5 ms·

That's one of the costs of using the MIT and BSD licenses: anybody can take it and go private/for-profit with it (without giving back even a "thanks"), and all

That's one of the costs of using the MIT and BSD licenses: anybody can take it and go private/for-profit with it (without giving back even a "thanks"), and all the author can do is issue a strongly worded statement about it. Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product.

masklinn 6y ago
Except essentially none of the statement takes issue with the forking itself. In fact the author of the statement is active in this very thread and specifically notes that this is very much allowed and is not what they take issue with.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me, no matter whether the allegations are true or not. It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". And yet it's really the only argument that could be made by the Zig author.
  - drcode 6y ago
    It's fine for Zen to fork the Zig code. It's not fine for Zen to claim authorship of code that was written by someone else (such as the async/await code)
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. They're not encouraging users to use zig instead of zen because zen is a private fork, they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. > The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me Most of the statement has to do with Zen's dubious relationship with the truth (with the lack of significant value despite lofty claims being but one of the examples thereof). The statement also doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour. You can infer poor character from poor behaviour but that is not what is pointed out in the statement. > It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". You may want to re-read the statement if that's what you got from it.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      > they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. And I quote: "we invite all Japanese developers ... to join the global Zig community and enjoy the real deal, without having to pay a single Yen for the privilege." > doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour Potato, tomato. You're correct that the specifics are different, yet the underlying message is the same: "these guys are bad, come over to Zig".
      - hitekker 6y ago
        It’s perfectly reasonable for an Open Source software foundation to point out how a private company is misusing their software and misappropriating their brand. Saying that Zig’s creators should sit down and be quiet sounds both condescending and craven.
        falcolas 6y ago
        No, Zig's creators putting up a stink about a for-profit fork (a developer IP assignment clause, how.. actually quite common, come to think of it) sounds like they made a decision that they now regret, and so they'll use whatever tactics they can to pull people off the fork. And lay off the personal attack, 'k?
        scythe 6y ago
        >a developer IP assignment clause, how.. actually quite common It is absolutely not normal to demand copyright for code written by a developer in off-hours. It is extremely not normal to write non-compete clauses for software developers and the ban on non-compete clauses in California has been cited as a key policy promoting the growth of the software industry. And it is obviously adversarial to fork a project and then try to get developers on the project to sign non-competes saying they will not work on the project.
        falcolas 6y ago
        > It is absolutely not normal to demand copyright for code written by a developer in off-hours. In the US, it's the standard. There are exceptions, but most companies will demand it. I've been bound by IP assignment contracts exactly like this for my entire career - from Oracle to a pair of startups. > sign non-competes saying they will not work on the project. Also, in the US, this is a long-established standard. You will not work for your competitors. Zig is a competitor for Zen.
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  - deleted 6y ago
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  - coldtea 6y ago
    >It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". When did fairness go out of fashion?
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Fairness could also apply to someone taking advantage of the decision to use an MIT license, only to be publicly lambasted. Is that fair?
      - coldtea 6y ago
        If he's being a dick about it (e.g. splitting the community, attempting to take credit, trying to register the trademark for a name it's not his, etc), then yes.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
reitzensteinm 6y ago
> Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product. You are oversimplifying things here. One can be a bad actor while remaining perfectly legal. Your friend has an upcoming surprise birthday party. You didn't enter in to an agreement not to tell them, so you do. Your friend group doesn't sue you in a court of law, they shun you. It's totally OK to decide that you want your project to be MIT, and call out hostile forks operating in bad faith. You're not going to stop them, but the community can judge for themselves whether you've got a point and which fork they want to associate with. It's OK to say: well if you made the project GPL, they couldn't do what they're doing legally. It's not OK to say: well you didn't make your project GPL, so you don't get to complain.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  I agree, however it is worth noting that I don't think many maintainers consider the explicit value of copyleft these days. I think BSD/MIT is more popular because it is simple and "less hassle", which is true but also makes it so that it is less of a hassle to be actively hostile to the project.
- johnnyfaehell 6y ago
  > It's not OK to say: well you didn't make your project GPL, so you don't get to complain. I kind of agree with you and kind of disagree with you. You should be able to complain all you want. However, if explictly decide to give people certain rights when you complain about them using those rights it shouldn't hold much value. Which is what I think was the original point in the sentence you replied to.
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    Well if you complain about a "hostile fork" that's just somebody stripping your branding and releasing a commercial fork, that should fall on deaf ears. That's in the spirit of MIT, and you've just picked your license poorly. But what's being alleged here is actual hostility and deception. If it's true, Zig being MIT licensed in no way removes their "moral high ground" (as GP put it) to make a post like this.
kazinator 6y ago
When I put the BSD license on something, I'm not condoning activity of hiring people away from working on the free version with non-competes that prevent them from contributing to the original. That's not in the scope of the license. I think the situation could easily exist with a GPL-ed project. It seems possible to hire someone to extend the fork of some GPL-ed code base in specific ways, and use non-compete clauses to disallow any other activity with regard to that fork, or any other. On paper, you might think that the GPL would hamper such at hing; after all, you have to release the source code. But in practice, things fall through the cracks. Someone with a fork of some GPLed code has certain customers. Those customers get access to the source code, but don't necessarily make it public. If you have key developers bound up with non-competes, and only they understand some code that only certain customers have, ... see the picture?
bumblebritches5 6y ago
More copyleft FUD
dralley 6y ago
I don't know why MPLv2 doesn't get much love. It's the right blend of both hard and soft copyleft IMO.

