24 ms·

There are some replies in this thread that misunderstood the content of Tim Nolet's twitter post. (Probably because the short headline has pitchfork raising ov

by jasode 6y ago

There are some replies in this thread that misunderstood the content of Tim Nolet's twitter post. (Probably because the short headline has pitchfork raising overtones.) - He's not complaining that Amazon forked his code with Apache license. He admits he also uses other open source with permissive licenses - He just thought it would be nice/courteous/polite/etc if Amazon acknowledge/recognized/credited/mentioned/thanked his original project that they forked from. The twitter reply of "user facing open source should have been AGPL" and replies in this thread of "you used the wrong license" don't really cover it. In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement".

LoSboccacc 6y ago
...you can just add a clause E: who downvoted this, care to explain? have you ever eard of the jslint license? you can add the fuck you want to one's software terms
- tomrod 6y ago
  Just like they could have added the owner's name.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    no? why would they? they are complying with everything dude asked for and mind reading is not in mandatory training as of yet. if you want a nod if used as a part of a software, just add it!
    - tomrod 6y ago
      It's good practice to cite your sources. Even if you're strictly legal, being ethical doesn't hurt.
      - RankingMember 6y ago
        It seems they did, just in a not obvious place. The thing with legal documents is that, if it's not in the document, you can't expect it to be adhered to. This gets hairy when opposing parties have different ideas of what "norms" are, aka "unspoken/unwritten expectations", as we see here.
        tomrod 6y ago
        I get that, and don't disagree.
- emiliobumachar 6y ago
  I did not downvote, but license proliferation is a big problem in free software. People cannot combine software with incompatible licenses.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    > People cannot combine software with incompatible licenses. well yeah, that the point, you either demand a nod, or suck it up and stop asking things that weren't in the license
paulcole 6y ago
> when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement" Ah yes, this ironclad legalese.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Perhaps that's why such a clause wasn't added to the license?
numlock86 6y ago
> There are some replies in this thread that misunderstood the content of Tim Nolet's twitter post. > [...] (reasons) Well, then why go on something as big and public like Twitter and HN to post about it in the first place? Send a mail to the team of AWS and get in touch. I don't get the point of this tweet, either.
- hashkb 6y ago
  Fear of bad PR is the most effective way to motivate larger American companies.
  - numlock86 6y ago
    Motivate them for what, though? Fixing your license issues? Where is the bad PR? Edit: Those downvotes are not really giving me answers. Anyone care to explain the issue?
    - shawnz 6y ago
      Motivate them to be mindful of the shoulders they stand on. The bad PR is that this at-a-glance anti-Amazon post is at the top of a popular tech forum.
      - numlock86 6y ago
        > Motivate them to be mindful of the shoulders they stand on. What makes you believe they are not? Or rather, what do you think they are apparently obligated to do? What's the issue here? > The bad PR is that this at-a-glance anti-Amazon post is at the top of a popular tech forum. I don't see the anti-Amazon part. What I do see is a developer that either has a license issue or simply wants some attention.
        shawnz 6y ago
        > What makes you believe they are not? The OP seems to be disappointed with how they handled it, and an Amazon agent even replied to agree and apologize. Plus, this is not the first time that people have reported similar feelings about Amazon's lack of appreciation for the permissive open source code they use. > what do you think they are apparently obligated to do? I don't know exactly, but I think it starts with making efforts to maintain good relationships with the open source community members who work for free to enable Amazon's (and others) products to exist. Regardless of whether they explicitly demand it up front.
pmontra 6y ago
Some Creative Commons by Attribution license? Maybe it's not an OSS license (I didn't check) but it should work.
- tokai 6y ago
  Creative Commons recommend against using the cc licenses for code. Recommending using the gnu licenses instead.
- duckerude 6y ago
  Most FOSS licenses require attribution, including the one used here. The issue is that attribution doesn't have to be very prominent.
ksec 6y ago
Yes I remember there was a similar scenario with Microsoft as well. > In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement". Yes. What we need is ABSD, AMIT or AAPL where the first A stands for appreciation / Attribution
- varispeed 6y ago
  Oh the good old companies paying in exposure... If you make a profit from using someone else software you should pay them (plus appropriate tax) regardless of the software license.
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    If someone wants to get paid by people who profit off their software, they should license it in a way that requires that. Otherwise, tough luck.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      This is a loophole that allows big companies to avoid hiring engineers and paying right tax. Not sure why would you support this?
      - tzs 6y ago
