5 ms·

Well, it's not common sense because it isn't necessarily a consistent position. Just because you don't like people taking your code and bundling it into a propr

Well, it's not common sense because it isn't necessarily a consistent position. Just because you don't like people taking your code and bundling it into a proprietary product doesn't mean you're necessarily also okay with using the legal system to enforce that preference. For example, I release my code into the public domain to the extent possible. But I am also very strongly opposed to plagiarism. Yet putting code into the public domain means people can legally plagiarize my work.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Then why not choose an attribution license such as BSD?
- burntsushi 6y ago
  I told you why. I'm not comfortable legally enforcing that preference. The only thing that needs to be accepted is that laws and ethics aren't necessarily equivalent. Just because something is legal doesn't make it ethical. If you accept that, then it's easy to see how one might choose a permissive license even if one finds certain actions allowed by that permissive license to be unethical. If you think laws and ethics are the same or should be, then I suppose that's a deeper disagreement and not one I mean to explore here. :-)
  - enriquto 6y ago
    A good choice in your case is to release your software without a license at all. I really like this option: it is elegant (no spurious license files and headers polluting your program), morally irreproachable, and it gets the job done (only people who are ridiculously obsessed with legal papers will not be able to use your software). The only problem is that if your software becomes somehow well-known, you'll be bugged to no end to release it into any license, and you will need to develop an anti-spam filter to automatically delete these mails.
    - burntsushi 6y ago
      Yes, well, I have many software projects that are well-known, so I am cursed with a good problem to have. I therefore must balance my ideology with pragmatism. I was a little coy above. I said that I "release my code into the public domain to the extent possible." In practice, I dual license my code under the UNLICENSE (public domain, effectively) and the MIT. I do this because the UNLICENSE is unsuitable either because people are too risk averse for it or because public domain is for one reason or another not recognized in their jurisdiction. I didn't elaborate on this in my original comment because it's not really pertinent. I think. But yes, I can't put code out there without a license because I ultimately want people to use it. And I've made the mistake of using a license that people don't like to use before (the WTFPL). You do indeed get bugged quite a bit.
    - ziml77 6y ago
      In the US, releasing code without a license means that the code is automatically subject to standard copyright. By the time that expires, no one will even be able to run the code anymore.
      - enriquto 6y ago
        No one who believes in US laws, that is.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      Not at all! In 90% of legal systems copyright applies automatically and not having a license makes your software closed source by default. The concept of copyright existed long before software licenses and long before the (c) symbol. It often applies automatically if you sing a song in a park, scribble an article on a napkin, paint a giraffe on your car - no matter how "casual" your artwork might seem.
  - ReactiveJelly 6y ago
    > If you think laws and ethics are the same or should be Well, there's two ways to do that. I think we would agree that my ethics shouldn't change to match the law, because the law might be wrong. But the law should change to match my ethics, if and only if my ethics are right. (Figuring out what ethics are right is left as an exercise) So if I don't want my project to be used outside the terms of the AGPL, I don't see the problem with releasing it under the AGPL. If you're against all forms of intellectual property you could just say that and clear things up. But I'd rather not give up my IP rights before corporations do.
    - burntsushi 6y ago
      > If you're against all forms of intellectual property you could just say that and clear things up. Yes, I am. But the validity of intellectual property isn't relevant to my argument in general I think. It just so happens to be true in my case. I'm not sure laws should change to match our ethics to be honest. But I think that's part of the "deeper disagreement" I alluded to in my parent comment.
  - zokier 6y ago
    > I'm not comfortable legally enforcing that preference. But licenses are not only for legal purpose, they also serve to communicate the authors preference for the prospective users. Of course you can communicate it otherwise, but using a common license is generally pretty easy way of doing it. But I think it is really important that the preference is communicated in some sufficiently clear and explicit manner.
    - burntsushi 6y ago
