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> The copyright holders of the code will not care if someone forks their code, updates it, doesn't update the link, contributes back, and has zero users. You'r

> The copyright holders of the code will not care if someone forks their code, updates it, doesn't update the link, contributes back, and has zero users. You're correct, but the whole point of licenses is having them work as intended. We don't run the free software ecosystem on goodwill and "I don't care if you violate my license as long as I like what you're doing". Licenses exist for a reason. > If there are 0 users of my modified version, I have offered a link to "all users". My reading of that is akin to "all potential users", as implied by the requirement being on what the modified version does; the code itself can only affect potential users since it has no idea of what actual users may or may not eventually exist.

TheDong 5y ago
> the whole point of licenses is having them work as intended. We don't run the free software ecosystem on goodwill But we do run the legal system at least partly good will, and licenses only matter in the context of the legal system. Obviously a less ambiguous better worded license is better, but I don't think it's necessarily that big a deal. > the code itself can only affect potential users since it has no idea of what actual users may or may not eventually exist. I don't think the law cares about this though. The law can know perfectly well after the fact that I personally did or didn't have any users. That I did or did not offer source code to all 0 users of my non-existent copy I'm not hosting. I don't really see why the copyright license can't make conditions based on real-world usage and hosting; very few laws are pure functions that take only source code as input, almost all of them reference reality. I guess you'd argue that I'm opening myself up to liability by forking, say, mastodon and modifying it because now someone could host my fork, and that someone (who isn't offering a correct source code link) would be causing me to violate the license... But that seems like the sort of reasoning that wouldn't last a heartbeat in court. The person running my copy of the code should have modified it further to have the correct link, they are the ones that failed to comply with the copyright license terms for the version they run. By analogy, in copyright law, fair use allows "violating" copyright in some cases, such as to copy a page of a book for teaching material. Your argument reads to me like saying "But the teacher copied a page of the book, gave it to his students for class, and then one of the students sold that page without permission from the copyright holder! Aha, the teacher has violated copyright". Which no court would ever hold to be true, even if a very literal reading of the law may be more murky.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  > should have modified it further to have the correct link, they are the ones that failed to comply with the copyright license terms for the version they run. But by not modifying it in the first place, they avoid entering into any legal obligations to do so. See the problem? > But the teacher copied a page of the book, gave it to his students for class, and then one of the students sold that page without permission from the copyright holder! Aha, the teacher has violated copyright". Which no court would ever hold to be true, even if a very literal reading of the law may be more murky. Nope, the student is the one who violated copyright here, as copyright also controls the right to distribution, not just making copies. By making the sale, a copyright violation occurred. The teacher is likely safe under fair use, as you say. If the teacher were to sell his original copy of the book, that would be legal under the first-sale doctrine: the copyright holder's interest in distribution rights for a particular copy is exhausted after the book was initially sold. But the interest in the right to make copies persists, and since the copy made for class was not sold by the original copyright holder, but rather only made and distributed under fair use, it is not bound by the first sale doctrine, and distribution rights are still controlled by the copyright owner (they re-appear when the copy is made). And hence, the student is in violation, as such a sale would not fall under fair use. People love to throw around this idea that the law is all subjective and judges work off of common sense, but that's really not how it works. The law is incredibly detailed on these things and lawmakers aren't stupid. This is all written in the books. Yes, there is some leeway for good faith interpretations, but the legal system doesn't run on whatever the judge feels is right on any given day. This is all spelled out.

TheDong 5y ago

> the whole point of licenses is having them work as intended. We don't run the free software ecosystem on goodwill But we do run the legal system at least partly good will, and licenses only matter in the context of the legal system. Obviously a less ambiguous better worded license is better, but I don't think it's necessarily that big a deal. > the code itself can only affect potential users since it has no idea of what actual users may or may not eventually exist. I don't think the law cares about this though. The law can know perfectly well after the fact that I personally did or didn't have any users. That I did or did not offer source code to all 0 users of my non-existent copy I'm not hosting. I don't really see why the copyright license can't make conditions based on real-world usage and hosting; very few laws are pure functions that take only source code as input, almost all of them reference reality. I guess you'd argue that I'm opening myself up to liability by forking, say, mastodon and modifying it because now someone could host my fork, and that someone (who isn't offering a correct source code link) would be causing me to violate the license... But that seems like the sort of reasoning that wouldn't last a heartbeat in court. The person running my copy of the code should have modified it further to have the correct link, they are the ones that failed to comply with the copyright license terms for the version they run. By analogy, in copyright law, fair use allows "violating" copyright in some cases, such as to copy a page of a book for teaching material. Your argument reads to me like saying "But the teacher copied a page of the book, gave it to his students for class, and then one of the students sold that page without permission from the copyright holder! Aha, the teacher has violated copyright". Which no court would ever hold to be true, even if a very literal reading of the law may be more murky.

marcan_42 5y ago
> should have modified it further to have the correct link, they are the ones that failed to comply with the copyright license terms for the version they run. But by not modifying it in the first place, they avoid entering into any legal obligations to do so. See the problem? > But the teacher copied a page of the book, gave it to his students for class, and then one of the students sold that page without permission from the copyright holder! Aha, the teacher has violated copyright". Which no court would ever hold to be true, even if a very literal reading of the law may be more murky. Nope, the student is the one who violated copyright here, as copyright also controls the right to distribution, not just making copies. By making the sale, a copyright violation occurred. The teacher is likely safe under fair use, as you say. If the teacher were to sell his original copy of the book, that would be legal under the first-sale doctrine: the copyright holder's interest in distribution rights for a particular copy is exhausted after the book was initially sold. But the interest in the right to make copies persists, and since the copy made for class was not sold by the original copyright holder, but rather only made and distributed under fair use, it is not bound by the first sale doctrine, and distribution rights are still controlled by the copyright owner (they re-appear when the copy is made). And hence, the student is in violation, as such a sale would not fall under fair use. People love to throw around this idea that the law is all subjective and judges work off of common sense, but that's really not how it works. The law is incredibly detailed on these things and lawmakers aren't stupid. This is all written in the books. Yes, there is some leeway for good faith interpretations, but the legal system doesn't run on whatever the judge feels is right on any given day. This is all spelled out.