5 ms·

Likely. Why is everyone acting like this is some high conspiracy or even blaming the entire project - this was probably some lazy dev that didn't want to deal w

Likely. Why is everyone acting like this is some high conspiracy or even blaming the entire project - this was probably some lazy dev that didn't want to deal with the hassle of including the licence and just copy pasted the class. I used to do this when I was learning to code, I often reimplemented stuff already available for learning and would just copy paste large chunks. I didn't publish any work back then and I realised it was a bad habit because I didn't know what the code does - but I get where it comes from. It was fixed and nobody was harmed. The outrage in GH issues is ridiculous.

ramboldio 6y ago
I also don't get where the outrage is coming from. Some mailinglist?
- tastroder 6y ago
  Mostly general distrust in the project by the German tech scene on Twitter. Their marketing comes with weird "trust us" vibe and the German tech scene went through these conversations already with the concept of the official app. Add to that their attempts at transparency which are often a little too late and vague, and you have internet outrage. (With this release for example people were expecting to see server-side code, not that of the Android app everybody could already find in the apk).
  - junon 6y ago
    Germans hate "trust us" mentalities anyway. That's why Google Street View is exceedingly rare here.
rostigerpudel 6y ago
People see this as an act of either carelessness or malevolence which both is unacceptable in an application that collects and stores very personal data on a large scale.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  I think you have unrealistic expectations of applications developed for public sector - I'm usually surprised if they do core of intended functionality correctly.
  - BubuIIC 6y ago
    This isn't a project developed for the public sector really. Afaik it's a privately funded, for profit, product that has been licensed by several states in Germany by now. Apart from that the official (indeed publicly funded) Corona-Warn-App did a much better job at this. (They actually did follow all the recent best practices in software-develoment + it's (mostly) run as a free software project, taking community contributions seriously, reacting to feedback and issues, etc.)
    - reader_mode 6y ago
      Sounds like a contractor developing something that gets paid with public money.
      - still_grokking 6y ago
        Sure. It's made by SAP.
  - vangelis 6y ago
    I've had pleasant experiences with applications developed by the public sector. It's the consulting companies that are no good. Look at 18F.
- drstewart 6y ago
  I see. Can you talk a bit more about the review process where you work to ensure no unlicensed code is committed? I assume there's either an automatic or manual, rigorous process that's followed.
yarcob 6y ago
> Why is everyone acting like this is some high conspiracy Because everyone here is a coder and puts a lot of effort into their work, and doesn't want it get stolen. We put a lot of effort into the Open Source projects we publish. Some of us are very generous and publish things to the public domain, but most of us at least want attribution for our work. If you copy & paste code, strip the license, claim it's your code, and sell it for money, we consider you the scum of the earth. That's just not something that decent people do. It could be an error; a junior dev may not know that just copy/pasting code from google search results is generally not allowed. But it's really something that everyone in our profession should know. Just like a musician is expected to know that they need clearance for samples, or journalists know they need permission for publishing a photo, a programmer is expected to know that they need a license for reusing other people's code.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  >If you copy & paste code, strip the license, claim it's your code, and sell it for money, we consider you the scum of the earth. That's just not something that decent people do. Meh - I'd speculate it's a result of an underpaid coder with too much work - I've seen these kinds of projects before - people with connections in the public sector get the contract and then basically hire the lowest cost developers available. > Just like a musician is expected to know that they need clearance for samples, or journalists know they need permission for publishing a photo, a programmer is expected to know that they need a license for reusing other people's code. And yet those get violated all the time, even in big time publications and by big time artists. I'm not defending the guy who did it - he did something wrong, but they corrected it and malice attributed to project seems misplaced. On the flip side I think this could be handled better industry wide - like we already have security vulnerability scanning tools bundled with major code hosting platforms, they should probably figure out a way to do copyright infringement warnings .
kmeisthax 6y ago
You as a learner copypasting code isn't itself the problem. The problem is that this is a published, copyrighted work that has been included into another published, copyrighted work without adherence to license terms. If I had copied Culture4Life's code and used it in my own project, they would be suing for tens of thousands of dollars in damages; and the law would agree that I should have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages for that infringement. Asking for attribution and a proper license declaration is the polite way to handle a license violation.
xbar 6y ago
No excuses to fail to meet the rules of OSS. None.