        It's not a loophole. A loophole is when you have some case or situation not covered by the rules allowing someone to get away with something that the rules were not meant to allow. E.g., a company arranging for its shareholders to be able to report dividends as capital gains rather than ordinary income by doing a fractional stock split followed by a mandatory buyback instead of declaring a dividend, with the split/buyback designed so that each shareholder ends up with exactly the same percentage ownership they had before and with cash equal to the exact amount that would have been otherwise distributed as a dividend [1], that's a loophole. An author picking an open source license that specifically and intentionally allows anyone to use their software and make money from it without having to give the author anything is not a loophole. [1] Yes, this actually happened around 100 years ago. The rules on buybacks were changed to fix it. But them some legitimate cases of buybacks that should have been capital gains became ordinary income, so more fixes were needed. The result is that what once needed at most a line in the tax code, if it even needed mention at all, became several paragraphs. This is why we do not have a small, simple tax code--there is a massive incentive for people to find even the tiniest loophole and exploit it, and so you end up with multiple paragraphs for things you at first would think could be done in a sentence. (And don't say a flat tax would help...almost all of the complexity in the tax code is in determining what gets taxes, not how much the tax is once you have figured out the what).
joseluisq 6y ago
Ok, we should fork at convenience without taking care how was made something. Because "the company" only takes care on your LICENSE file and fu.. the maintainers or collaborators on it. If we always come with excuses like "Oh, wait but it's not specified somewhere I can copy, appropriate it and sell it as mine". Fu..! Because looks like we need to protect* our self of companies instead of trust them. So OSS doesn't make sense. So now turns out that there are no people managing decisions like this. Come on, credits are not a fu..ing problem and are free of cost!
saxonww 6y ago
The original 4-clause BSD had an advertising clause that is basically what you're asking for. It was considered impractical.
lwh 6y ago
The original BSD license had this "advertising clause" and it was removed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#4-clause_license_(original_%22BSD_License%22) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#4-clause_license_... Personally I'd rather have their source be released like AGPL, as that would credit the authors and let me see their changes.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Because it’s a great idea but for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors. A massive undertaking that doesn’t help anyone, really.
  - thomasahle 6y ago
    > for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors It wouldn't be too hard to maintain though. Could probably mostly pull it out of git even.
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      Documentation is not the problem. The problem is that, the advertising clause requires ALL promotional materials to include these acknowledgements, for ALL software that has been used in the software. It was not a problem for BSD back then, since UCB was the only developer. But for projects with multiple copyright owners, such as the Linux kernel, a Linux distro poster would contain a thousand lines of acknowledgements, and this is not even counting the packages in the userspace.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        A modern revisiting would probably require crediting the project as a whole rather than each individual author, and maybe have separate consideration for products that derive from a large number of such projects.
      - 6y ago
code4tee 6y ago
If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually DID acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Of course the, now inaccurate, headline Tweet remains the thing getting attention.
- simonw 6y ago
  I read the replies and I didn't see that tweet - can you link to it? Or are you talking about how if you download the Chrome extension and extract it you can see him referenced in NOTICES.txt? https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376 https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376
- jasode 6y ago
  >If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually did acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Thanks for informing us with the clarification. The original tweet was 11:16 UTC. This HN thread was submitted 11:23 UTC. That twitter reply showing the acknowledgement in "NOTICES.txt" was later at 11:54 UTC. https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376 https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376
  - whoknew1122 6y ago
    I'm not sure the timeline is important, other than to say HN posters shouldn't submit incendiary tweets as HN topics without some sort of corroboration. Especially when the person who tweets and posts on HN are the same. Here's the timeline I saw: 11:16 - A person blames AWS of something without additional context and understanding 11:23 - Presumably the same person posts on HN (to signal boost? farm karma from the anti-Amazon crowd sure to pop up? both?) Never:Never - OP apologizes for rousing the HN pitchfork mob
    - barkingcat 6y ago
      Hacker news never reads original posts either way, let alone followups to original posts :) I'll be downvoted, but that's a symptom of how poorly the audience of this site understands the issues at hand. (myself included)
_verandaguy 6y ago
I believe CC-BY[0] covers this. Worth noting that CC is more of a generalist license than software, though, so you may not have as fine-grained control as with BSD/GPL/MIT etc. [0] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
- riffraff 6y ago
  would CC-BY require that the licensed work get mentioned in _the product announcement_ ? It seems to me it would just require mentioning it in some CREDITS.txt or whatever, which the other lincenses also do.
  - _verandaguy 6y ago
    Good catch. I think you could get somewhat around this by running a CC-BY-SA, which requires that Amazon disclose the source of their forked product, which in turn would include a credit.
matthewaveryusa 6y ago
I really don't understand this reasoning of "there's not a license" Take an existing one you like and amend whatever you want to it.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  IIRC the GPL, for example, is itself covered by copyright and doesn't permit modification of its own text.
  - matthewaveryusa 6y ago