      I don't think I should have to say "don't plagiarize" me every time I publish something. If I did do that, the funny thing is that it might end up having the exact opposite effect! Human nature and all that. I think licenses communicate legal things. Some things, like copyleft, use copyright as a hack to inject its ethics into the legal system. But that's one specific and very intentional case, and is definitely not something that is commonplace among software licenses. (Typically, when people try to do it, it has a Not Good outcome.)
      - zokier 6y ago
        > I don't think I should have to say "don't plagiarize" me every time I publish something No, but placing something to public domain is easily interpreted as explicit "please plagiarize", so it would be good to counter that message with something if that is not the message intended.
        burntsushi 6y ago
        > but placing something to public domain is easily interpreted as explicit "please plagiarize" I've never heard of anyone interpreting public domain as any such thing. Whenever I get an idea from the SQLite source code for example, I have never for even a single moment ever considered plagiarizing it. If public domain were really treated as you say, then movies and TV shows about Sherlock Holmes wouldn't begin (or end) with "Based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." They'd just say, "Sherlock Holmes was conceived, written and created by Foo Johnson." But of course nobody does that, because plagiarism is unethical.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
The majority of [A]GPL users I know are also uncomfortable with the legal system enforcing copyright, patents and trademarks. And this is the whole point of copyleft: turn copyright around itself to ensure user freedom.
- burntsushi 6y ago
  Yes, I know. And I've had that argument many times over the years. But I think that's separate from the topic at hand. The short story is that I don't agree with using the copyright system against itself.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    The copyright system is always there and works regardless of your licenses. You cannot "use" it or "not use it". If you pick a "public domain" license, or MIT or WTFPL you
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    The copyright system is always there and works regardless of your licenses. If you pick a "public domain" license, or MIT or WTFPL you are just building upon the copyright system in a different way than GPL or some other license or closed source. You cannot "use" it or "not use it".
    - burntsushi 6y ago
      This has absolutely no relevance to anything I've said. I am pretty obviously not denying the reality facing us (in the US) that our legal framework for intellectual property is impossible to completely opt out of. Please see my other comments in this thread for more details on my position.
Angostura 6y ago
What are your reasons for using public domain when this is apparently at odds with your principles?
- burntsushi 6y ago
  It doesn't matter. The point is that it's not common sense to always use the legal system to enforce one's ethics. It's perfectly consistent to hold two mutually exclusive views: 1) I don't want to use the legal system to enforce things like who can use my software and 2) I have ethics that go above and beyond what's legal (I imagine most people do).
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    Sure, most humans have ethics that go above and beyond what's legal. But for-profit corporations don't, and they're growing more and more powerful. The legal system is one of the few ways of fighting that power.
    - burntsushi 6y ago
      That's a totally different argument than the one I responded to though. If that were the argument, I wouldn't have said anything.
sauerbraten 6y ago
Is it really plagiarism if you explicitly allow them to use and even sell your code, though? Also, plagiarism implies they don't give you credit and instead put their own name on it.
- burntsushi 6y ago
  The definition of plagiarism isn't connected to laws, so yes, it is. Intentionally taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own is bad juju through and through. And even if I kept my code under copyright with an attribution license, not all forms of plagiarism would necessarily violate the copyright. For example, ideas and facts generally can't be copyrighted, but one could imagine cases where they can be plagiarized. So even if I did use a license that requires attribution, that only works insomuch as plagiarism is a violation of copyright. And as we all know, there is a ton of grey area there. But regardless of the grey area, the plagiarism itself is still unethical. Some interesting bits are here: https://www.plagiarism.org/blog/2017/10/27/is-plagiarism-illegal https://www.plagiarism.org/blog/2017/10/27/is-plagiarism-ill...
  - wolco2 6y ago
    Are people passing it off as their work? If I buy a copy of a wp theme and use it am I passing it off as my own work and would it be called plagiarism?
    - burntsushi 6y ago
      Is it really necessary to dig into a tit-for-tat war on definitions here? I think plagiarism has a plain enough meaning for my argument here. People can argue about special cases or the edges, but disagreement there needn't invalidate my whole argument.
  - sauerbraten 6y ago