masklinn 6y ago

Except essentially none of the statement takes issue with the forking itself. In fact the author of the statement is active in this very thread and specifically notes that this is very much allowed and is not what they take issue with.

falcolas 6y ago
Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me, no matter whether the allegations are true or not. It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". And yet it's really the only argument that could be made by the Zig author.
- drcode 6y ago
  It's fine for Zen to fork the Zig code. It's not fine for Zen to claim authorship of code that was written by someone else (such as the async/await code)
- masklinn 6y ago
  > Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. They're not encouraging users to use zig instead of zen because zen is a private fork, they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. > The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me Most of the statement has to do with Zen's dubious relationship with the truth (with the lack of significant value despite lofty claims being but one of the examples thereof). The statement also doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour. You can infer poor character from poor behaviour but that is not what is pointed out in the statement. > It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". You may want to re-read the statement if that's what you got from it.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    > they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. And I quote: "we invite all Japanese developers ... to join the global Zig community and enjoy the real deal, without having to pay a single Yen for the privilege." > doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour Potato, tomato. You're correct that the specifics are different, yet the underlying message is the same: "these guys are bad, come over to Zig".
    - hitekker 6y ago
      It’s perfectly reasonable for an Open Source software foundation to point out how a private company is misusing their software and misappropriating their brand. Saying that Zig’s creators should sit down and be quiet sounds both condescending and craven.
      - falcolas 6y ago
        No, Zig's creators putting up a stink about a for-profit fork (a developer IP assignment clause, how.. actually quite common, come to think of it) sounds like they made a decision that they now regret, and so they'll use whatever tactics they can to pull people off the fork. And lay off the personal attack, 'k?
        scythe 6y ago
        >a developer IP assignment clause, how.. actually quite common It is absolutely not normal to demand copyright for code written by a developer in off-hours. It is extremely not normal to write non-compete clauses for software developers and the ban on non-compete clauses in California has been cited as a key policy promoting the growth of the software industry. And it is obviously adversarial to fork a project and then try to get developers on the project to sign non-competes saying they will not work on the project.
        falcolas 6y ago
        > It is absolutely not normal to demand copyright for code written by a developer in off-hours. In the US, it's the standard. There are exceptions, but most companies will demand it. I've been bound by IP assignment contracts exactly like this for my entire career - from Oracle to a pair of startups. > sign non-competes saying they will not work on the project. Also, in the US, this is a long-established standard. You will not work for your competitors. Zig is a competitor for Zen.
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- coldtea 6y ago
  >It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". When did fairness go out of fashion?
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Fairness could also apply to someone taking advantage of the decision to use an MIT license, only to be publicly lambasted. Is that fair?
    - coldtea 6y ago
      If he's being a dick about it (e.g. splitting the community, attempting to take credit, trying to register the trademark for a name it's not his, etc), then yes.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

reitzensteinm 6y ago

> Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product. You are oversimplifying things here. One can be a bad actor while remaining perfectly legal. Your friend has an upcoming surprise birthday party. You didn't enter in to an agreement not to tell them, so you do. Your friend group doesn't sue you in a court of law, they shun you. It's totally OK to decide that you want your project to be MIT, and call out hostile forks operating in bad faith. You're not going to stop them, but the community can judge for themselves whether you've got a point and which fork they want to associate with. It's OK to say: well if you made the project GPL, they couldn't do what they're doing legally. It's not OK to say: well you didn't make your project GPL, so you don't get to complain.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
I agree, however it is worth noting that I don't think many maintainers consider the explicit value of copyleft these days. I think BSD/MIT is more popular because it is simple and "less hassle", which is true but also makes it so that it is less of a hassle to be actively hostile to the project.
johnnyfaehell 6y ago
> It's not OK to say: well you didn't make your project GPL, so you don't get to complain. I kind of agree with you and kind of disagree with you. You should be able to complain all you want. However, if explictly decide to give people certain rights when you complain about them using those rights it shouldn't hold much value. Which is what I think was the original point in the sentence you replied to.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  Well if you complain about a "hostile fork" that's just somebody stripping your branding and releasing a commercial fork, that should fall on deaf ears. That's in the spirit of MIT, and you've just picked your license poorly. But what's being alleged here is actual hostility and deception. If it's true, Zig being MIT licensed in no way removes their "moral high ground" (as GP put it) to make a post like this.

kazinator 6y ago

When I put the BSD license on something, I'm not condoning activity of hiring people away from working on the free version with non-competes that prevent them from contributing to the original. That's not in the scope of the license. I think the situation could easily exist with a GPL-ed project. It seems possible to hire someone to extend the fork of some GPL-ed code base in specific ways, and use non-compete clauses to disallow any other activity with regard to that fork, or any other. On paper, you might think that the GPL would hamper such at hing; after all, you have to release the source code. But in practice, things fall through the cracks. Someone with a fork of some GPLed code has certain customers. Those customers get access to the source code, but don't necessarily make it public. If you have key developers bound up with non-competes, and only they understand some code that only certain customers have, ... see the picture?

bumblebritches5 6y ago

More copyleft FUD

dralley 6y ago

I don't know why MPLv2 doesn't get much love. It's the right blend of both hard and soft copyleft IMO.