    That is super interesting, I was actually thinking about it as I was writing that response. Isn't that non-enforceable? As in, if you write a legal document, and then make that document law, and then copyright it, it would mean that you wouldn't be able to modify the law without breaching copyright law. Is this really true and enforceable?
    - lwh 6y ago
      You can modify or add extra terms to the GPL, they even have templates: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLIncompatible... Totem has an example https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/totem/-/blob/b4050524d6cd961b544ba834451a6c67e9142cc9/COPYING https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/totem/-/blob/b4050524d6cd961b...
  - duckerude 6y ago
    You're allowed to modify it as long as you make it very clear that the new license is distinct from the old one: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Ah, cool. It sounds like they have a specific way they want you to avoid modifying the text at the end of the paragraph about modifying it (for version 3): > Rather than modifying the GPL, please use the exception mechanism offered by GPL version 3.
beojan 6y ago
> In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement". There is: the four-clause (original) BSD license (https://choosealicense.com/licenses/bsd-4-clause/ https://choosealicense.com/licenses/bsd-4-clause/). Pretty much no one uses it anymore because things quickly get unwieldy if you have to mention ten or twenty projects you used code from in all advertising.
dekhn 6y ago
The original BSD license specifically had a clause that required companies including licensed code to acknowledge it in their advertising material.
GuB-42 6y ago
Isn't there a requirement to acknowledge the original author for all copyrighted work, no matter how permissive the license is? That is, the only way to not make it a requirement is to put the work in the public domain, and in some countries, it is not even an option. That is, how can you know who the copyright holder is if you don't do that? Considering that not all projects are littered with (c) Stack Overflow User, I may have the wrong idea, but it is definitely something I have seen somewhere. I am not a lawyer, obviously.
- qw3rty01 6y ago
  No, acknowledgement is only required if the license requires it.
systemvoltage 6y ago
> He's not complaining How is he not complaining. He totally is.
- jmholla 6y ago
  That's completely out of context. The full quote is > He's not complaining that Amazon forked his code with Apache license. The poster was indicating what part of Amazon's behavior he wasn't complaining about, not asserting that he wasn't complaining at all.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    I see the distinction, thanks. I find this entire thread absurd though...if the person wanted to get fair credit, they should have used a different license. It's like saying "Hey, totally ok to have a beer from my fridge. But I'd really really plead you to drop in a buck... but only if you wish though. But I highly recommend it. It would be shame if you don't. Most people don't want to be shamed do they?" Just be straight forward and put that in the license. Otherwise, it is truly optional and should be treated as such. As much as I dislike having trillion dollar corporation not give a credit, that's why we have licenses.
sequoia 6y ago
The issue is wanting to have it both ways. - I don't want to use restrictive (GPL) license like those business-hating FSF folks–I want people to use my software _freely_ - Hey! A big business used my software in a way that rubs me the wrong way (in this case, without giving prominent enough attribution)! Not nice! What's not nice about it? You use a permissive license but you're going to get upset if people follow the letter of your license? This doesn't make sense. This might make sense if there were not alternative licenses but there are, and the author chose not to use them. This seems like playing a mind-game. "It's permissive! Use it how you like! (but I'm going to be upset if you don't follow the unwritten attribution guideline I have in my head)." How is it fair to expect other parties to meet your secret expectations? What did AWS do wrong here? Were they supposed to know this guy's unwritten expectations?
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  > How is it fair to expect other parties to meet your secret expectations? > What did AWS do wrong here? Were they supposed to know this guy's unwritten expectations? I suspect you're either autistic or a lawyer being obstinate. Human society is full of unwritten expectations, we learn these quickly as a child or face social consequences. No where in the law is it written that you must say 'please' and 'thank you' but it's also expected and people are less likely to do things for you again if you don't. So consider this situation now: _A person (the dev) did something nice for someone else (a trillion dollar company) and they didn't bother to say thank you._
  - sequoia 6y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20090717023402/https://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090717023402/https://zedshaw.c... The answer you're looking for this guy wrote up 10+ years ago: If you don't like the way people are using your work, release your next work under a different license that more closely matches what you want. Learn from the mistake & don't make it again. Maybe I'm autistic (the diagnostic criteria are very fuzzy around the edges) but I'm not sure what that has to do with my argument.
bawolff 6y ago
I disagree, he posted a rant on twitter complaining about amazons behaviour. Even if he admits that its not technically required, he is still generatig negative press for someone legitamently exercising their rights under the open source license he used. In my opinion he is violating the spirit of the open source license since he is using extra-legal means to interefere with amazon exercising their rights under the apache license. This is unethical in my opinion
jgowdy 6y ago
> In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement". That's called the old BSD 4 clause license. Now you know. https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html