ramboldio 6y ago

I also don't get where the outrage is coming from. Some mailinglist?

tastroder 6y ago
Mostly general distrust in the project by the German tech scene on Twitter. Their marketing comes with weird "trust us" vibe and the German tech scene went through these conversations already with the concept of the official app. Add to that their attempts at transparency which are often a little too late and vague, and you have internet outrage. (With this release for example people were expecting to see server-side code, not that of the Android app everybody could already find in the apk).
- junon 6y ago
  Germans hate "trust us" mentalities anyway. That's why Google Street View is exceedingly rare here.

rostigerpudel 6y ago

People see this as an act of either carelessness or malevolence which both is unacceptable in an application that collects and stores very personal data on a large scale.

reader_mode 6y ago
I think you have unrealistic expectations of applications developed for public sector - I'm usually surprised if they do core of intended functionality correctly.
- BubuIIC 6y ago
  This isn't a project developed for the public sector really. Afaik it's a privately funded, for profit, product that has been licensed by several states in Germany by now. Apart from that the official (indeed publicly funded) Corona-Warn-App did a much better job at this. (They actually did follow all the recent best practices in software-develoment + it's (mostly) run as a free software project, taking community contributions seriously, reacting to feedback and issues, etc.)
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    Sounds like a contractor developing something that gets paid with public money.
    - still_grokking 6y ago
      Sure. It's made by SAP.
- vangelis 6y ago
  I've had pleasant experiences with applications developed by the public sector. It's the consulting companies that are no good. Look at 18F.
drstewart 6y ago
I see. Can you talk a bit more about the review process where you work to ensure no unlicensed code is committed? I assume there's either an automatic or manual, rigorous process that's followed.

yarcob 6y ago

> Why is everyone acting like this is some high conspiracy Because everyone here is a coder and puts a lot of effort into their work, and doesn't want it get stolen. We put a lot of effort into the Open Source projects we publish. Some of us are very generous and publish things to the public domain, but most of us at least want attribution for our work. If you copy & paste code, strip the license, claim it's your code, and sell it for money, we consider you the scum of the earth. That's just not something that decent people do. It could be an error; a junior dev may not know that just copy/pasting code from google search results is generally not allowed. But it's really something that everyone in our profession should know. Just like a musician is expected to know that they need clearance for samples, or journalists know they need permission for publishing a photo, a programmer is expected to know that they need a license for reusing other people's code.

reader_mode 6y ago
>If you copy & paste code, strip the license, claim it's your code, and sell it for money, we consider you the scum of the earth. That's just not something that decent people do. Meh - I'd speculate it's a result of an underpaid coder with too much work - I've seen these kinds of projects before - people with connections in the public sector get the contract and then basically hire the lowest cost developers available. > Just like a musician is expected to know that they need clearance for samples, or journalists know they need permission for publishing a photo, a programmer is expected to know that they need a license for reusing other people's code. And yet those get violated all the time, even in big time publications and by big time artists. I'm not defending the guy who did it - he did something wrong, but they corrected it and malice attributed to project seems misplaced. On the flip side I think this could be handled better industry wide - like we already have security vulnerability scanning tools bundled with major code hosting platforms, they should probably figure out a way to do copyright infringement warnings .

kmeisthax 6y ago

You as a learner copypasting code isn't itself the problem. The problem is that this is a published, copyrighted work that has been included into another published, copyrighted work without adherence to license terms. If I had copied Culture4Life's code and used it in my own project, they would be suing for tens of thousands of dollars in damages; and the law would agree that I should have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages for that infringement. Asking for attribution and a proper license declaration is the polite way to handle a license violation.

xbar 6y ago

No excuses to fail to meet the rules of OSS. None.