    Okay I get what you mean now, I looked at it from a legality POV. I agree with you that plagiarism might not be illegal but still unethical. Why do you not just pick a license that forbids uses not compatible with your ethical standpoint, and chose to just not enforce the terms should they be violated? This way, companies are likely to respect your intent and preference and you don't have to make use of a legal system you don't support.
cercatrova 6y ago
Enforcement of public domain is done through the legal system, as is all intellectual property enforcement (or unenforcement).
- burntsushi 6y ago
  I'm well aware. That doesn't mean there isn't a difference between what's being enforced when you use public domain vs copyleft. Looking back, I guess you might say my wording may not be precisely correct, but I think its meaning is clear. If you took me literally, then I think the only consistent position at that point would be to never publish anything. Which is a border-line nonsense position I think. So if you insist, I suppose change my statement from "not use the legal system at all" to "use the legal system to enforce as few things as possible given its current framework."
skyfaller 6y ago
I think that it is precisely because you don't want to use the law to enforce your preferences that you should use copyleft in general and the AGPL in particular. The real problem is copyright law. Copyright lasts for an absurdly long time, the DMCA which makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection is a threat to general-purpose computing, damages if you lose a copyright case can be astronomical and bankrupt anyone, copyright trolls sue people using stuff instead of using the copyrighted material to make anything themselves, etc. Copyleft and the AGPL are a judo move that uses the strength of the copyright system against it. If enough stuff were under a strong copyleft license, maybe corporations wouldn't be so enthusiastic about the copyright system. Maybe they would rediscover the benefits of the public domain, since copyright expiring would also liberate copylefted content + software. Perhaps they wouldn't actually help reduce copyright, but they might not work so hard to stop efforts to do so. I believe that the path to a stronger public domain leads through copyleft + the AGPL. Put your software in the public domain by reducing the power of copyright law, by shortening copyright term length, by reducing the number of things covered by copyright, by putting everything in the public domain, not just the software you control.
- burntsushi 6y ago
  As I've said to others in this comment thread, yes, I'm well aware of this argument. But it's a tangent from what I'm saying I think. I've had this position for well over 10 years. I know why copyleft exists, its philosophical history and how it's intended to use the copyright system against itself. But I disagree with doing that because I want government out of the business of intellectual property altogether and I don't agree with using the copyright system against itself to do it. Fundamentally, I'm opposed to the ownership of ideas at an ideological level, so I wish to relinquish as much of that ownership as I can in today's system. And that's public domain. We could have a longer discussion, but like I said, this is totally distinct from the argument I'm making that it's not "common sense" to consider laws and ethics the same.
  - skyfaller 6y ago
    Apologies for the digression, I agree that law and morality are quite distinct. I just think refusing to use copyleft is unwise on a strategic level. It smells like unilateral disarmament to me. If a warlord is rampaging through the countryside putting villages to the sword, it's not good enough to say, "Hey, I don't agree with stabbing people to death." It's great if you have a plan to stop the pillaging without stabbing anyone, but if you don't, then you need to consider plans that do involve stabbing, or at the very least fielding some stabbers. There may be times when all courses of action involve moral compromise, but inaction always favors the oppressor. Do you have a plan for fighting copyright without using copyright? If yes, then I withdraw my objection. If not, then I ask you to consider whether using copyleft is better than nothing. The oppressive copyright system will continue doing damage without you.
infogulch 6y ago
So you would prefer the world where the idea of copyright isn't used for software at all (or something like that I hope). Of course, in that world anyone can do anything with it including things you may not like; a sacrifice you voluntarily choose to make. But that is (virtually) no different from what people could do today, in this world, by giving users (UN)license to do anything they want. From this perspective it seems clear to me why you choose to publish to the public domain, because the outcome is the same as it would be in the world you want. And with that, the fact that you are opposed to plagiarism seems almost immaterial; yes, plagiarism is bad but believing that something is bad doesn't equate to believing that there should be a law to restrict it.
- burntsushi 6y ago
  Sure. Plagiarism is just an example to show how "common sense" can't be applied to licensing at the parent poster said. > plagiarism is bad but believing that something is bad doesn't equate to believing that there should be a law to restrict it. That is pretty much my point, yes.