by jasode 6y ago

LoSboccacc 6y ago

...you can just add a clause E: who downvoted this, care to explain? have you ever eard of the jslint license? you can add the fuck you want to one's software terms

tomrod 6y ago
Just like they could have added the owner's name.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  no? why would they? they are complying with everything dude asked for and mind reading is not in mandatory training as of yet. if you want a nod if used as a part of a software, just add it!
  - tomrod 6y ago
    It's good practice to cite your sources. Even if you're strictly legal, being ethical doesn't hurt.
    - RankingMember 6y ago
      It seems they did, just in a not obvious place. The thing with legal documents is that, if it's not in the document, you can't expect it to be adhered to. This gets hairy when opposing parties have different ideas of what "norms" are, aka "unspoken/unwritten expectations", as we see here.
      - tomrod 6y ago
        I get that, and don't disagree.
emiliobumachar 6y ago
I did not downvote, but license proliferation is a big problem in free software. People cannot combine software with incompatible licenses.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  > People cannot combine software with incompatible licenses. well yeah, that the point, you either demand a nod, or suck it up and stop asking things that weren't in the license

paulcole 6y ago

> when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement" Ah yes, this ironclad legalese.

shawnz 6y ago
Perhaps that's why such a clause wasn't added to the license?

numlock86 6y ago

> There are some replies in this thread that misunderstood the content of Tim Nolet's twitter post. > [...] (reasons) Well, then why go on something as big and public like Twitter and HN to post about it in the first place? Send a mail to the team of AWS and get in touch. I don't get the point of this tweet, either.

