4 ms·

> Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on with licensing because I am losing my goddamn mind. This seems like a storm in a tea cup to me. Distros

by xupybd 4y ago

> Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on with licensing because I am losing my goddamn mind. This seems like a storm in a tea cup to me. Distros are made of thousands of packages. The maintainers are supposed to get the license details correct but sometimes humans error. When these errors get buried deep into things and no one is auditing them, they go unnoticed. No need for anyone to lose their mind over that. It's life.

rroot 4y ago
Its not a storm in a tea cup. A lot of people had relaxed attitude towards licensing text. Then SCO came a long, partially funded by Microsoft and threatened everyone using Linux due to alleged licensing issues. This was a major issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
- jchw 4y ago
  That is quite a different beast in numerous ways, and I'm failing to see the connection.
  - rroot 4y ago
    Yes, because the beast grew to a behemoth. But the fundamental issue is the same: code with unknown/issues with licensing. There is absolutely no reason to take that lightly. Yes it might turn into absolutely nothing. What happens if years down the line someone like Oracle acquires code that 1000s of projects depend on?
    - jchw 4y ago
      Because it can be fixed trivially, eliminating the threat? Literally, it already happened here: https://github.com/seletskiy/godiff/commit/865648740d705a24a9cf927dfa73f458322141d9 https://github.com/seletskiy/godiff/commit/865648740d705a24a... Just as described, the problem was raised and then fixed. Now let's assume someone like Oracle goes and acquires 1000 unlicensed tiny open source projects, just to be a dick, and closes their source and begins copyright trolling. Here's what happens: people switch off of those projects. I'm not trying to diminish the usefulness of godiff; it is useful! But it's not literally irreplaceable; there may even already be other options in the ecosystem, and if there's not, it's not something that can't be removed temporarily, and replaced long-term. This blog post is a little alarmist IMO, but people who do this kind of sleuthing are doing a service to the open source community, because yes, issues like this can just be mitigated.

by xupybd 4y ago

rroot 4y ago

Its not a storm in a tea cup. A lot of people had relaxed attitude towards licensing text. Then SCO came a long, partially funded by Microsoft and threatened everyone using Linux due to alleged licensing issues. This was a major issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes

jchw 4y ago
That is quite a different beast in numerous ways, and I'm failing to see the connection.
- rroot 4y ago
  Yes, because the beast grew to a behemoth. But the fundamental issue is the same: code with unknown/issues with licensing. There is absolutely no reason to take that lightly. Yes it might turn into absolutely nothing. What happens if years down the line someone like Oracle acquires code that 1000s of projects depend on?
  - jchw 4y ago
    Because it can be fixed trivially, eliminating the threat? Literally, it already happened here: https://github.com/seletskiy/godiff/commit/865648740d705a24a9cf927dfa73f458322141d9 https://github.com/seletskiy/godiff/commit/865648740d705a24a... Just as described, the problem was raised and then fixed. Now let's assume someone like Oracle goes and acquires 1000 unlicensed tiny open source projects, just to be a dick, and closes their source and begins copyright trolling. Here's what happens: people switch off of those projects. I'm not trying to diminish the usefulness of godiff; it is useful! But it's not literally irreplaceable; there may even already be other options in the ecosystem, and if there's not, it's not something that can't be removed temporarily, and replaced long-term. This blog post is a little alarmist IMO, but people who do this kind of sleuthing are doing a service to the open source community, because yes, issues like this can just be mitigated.