paulryanrogers 6y ago

Then why not choose an attribution license such as BSD?

burntsushi 6y ago
I told you why. I'm not comfortable legally enforcing that preference. The only thing that needs to be accepted is that laws and ethics aren't necessarily equivalent. Just because something is legal doesn't make it ethical. If you accept that, then it's easy to see how one might choose a permissive license even if one finds certain actions allowed by that permissive license to be unethical. If you think laws and ethics are the same or should be, then I suppose that's a deeper disagreement and not one I mean to explore here. :-)
- enriquto 6y ago
  A good choice in your case is to release your software without a license at all. I really like this option: it is elegant (no spurious license files and headers polluting your program), morally irreproachable, and it gets the job done (only people who are ridiculously obsessed with legal papers will not be able to use your software). The only problem is that if your software becomes somehow well-known, you'll be bugged to no end to release it into any license, and you will need to develop an anti-spam filter to automatically delete these mails.
  - burntsushi 6y ago
    Yes, well, I have many software projects that are well-known, so I am cursed with a good problem to have. I therefore must balance my ideology with pragmatism. I was a little coy above. I said that I "release my code into the public domain to the extent possible." In practice, I dual license my code under the UNLICENSE (public domain, effectively) and the MIT. I do this because the UNLICENSE is unsuitable either because people are too risk averse for it or because public domain is for one reason or another not recognized in their jurisdiction. I didn't elaborate on this in my original comment because it's not really pertinent. I think. But yes, I can't put code out there without a license because I ultimately want people to use it. And I've made the mistake of using a license that people don't like to use before (the WTFPL). You do indeed get bugged quite a bit.
  - ziml77 6y ago
    In the US, releasing code without a license means that the code is automatically subject to standard copyright. By the time that expires, no one will even be able to run the code anymore.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      No one who believes in US laws, that is.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    Not at all! In 90% of legal systems copyright applies automatically and not having a license makes your software closed source by default. The concept of copyright existed long before software licenses and long before the (c) symbol. It often applies automatically if you sing a song in a park, scribble an article on a napkin, paint a giraffe on your car - no matter how "casual" your artwork might seem.
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  > If you think laws and ethics are the same or should be Well, there's two ways to do that. I think we would agree that my ethics shouldn't change to match the law, because the law might be wrong. But the law should change to match my ethics, if and only if my ethics are right. (Figuring out what ethics are right is left as an exercise) So if I don't want my project to be used outside the terms of the AGPL, I don't see the problem with releasing it under the AGPL. If you're against all forms of intellectual property you could just say that and clear things up. But I'd rather not give up my IP rights before corporations do.
  - burntsushi 6y ago
    > If you're against all forms of intellectual property you could just say that and clear things up. Yes, I am. But the validity of intellectual property isn't relevant to my argument in general I think. It just so happens to be true in my case. I'm not sure laws should change to match our ethics to be honest. But I think that's part of the "deeper disagreement" I alluded to in my parent comment.
- zokier 6y ago
  > I'm not comfortable legally enforcing that preference. But licenses are not only for legal purpose, they also serve to communicate the authors preference for the prospective users. Of course you can communicate it otherwise, but using a common license is generally pretty easy way of doing it. But I think it is really important that the preference is communicated in some sufficiently clear and explicit manner.
  - burntsushi 6y ago
    I don't think I should have to say "don't plagiarize" me every time I publish something. If I did do that, the funny thing is that it might end up having the exact opposite effect! Human nature and all that. I think licenses communicate legal things. Some things, like copyleft, use copyright as a hack to inject its ethics into the legal system. But that's one specific and very intentional case, and is definitely not something that is commonplace among software licenses. (Typically, when people try to do it, it has a Not Good outcome.)
    - zokier 6y ago
      > I don't think I should have to say "don't plagiarize" me every time I publish something No, but placing something to public domain is easily interpreted as explicit "please plagiarize", so it would be good to counter that message with something if that is not the message intended.
      - burntsushi 6y ago
        > but placing something to public domain is easily interpreted as explicit "please plagiarize" I've never heard of anyone interpreting public domain as any such thing. Whenever I get an idea from the SQLite source code for example, I have never for even a single moment ever considered plagiarizing it. If public domain were really treated as you say, then movies and TV shows about Sherlock Holmes wouldn't begin (or end) with "Based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." They'd just say, "Sherlock Holmes was conceived, written and created by Foo Johnson." But of course nobody does that, because plagiarism is unethical.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