hashkb 6y ago
Fear of bad PR is the most effective way to motivate larger American companies.
- numlock86 6y ago
  Motivate them for what, though? Fixing your license issues? Where is the bad PR? Edit: Those downvotes are not really giving me answers. Anyone care to explain the issue?
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Motivate them to be mindful of the shoulders they stand on. The bad PR is that this at-a-glance anti-Amazon post is at the top of a popular tech forum.
    - numlock86 6y ago
      > Motivate them to be mindful of the shoulders they stand on. What makes you believe they are not? Or rather, what do you think they are apparently obligated to do? What's the issue here? > The bad PR is that this at-a-glance anti-Amazon post is at the top of a popular tech forum. I don't see the anti-Amazon part. What I do see is a developer that either has a license issue or simply wants some attention.
      - shawnz 6y ago
        > What makes you believe they are not? The OP seems to be disappointed with how they handled it, and an Amazon agent even replied to agree and apologize. Plus, this is not the first time that people have reported similar feelings about Amazon's lack of appreciation for the permissive open source code they use. > what do you think they are apparently obligated to do? I don't know exactly, but I think it starts with making efforts to maintain good relationships with the open source community members who work for free to enable Amazon's (and others) products to exist. Regardless of whether they explicitly demand it up front.

pmontra 6y ago

Some Creative Commons by Attribution license? Maybe it's not an OSS license (I didn't check) but it should work.

tokai 6y ago
Creative Commons recommend against using the cc licenses for code. Recommending using the gnu licenses instead.
duckerude 6y ago
Most FOSS licenses require attribution, including the one used here. The issue is that attribution doesn't have to be very prominent.

ksec 6y ago

Yes I remember there was a similar scenario with Microsoft as well. > In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement". Yes. What we need is ABSD, AMIT or AAPL where the first A stands for appreciation / Attribution

varispeed 6y ago
Oh the good old companies paying in exposure... If you make a profit from using someone else software you should pay them (plus appropriate tax) regardless of the software license.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  If someone wants to get paid by people who profit off their software, they should license it in a way that requires that. Otherwise, tough luck.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    This is a loophole that allows big companies to avoid hiring engineers and paying right tax. Not sure why would you support this?
    - tzs 6y ago
      It's not a loophole. A loophole is when you have some case or situation not covered by the rules allowing someone to get away with something that the rules were not meant to allow. E.g., a company arranging for its shareholders to be able to report dividends as capital gains rather than ordinary income by doing a fractional stock split followed by a mandatory buyback instead of declaring a dividend, with the split/buyback designed so that each shareholder ends up with exactly the same percentage ownership they had before and with cash equal to the exact amount that would have been otherwise distributed as a dividend [1], that's a loophole. An author picking an open source license that specifically and intentionally allows anyone to use their software and make money from it without having to give the author anything is not a loophole. [1] Yes, this actually happened around 100 years ago. The rules on buybacks were changed to fix it. But them some legitimate cases of buybacks that should have been capital gains became ordinary income, so more fixes were needed. The result is that what once needed at most a line in the tax code, if it even needed mention at all, became several paragraphs. This is why we do not have a small, simple tax code--there is a massive incentive for people to find even the tiniest loophole and exploit it, and so you end up with multiple paragraphs for things you at first would think could be done in a sentence. (And don't say a flat tax would help...almost all of the complexity in the tax code is in determining what gets taxes, not how much the tax is once you have figured out the what).

joseluisq 6y ago

Ok, we should fork at convenience without taking care how was made something. Because "the company" only takes care on your LICENSE file and fu.. the maintainers or collaborators on it. If we always come with excuses like "Oh, wait but it's not specified somewhere I can copy, appropriate it and sell it as mine". Fu..! Because looks like we need to protect* our self of companies instead of trust them. So OSS doesn't make sense. So now turns out that there are no people managing decisions like this. Come on, credits are not a fu..ing problem and are free of cost!

saxonww 6y ago

The original 4-clause BSD had an advertising clause that is basically what you're asking for. It was considered impractical.

lwh 6y ago

The original BSD license had this "advertising clause" and it was removed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#4-clause_license_(original_%22BSD_License%22) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#4-clause_license_... Personally I'd rather have their source be released like AGPL, as that would credit the authors and let me see their changes.

