4 ms·

Well I'm instinctively against this, but on the other hand wouldn't it encourage serious adoption of a decentralized system? Which might not be a bad thing. Or?

onion2k 9y ago
As with most things it's not a simple black and white, good versus evil issue. It could lead to developers actually bothering to put a license on their open work, stricter enforcement of open source agreements, and, like you suggest, people looking at alternative ways of hosting code. On the other hand, it would also mean that we'd be 'randomly' told that we can't commit something because it looks too similar to some other code someone wrote. In the case of Google vs Oracle that would be a relatively trivial, obvious-to-an-experienced-developer 10 line method. That wouldn't be great...
- zerostar07 9y ago
  it also means the end of the internet as a disruptive force, the prevalence of legal force over everything and the end of utopians
- shapiro92 9y ago
  for me this is very weird. While being employed by a company the code you write is theirs, so what happens if I move to another company and reuse code from my brain? Also do they understand how amazingly complex it would be to do code checks for similarity of code?
  - pixl97 9y ago
    >so what happens if I move to another company Don't worry, at our current rate that won't be allowed. As a programmer you are now company property. I guess that also means "You're fired" means "Literally fired in an incinerator"
mtgx 9y ago
It could. After all the internet has tended to route around censorship so far. Or it could make the whole internet more like the Chinese internet. I'd rather not take that chance and allow the decentralized systems to grow organically instead (and they do, albeit quite slowly).
jcwayne 9y ago
Possibly, but the policy response to such a development could be making it illegal to participate in such a system if it does not implement similar measures. I, for one, would prefer the censorship arms race be stopped here.

onion2k 9y ago

As with most things it's not a simple black and white, good versus evil issue. It could lead to developers actually bothering to put a license on their open work, stricter enforcement of open source agreements, and, like you suggest, people looking at alternative ways of hosting code. On the other hand, it would also mean that we'd be 'randomly' told that we can't commit something because it looks too similar to some other code someone wrote. In the case of Google vs Oracle that would be a relatively trivial, obvious-to-an-experienced-developer 10 line method. That wouldn't be great...

zerostar07 9y ago
it also means the end of the internet as a disruptive force, the prevalence of legal force over everything and the end of utopians
shapiro92 9y ago
for me this is very weird. While being employed by a company the code you write is theirs, so what happens if I move to another company and reuse code from my brain? Also do they understand how amazingly complex it would be to do code checks for similarity of code?
- pixl97 9y ago
  >so what happens if I move to another company Don't worry, at our current rate that won't be allowed. As a programmer you are now company property. I guess that also means "You're fired" means "Literally fired in an incinerator"

mtgx 9y ago

It could. After all the internet has tended to route around censorship so far. Or it could make the whole internet more like the Chinese internet. I'd rather not take that chance and allow the decentralized systems to grow organically instead (and they do, albeit quite slowly).

jcwayne 9y ago

Possibly, but the policy response to such a development could be making it illegal to participate in such a system if it does not implement similar measures. I, for one, would prefer the censorship arms race be stopped here.