The majority of [A]GPL users I know are also uncomfortable with the legal system enforcing copyright, patents and trademarks. And this is the whole point of copyleft: turn copyright around itself to ensure user freedom.

burntsushi 6y ago
Yes, I know. And I've had that argument many times over the years. But I think that's separate from the topic at hand. The short story is that I don't agree with using the copyright system against itself.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  The copyright system is always there and works regardless of your licenses. You cannot "use" it or "not use it". If you pick a "public domain" license, or MIT or WTFPL you
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  The copyright system is always there and works regardless of your licenses. If you pick a "public domain" license, or MIT or WTFPL you are just building upon the copyright system in a different way than GPL or some other license or closed source. You cannot "use" it or "not use it".
  - burntsushi 6y ago
    This has absolutely no relevance to anything I've said. I am pretty obviously not denying the reality facing us (in the US) that our legal framework for intellectual property is impossible to completely opt out of. Please see my other comments in this thread for more details on my position.

Angostura 6y ago

What are your reasons for using public domain when this is apparently at odds with your principles?

burntsushi 6y ago
It doesn't matter. The point is that it's not common sense to always use the legal system to enforce one's ethics. It's perfectly consistent to hold two mutually exclusive views: 1) I don't want to use the legal system to enforce things like who can use my software and 2) I have ethics that go above and beyond what's legal (I imagine most people do).
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  Sure, most humans have ethics that go above and beyond what's legal. But for-profit corporations don't, and they're growing more and more powerful. The legal system is one of the few ways of fighting that power.
  - burntsushi 6y ago
    That's a totally different argument than the one I responded to though. If that were the argument, I wouldn't have said anything.

sauerbraten 6y ago

Is it really plagiarism if you explicitly allow them to use and even sell your code, though? Also, plagiarism implies they don't give you credit and instead put their own name on it.

burntsushi 6y ago
The definition of plagiarism isn't connected to laws, so yes, it is. Intentionally taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own is bad juju through and through. And even if I kept my code under copyright with an attribution license, not all forms of plagiarism would necessarily violate the copyright. For example, ideas and facts generally can't be copyrighted, but one could imagine cases where they can be plagiarized. So even if I did use a license that requires attribution, that only works insomuch as plagiarism is a violation of copyright. And as we all know, there is a ton of grey area there. But regardless of the grey area, the plagiarism itself is still unethical. Some interesting bits are here: https://www.plagiarism.org/blog/2017/10/27/is-plagiarism-illegal https://www.plagiarism.org/blog/2017/10/27/is-plagiarism-ill...
- wolco2 6y ago
  Are people passing it off as their work? If I buy a copy of a wp theme and use it am I passing it off as my own work and would it be called plagiarism?
  - burntsushi 6y ago
    Is it really necessary to dig into a tit-for-tat war on definitions here? I think plagiarism has a plain enough meaning for my argument here. People can argue about special cases or the edges, but disagreement there needn't invalidate my whole argument.
- sauerbraten 6y ago
  Okay I get what you mean now, I looked at it from a legality POV. I agree with you that plagiarism might not be illegal but still unethical. Why do you not just pick a license that forbids uses not compatible with your ethical standpoint, and chose to just not enforce the terms should they be violated? This way, companies are likely to respect your intent and preference and you don't have to make use of a legal system you don't support.