tinus_hn 6y ago
Because it’s a great idea but for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors. A massive undertaking that doesn’t help anyone, really.
- thomasahle 6y ago
  > for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors It wouldn't be too hard to maintain though. Could probably mostly pull it out of git even.
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    Documentation is not the problem. The problem is that, the advertising clause requires ALL promotional materials to include these acknowledgements, for ALL software that has been used in the software. It was not a problem for BSD back then, since UCB was the only developer. But for projects with multiple copyright owners, such as the Linux kernel, a Linux distro poster would contain a thousand lines of acknowledgements, and this is not even counting the packages in the userspace.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      A modern revisiting would probably require crediting the project as a whole rather than each individual author, and maybe have separate consideration for products that derive from a large number of such projects.
    - 6y ago

code4tee 6y ago

If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually DID acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Of course the, now inaccurate, headline Tweet remains the thing getting attention.

simonw 6y ago
I read the replies and I didn't see that tweet - can you link to it? Or are you talking about how if you download the Chrome extension and extract it you can see him referenced in NOTICES.txt? https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376 https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376
jasode 6y ago
>If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually did acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Thanks for informing us with the clarification. The original tweet was 11:16 UTC. This HN thread was submitted 11:23 UTC. That twitter reply showing the acknowledgement in "NOTICES.txt" was later at 11:54 UTC. https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376 https://twitter.com/maxibanki/status/1317071448322789376
- whoknew1122 6y ago
  I'm not sure the timeline is important, other than to say HN posters shouldn't submit incendiary tweets as HN topics without some sort of corroboration. Especially when the person who tweets and posts on HN are the same. Here's the timeline I saw: 11:16 - A person blames AWS of something without additional context and understanding 11:23 - Presumably the same person posts on HN (to signal boost? farm karma from the anti-Amazon crowd sure to pop up? both?) Never:Never - OP apologizes for rousing the HN pitchfork mob
  - barkingcat 6y ago
    Hacker news never reads original posts either way, let alone followups to original posts :) I'll be downvoted, but that's a symptom of how poorly the audience of this site understands the issues at hand. (myself included)

_verandaguy 6y ago

I believe CC-BY[0] covers this. Worth noting that CC is more of a generalist license than software, though, so you may not have as fine-grained control as with BSD/GPL/MIT etc. [0] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

riffraff 6y ago
would CC-BY require that the licensed work get mentioned in _the product announcement_ ? It seems to me it would just require mentioning it in some CREDITS.txt or whatever, which the other lincenses also do.
- _verandaguy 6y ago
  Good catch. I think you could get somewhat around this by running a CC-BY-SA, which requires that Amazon disclose the source of their forked product, which in turn would include a credit.

matthewaveryusa 6y ago

I really don't understand this reasoning of "there's not a license" Take an existing one you like and amend whatever you want to it.

nitrogen 6y ago
IIRC the GPL, for example, is itself covered by copyright and doesn't permit modification of its own text.
- matthewaveryusa 6y ago
  That is super interesting, I was actually thinking about it as I was writing that response. Isn't that non-enforceable? As in, if you write a legal document, and then make that document law, and then copyright it, it would mean that you wouldn't be able to modify the law without breaching copyright law. Is this really true and enforceable?
  - lwh 6y ago
    You can modify or add extra terms to the GPL, they even have templates: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLIncompatible... Totem has an example https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/totem/-/blob/b4050524d6cd961b544ba834451a6c67e9142cc9/COPYING https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/totem/-/blob/b4050524d6cd961b...
- duckerude 6y ago
  You're allowed to modify it as long as you make it very clear that the new license is distinct from the old one: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Ah, cool. It sounds like they have a specific way they want you to avoid modifying the text at the end of the paragraph about modifying it (for version 3): > Rather than modifying the GPL, please use the exception mechanism offered by GPL version 3.

beojan 6y ago

> In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement". There is: the four-clause (original) BSD license (https://choosealicense.com/licenses/bsd-4-clause/ https://choosealicense.com/licenses/bsd-4-clause/). Pretty much no one uses it anymore because things quickly get unwieldy if you have to mention ten or twenty projects you used code from in all advertising.

dekhn 6y ago

The original BSD license specifically had a clause that required companies including licensed code to acknowledge it in their advertising material.

