4 ms·

Software and Copyright: It’s Complicated

41 points by vmbrasseur 6y ago

alexashka 6y ago
It's complicated for lawyers. It's not complicated for people who don't have the money to hire and pay lawyers. Who is the target audience for this book?
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Not having lawyers doesn't mean you won't get sued by people who do have lawyers.
aranchelk 6y ago
> You could sue me for copyright infringement anyway, but you’d need to prove that my program copies yours. Some of the criteria used to prove this include the structure and organisation of the original source code, so even if I were to have used a different programming language, if I use the same code structure (even coincidentally) then it can appear as if I copied your program. AFAIK, at least in the US, coincidence in and of itself is just fine, to prove infringement the copyright holder has to show that the defendant had access to the work, i.e. they actually copied it. This would seem to rule out most scenarios with a SASS/closed source plaintiff.
- zabzonk 6y ago
  > US, coincidence in and of itself is just fine, to prove infringement the copyright holder has to show that the defendant had access to the work That's right, which is why the Phoenix BIOS and others on IBM compatibles was never successfully challenged by IBM. The developers were given the API and were able to prove that they had never seen the implementation.
runningmike 6y ago
misleading title: it’s not complicated, but you can make it complicated. Just use cc-by (sa or nd) and an osi approved foss license. A good read: https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/owning-your-own-copyrights-in-open-source/ https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/owning-your-own-copyright... or see https://blog.codeforscience.org/intellectual-property-in-open-projects/ https://blog.codeforscience.org/intellectual-property-in-ope... to keep it simple!
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  They recommend against using their licenses for software. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... It is only for example one way compatible with say the GPL. GPL projects can integrate your work but may choose not to due to unfamiliarity but you may not integrate their work. It also expressly reserves patent rights for yourself vs gpl 3 which disclaims them. If your software doesn't represent anything you intend to pursue patents on it may still put off companies who fear to be sued by anyone who buys it. It looks sort of complicated.
- pabs3 6y ago
  Please note that CC ND licenses are not FLOSS licenses.
hinkley 6y ago
Public domain software is particularly tricky situation for multi-nationals. Vetting an MIT licensed library is virtually a no-op, but some jurisdictions simply do not recognize PD licenses (let alone "do whatever the fuck you want" licenses people sometimes write while being clever). The one time I got stung by this it wasn't that hard to fix but things could have gone a lot different if we had more deeply leveraged either of the two PD tools that we had in our dependency chain. I swapped one for a slightly larger MIT licensed library, and set a coworker up to cleanroom the other, since I was already tainted.
- prepend 6y ago
  I’m involved with some US government OSS projects and it’s interesting US government content is public domain in the US so not copyrighted. This seems like it should be easy for open source because public domain, no copyright can be used for pretty much anything. However, this was confusing to many users and contributors so we worked with our lawyers to update the public domain notices to also include CC0 and MIT or ASL2. That seems to help but we still get questions about why include CC0 and an OSI license. There’s some confusion that these conflict although they don’t of material is released under both consistently. I think there are issues if you try to add one on top of the other. But I wish there was a cleaner way to handle this to allow for software and source to be used widely.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    There is also an MIT-0 license that is OSI approved now. It doesn't have the questionable patent language that caused CC0 to eventually be withdrawn from OSI consideration. Of possibly historical interest, the MIT license was created in the first place because there were issues with just putting X Windows into the public domain.
  - zokier 6y ago
    Doesn't open source license like MIT or ASL2 imply that there is an entity holding copyright? The very first line of MIT license is Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> But if USG can not hold copyright, how can it then apply license to its works?

41 points by vmbrasseur 6y ago

It's complicated for lawyers. It's not complicated for people who don't have the money to hire and pay lawyers. Who is the target audience for this book?

marcinzm 6y ago
Not having lawyers doesn't mean you won't get sued by people who do have lawyers.

aranchelk 6y ago

> You could sue me for copyright infringement anyway, but you’d need to prove that my program copies yours. Some of the criteria used to prove this include the structure and organisation of the original source code, so even if I were to have used a different programming language, if I use the same code structure (even coincidentally) then it can appear as if I copied your program. AFAIK, at least in the US, coincidence in and of itself is just fine, to prove infringement the copyright holder has to show that the defendant had access to the work, i.e. they actually copied it. This would seem to rule out most scenarios with a SASS/closed source plaintiff.

zabzonk 6y ago
> US, coincidence in and of itself is just fine, to prove infringement the copyright holder has to show that the defendant had access to the work That's right, which is why the Phoenix BIOS and others on IBM compatibles was never successfully challenged by IBM. The developers were given the API and were able to prove that they had never seen the implementation.

runningmike 6y ago

misleading title: it’s not complicated, but you can make it complicated. Just use cc-by (sa or nd) and an osi approved foss license. A good read: https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/owning-your-own-copyrights-in-open-source/ https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/owning-your-own-copyright... or see https://blog.codeforscience.org/intellectual-property-in-open-projects/ https://blog.codeforscience.org/intellectual-property-in-ope... to keep it simple!

michaelmrose 6y ago
They recommend against using their licenses for software. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... It is only for example one way compatible with say the GPL. GPL projects can integrate your work but may choose not to due to unfamiliarity but you may not integrate their work. It also expressly reserves patent rights for yourself vs gpl 3 which disclaims them. If your software doesn't represent anything you intend to pursue patents on it may still put off companies who fear to be sued by anyone who buys it. It looks sort of complicated.
pabs3 6y ago
Please note that CC ND licenses are not FLOSS licenses.

hinkley 6y ago

Public domain software is particularly tricky situation for multi-nationals. Vetting an MIT licensed library is virtually a no-op, but some jurisdictions simply do not recognize PD licenses (let alone "do whatever the fuck you want" licenses people sometimes write while being clever). The one time I got stung by this it wasn't that hard to fix but things could have gone a lot different if we had more deeply leveraged either of the two PD tools that we had in our dependency chain. I swapped one for a slightly larger MIT licensed library, and set a coworker up to cleanroom the other, since I was already tainted.

prepend 6y ago
I’m involved with some US government OSS projects and it’s interesting US government content is public domain in the US so not copyrighted. This seems like it should be easy for open source because public domain, no copyright can be used for pretty much anything. However, this was confusing to many users and contributors so we worked with our lawyers to update the public domain notices to also include CC0 and MIT or ASL2. That seems to help but we still get questions about why include CC0 and an OSI license. There’s some confusion that these conflict although they don’t of material is released under both consistently. I think there are issues if you try to add one on top of the other. But I wish there was a cleaner way to handle this to allow for software and source to be used widely.
- ghaff 6y ago
  There is also an MIT-0 license that is OSI approved now. It doesn't have the questionable patent language that caused CC0 to eventually be withdrawn from OSI consideration. Of possibly historical interest, the MIT license was created in the first place because there were issues with just putting X Windows into the public domain.
- zokier 6y ago
  Doesn't open source license like MIT or ASL2 imply that there is an entity holding copyright? The very first line of MIT license is Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> But if USG can not hold copyright, how can it then apply license to its works?