cercatrova 6y ago

Enforcement of public domain is done through the legal system, as is all intellectual property enforcement (or unenforcement).

burntsushi 6y ago
I'm well aware. That doesn't mean there isn't a difference between what's being enforced when you use public domain vs copyleft. Looking back, I guess you might say my wording may not be precisely correct, but I think its meaning is clear. If you took me literally, then I think the only consistent position at that point would be to never publish anything. Which is a border-line nonsense position I think. So if you insist, I suppose change my statement from "not use the legal system at all" to "use the legal system to enforce as few things as possible given its current framework."

skyfaller 6y ago

I think that it is precisely because you don't want to use the law to enforce your preferences that you should use copyleft in general and the AGPL in particular. The real problem is copyright law. Copyright lasts for an absurdly long time, the DMCA which makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection is a threat to general-purpose computing, damages if you lose a copyright case can be astronomical and bankrupt anyone, copyright trolls sue people using stuff instead of using the copyrighted material to make anything themselves, etc. Copyleft and the AGPL are a judo move that uses the strength of the copyright system against it. If enough stuff were under a strong copyleft license, maybe corporations wouldn't be so enthusiastic about the copyright system. Maybe they would rediscover the benefits of the public domain, since copyright expiring would also liberate copylefted content + software. Perhaps they wouldn't actually help reduce copyright, but they might not work so hard to stop efforts to do so. I believe that the path to a stronger public domain leads through copyleft + the AGPL. Put your software in the public domain by reducing the power of copyright law, by shortening copyright term length, by reducing the number of things covered by copyright, by putting everything in the public domain, not just the software you control.

burntsushi 6y ago
As I've said to others in this comment thread, yes, I'm well aware of this argument. But it's a tangent from what I'm saying I think. I've had this position for well over 10 years. I know why copyleft exists, its philosophical history and how it's intended to use the copyright system against itself. But I disagree with doing that because I want government out of the business of intellectual property altogether and I don't agree with using the copyright system against itself to do it. Fundamentally, I'm opposed to the ownership of ideas at an ideological level, so I wish to relinquish as much of that ownership as I can in today's system. And that's public domain. We could have a longer discussion, but like I said, this is totally distinct from the argument I'm making that it's not "common sense" to consider laws and ethics the same.
- skyfaller 6y ago
  Apologies for the digression, I agree that law and morality are quite distinct. I just think refusing to use copyleft is unwise on a strategic level. It smells like unilateral disarmament to me. If a warlord is rampaging through the countryside putting villages to the sword, it's not good enough to say, "Hey, I don't agree with stabbing people to death." It's great if you have a plan to stop the pillaging without stabbing anyone, but if you don't, then you need to consider plans that do involve stabbing, or at the very least fielding some stabbers. There may be times when all courses of action involve moral compromise, but inaction always favors the oppressor. Do you have a plan for fighting copyright without using copyright? If yes, then I withdraw my objection. If not, then I ask you to consider whether using copyleft is better than nothing. The oppressive copyright system will continue doing damage without you.

infogulch 6y ago

So you would prefer the world where the idea of copyright isn't used for software at all (or something like that I hope). Of course, in that world anyone can do anything with it including things you may not like; a sacrifice you voluntarily choose to make. But that is (virtually) no different from what people could do today, in this world, by giving users (UN)license to do anything they want. From this perspective it seems clear to me why you choose to publish to the public domain, because the outcome is the same as it would be in the world you want. And with that, the fact that you are opposed to plagiarism seems almost immaterial; yes, plagiarism is bad but believing that something is bad doesn't equate to believing that there should be a law to restrict it.

burntsushi 6y ago
Sure. Plagiarism is just an example to show how "common sense" can't be applied to licensing at the parent poster said. > plagiarism is bad but believing that something is bad doesn't equate to believing that there should be a law to restrict it. That is pretty much my point, yes.