GuB-42 6y ago

Isn't there a requirement to acknowledge the original author for all copyrighted work, no matter how permissive the license is? That is, the only way to not make it a requirement is to put the work in the public domain, and in some countries, it is not even an option. That is, how can you know who the copyright holder is if you don't do that? Considering that not all projects are littered with (c) Stack Overflow User, I may have the wrong idea, but it is definitely something I have seen somewhere. I am not a lawyer, obviously.

qw3rty01 6y ago
No, acknowledgement is only required if the license requires it.

systemvoltage 6y ago

> He's not complaining How is he not complaining. He totally is.

jmholla 6y ago
That's completely out of context. The full quote is > He's not complaining that Amazon forked his code with Apache license. The poster was indicating what part of Amazon's behavior he wasn't complaining about, not asserting that he wasn't complaining at all.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I see the distinction, thanks. I find this entire thread absurd though...if the person wanted to get fair credit, they should have used a different license. It's like saying "Hey, totally ok to have a beer from my fridge. But I'd really really plead you to drop in a buck... but only if you wish though. But I highly recommend it. It would be shame if you don't. Most people don't want to be shamed do they?" Just be straight forward and put that in the license. Otherwise, it is truly optional and should be treated as such. As much as I dislike having trillion dollar corporation not give a credit, that's why we have licenses.

sequoia 6y ago

The issue is wanting to have it both ways. - I don't want to use restrictive (GPL) license like those business-hating FSF folks–I want people to use my software _freely_ - Hey! A big business used my software in a way that rubs me the wrong way (in this case, without giving prominent enough attribution)! Not nice! What's not nice about it? You use a permissive license but you're going to get upset if people follow the letter of your license? This doesn't make sense. This might make sense if there were not alternative licenses but there are, and the author chose not to use them. This seems like playing a mind-game. "It's permissive! Use it how you like! (but I'm going to be upset if you don't follow the unwritten attribution guideline I have in my head)." How is it fair to expect other parties to meet your secret expectations? What did AWS do wrong here? Were they supposed to know this guy's unwritten expectations?

Zenbit_UX 6y ago
> How is it fair to expect other parties to meet your secret expectations? > What did AWS do wrong here? Were they supposed to know this guy's unwritten expectations? I suspect you're either autistic or a lawyer being obstinate. Human society is full of unwritten expectations, we learn these quickly as a child or face social consequences. No where in the law is it written that you must say 'please' and 'thank you' but it's also expected and people are less likely to do things for you again if you don't. So consider this situation now: _A person (the dev) did something nice for someone else (a trillion dollar company) and they didn't bother to say thank you._
- sequoia 6y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20090717023402/https://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090717023402/https://zedshaw.c... The answer you're looking for this guy wrote up 10+ years ago: If you don't like the way people are using your work, release your next work under a different license that more closely matches what you want. Learn from the mistake & don't make it again. Maybe I'm autistic (the diagnostic criteria are very fuzzy around the edges) but I'm not sure what that has to do with my argument.

bawolff 6y ago

I disagree, he posted a rant on twitter complaining about amazons behaviour. Even if he admits that its not technically required, he is still generatig negative press for someone legitamently exercising their rights under the open source license he used. In my opinion he is violating the spirit of the open source license since he is using extra-legal means to interefere with amazon exercising their rights under the apache license. This is unethical in my opinion

jgowdy 6y ago

> In other words, I'm not aware of a permissive license that's the same as BSD/Apache with the only difference in that also says "use it as you wish but you must mention my name when you're a commercial enterprise making a splashy product announcement". That's called the old BSD 4 clause license. Now you know. https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html