include something because someone told you it was OK, but didn't do at least some minimal work to verify that it was in fact OK, then you have erred.) Start from 'no' (that is, you don't have permission to copy something you didn't write). Even if you do have permission to copy something[1], you probably don't have permission to claim that you wrote it. Even if you do have permission to claim that you wrote it (because it's in the public domain), you would be a first-class jackass to do so. The cases you point out are subtle, and were attempts to expand what copyright covers. (This is similar to the discussion some months ago about the copyright-ability of one's tweets, with the general consensus being that they cannot individually be copyrighted, but one's "tweet-oeuvre" would be. Single words and short phrases are too short to be individually unique.) Yet, neither of these cases change the basics (assume you don't have permission, don't try to claim what you didn't write as yours). Fair use is a more subtle item because it's based on case law instead of regulation or explicit law. I never said that copyright law wasn't hard, or that copyright issues couldn't get complicated quickly. But getting the start of things right? It's not hard at all.
  - 16y ago