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In this case, the author can set out what they think is acceptable in their license terms. Attribution costs nothing to the user - so if you want it, stick it i

In this case, the author can set out what they think is acceptable in their license terms. Attribution costs nothing to the user - so if you want it, stick it in your license. People should be able to comfortably use software within the bounds of the license without worrying about the author coming along and then shaming them for not complying with an additional set of implicit constraints. Yes, it would have been nice for Amazon to acknowledge the original author. But given that they are not obligated to, it's unfair to act as if they are at fault for not doing so.

threatofrain 6y ago
A credit-to-author clause has been tried before by the tech community, and IMO it's up to the community and not an individual author to develop a license which fits. The reason is because any modification to a well-known agreement makes your license very expensive to understand, even if it's a trivial modification. Open source licenses only work because the community adopts them as a standard.
- another-dave 6y ago
  I'd agree with this — with things like Creative Commons it's very clear if someone is asking for attribution or not, if it allows non commercial etc. In an enterprise company, it's _much_ easier to use something with an established licence. Having "MIT with attribution" might be waved through by a standing policy. Having "my custom MIT fork" needs Legal involved & may not be a hill to die on so just get ditched instead.
mywacaday 6y ago
I think it comes back to politeness, somewhere in amazon there is product manager that saw or was shown Tim's repo and saw an opportunity(nothing wrong with that). It would have been a nice thing to do to give him a shoutout just like it was a nice thing to do of Tim's to release his code under a permissive license. There must be a mountain of code forked by large companies that if given some sort of recognition would be of benefit to the original author even if its only internet points.
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  lol. That's almost certainly not how this worked. This worked by: - The PM set some broad brush requirements. - An engineer saw there was some useful code. - They/their infrastructure checked that it was under a sensible license. - They added it - They released it - Someone noticed that their product was being used under the license that they had released it under. - .. - Big deal?
  - nacs 6y ago
    > An engineer saw there was some useful code. This is full clone of the original project, not "some code".
dalbasal 6y ago
Look.. going back up the thread and the tweet. There has to be daylight between legal "fault" or obligation and courtesy. The author isn't going on a tirade, he made a quip. We have faculties, as humans, that aren't strictly legible in the way a license or legal code is. Laws are not a substitute for custom or courtesy. We do need both. No one said they stole. They said they were discourteous.
- ivanbakel 6y ago
  But the author had the opportunity to specify the behaviour that he felt was courteous enough. Some people do not care about shout-outs, and those people do not include attribution clauses in their code licenses. I also did not mean "fault" in the legal sense, but rather in the sense of courtesy. It is not a faux pas to comply neatly with the terms of a public contract. What you're suggesting is that Amazon erred in not mentioning the author, but the fact that is visible to everyone in the license is that the author does not care about attribution. I don't like the insinuation that a license can be non-exhaustive in its conditions for the "correct" use of open-source software. You shouldn't run the risk of offending an author by violating some tacit, contradictory rule.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    > But the author had the opportunity to specify the behaviour that he felt was courteous enough. So I'm free to treat you like an absolutely piece of shit, be a raging asshole at you, and you're going to defend my horrendous treatment of you just because legally I'm allowed to and you failed to make a contract with me saying I have to be nice in excruciating detail that's legally enforceable?
  - monsieurbanana 6y ago
    Do you also dislike interacting with people, seeing how there's no such thing as an exhaustive list of things to do and not to do? This is not even an analogy, it's what is being discussed. AWS didn't do anything illegal with regards to their usage of open-source, but we live in a society, and we do have innumerable tacit rules. One of them is that you should give credit to where credit is due.
himinlomax 6y ago
> so if you want it, stick it in your license It's a rather pointless burden and not without cost, as it can make it incompatible with other licenses. It's reasonable to expect some credit to be acknowledged even when it's not mandated by law. Just common courtesy.

threatofrain 6y ago

A credit-to-author clause has been tried before by the tech community, and IMO it's up to the community and not an individual author to develop a license which fits. The reason is because any modification to a well-known agreement makes your license very expensive to understand, even if it's a trivial modification. Open source licenses only work because the community adopts them as a standard.

another-dave 6y ago
I'd agree with this — with things like Creative Commons it's very clear if someone is asking for attribution or not, if it allows non commercial etc. In an enterprise company, it's _much_ easier to use something with an established licence. Having "MIT with attribution" might be waved through by a standing policy. Having "my custom MIT fork" needs Legal involved & may not be a hill to die on so just get ditched instead.

mywacaday 6y ago

I think it comes back to politeness, somewhere in amazon there is product manager that saw or was shown Tim's repo and saw an opportunity(nothing wrong with that). It would have been a nice thing to do to give him a shoutout just like it was a nice thing to do of Tim's to release his code under a permissive license. There must be a mountain of code forked by large companies that if given some sort of recognition would be of benefit to the original author even if its only internet points.

richardwhiuk 6y ago
lol. That's almost certainly not how this worked. This worked by: - The PM set some broad brush requirements. - An engineer saw there was some useful code. - They/their infrastructure checked that it was under a sensible license. - They added it - They released it - Someone noticed that their product was being used under the license that they had released it under. - .. - Big deal?
- nacs 6y ago
  > An engineer saw there was some useful code. This is full clone of the original project, not "some code".

dalbasal 6y ago

Look.. going back up the thread and the tweet. There has to be daylight between legal "fault" or obligation and courtesy. The author isn't going on a tirade, he made a quip. We have faculties, as humans, that aren't strictly legible in the way a license or legal code is. Laws are not a substitute for custom or courtesy. We do need both. No one said they stole. They said they were discourteous.

ivanbakel 6y ago
But the author had the opportunity to specify the behaviour that he felt was courteous enough. Some people do not care about shout-outs, and those people do not include attribution clauses in their code licenses. I also did not mean "fault" in the legal sense, but rather in the sense of courtesy. It is not a faux pas to comply neatly with the terms of a public contract. What you're suggesting is that Amazon erred in not mentioning the author, but the fact that is visible to everyone in the license is that the author does not care about attribution. I don't like the insinuation that a license can be non-exhaustive in its conditions for the "correct" use of open-source software. You shouldn't run the risk of offending an author by violating some tacit, contradictory rule.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  > But the author had the opportunity to specify the behaviour that he felt was courteous enough. So I'm free to treat you like an absolutely piece of shit, be a raging asshole at you, and you're going to defend my horrendous treatment of you just because legally I'm allowed to and you failed to make a contract with me saying I have to be nice in excruciating detail that's legally enforceable?
- monsieurbanana 6y ago
  Do you also dislike interacting with people, seeing how there's no such thing as an exhaustive list of things to do and not to do? This is not even an analogy, it's what is being discussed. AWS didn't do anything illegal with regards to their usage of open-source, but we live in a society, and we do have innumerable tacit rules. One of them is that you should give credit to where credit is due.

himinlomax 6y ago

> so if you want it, stick it in your license It's a rather pointless burden and not without cost, as it can make it incompatible with other licenses. It's reasonable to expect some credit to be acknowledged even when it's not mandated by law. Just common courtesy.