3 ms·
> Either these things stop or software licensing is meaningless. Pick one. I think this is overly simplistic. People routinely write code that bears a lot of s
by remus 4y ago
> Either these things stop or software licensing is meaningless. Pick one.
I think this is overly simplistic. People routinely write code that bears a lot of similarity to existing code (there's only so many ways you can write "for x in my_list: print(x)") so there's some threshold for originality that's applied. Looking at it from the other side, minor tweaks to otherwise interesting and novel bits of code shouldn't exempt you from the original licensing obligations.
There's a happy medium in there somewhere (though admittedly it's hard to define).
- jimbokun 4y agoThere is a ton of existing court decisions that have addressed theses questions.
- thesuperbigfrog 4y agoI think this is overly simplistic. People routinely write comments that bear a lot of similarity to other comments (there's only so many ways you can write words in English) so there's some threshold for originality that's applied. Looking at it from the other side, minor tweaks to otherwise interesting and novel comments shouldn't exempt you from scrutiny. There might be a happy medium in there somewhere, but it's hard to know for sure.
- Shish2k 4y agoNow I wonder if copyright for source-code should have its own “satire” exception...
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoI've never seen someone independently recreate exact comments with a persons name in it, have you? Do you find that reasonable as an excuse for independent creation? Github cannot independently create code, we know this. Comparing Github to humans writing code is disingenuous at best.