13 ms·

Of regrets

238 points by nullc 4y ago

ztrqst 4y ago
This acceptance of this lawsuit is so egregious that all Open Source licenses should explicitly exclude the U.K. for distribution. Let's see how their economy will work then.
- Veen 4y ago
  Why don't you wait to see how the court case is resolved before you throw your dummy? It's entirely possible the court will rule against Wright, setting a precedent that protects developers from this sort of legal action.
  - Tuna-Fish 4y ago
    The fact that this goes to trial is alone enough to be disastrous. There are serious costs to defending yourself in a foreign country. And if you fail to do so, a default judgement can be entered against you.
nhchris 4y ago
Can somebody elaborate? The article claims the MIT license's no-warranty clause has been voided in the UK, but provides no details or a source.
- asfarley 4y ago
  Yeah this really needs some context.
  - midmagico 4y ago
    Look down a bit, nullc wrote a large paragraph explaining what's going on.
- jsnell 4y ago
  As a non-lawyer, I don't think it's correct to say that it has been voided. My reading of the appeals judgement is that there is no case law either way on whether open source developers could be considered to have a fiduciary duty to stakeholders (or under what circumstances that duty would exist), but there is at least a plausible case to be made. To establish precedent in a situation where none exists, the trial should proceed.
  - spac 4y ago
    do you have a link handy for the appeals judgement?
    - jsnell 4y ago
      From nullc's comment: https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_CA-2022-001050_1062_2184_Final_Judgment_03-02-2023.pdf https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_...
      - gumby 4y ago
        But if you click on that link you will not find the word "warranty" used in any way, and in fact the bases of the case seem not to involve any warranty-like responsibility at all. So I'm confused. The situation described in nullc's comment seem pretty horrible!
        yw3410 4y ago
        The term used is fiduciary duty/responsibility.
        gumby 4y ago
        Thank you. Reading your comment, and then the link in nullc's comment, where the warranty language is included at para 110, it is clear that the warranty is not actually the issue but the disclaimer of liability. I wonder if the license were modified to add, "if you do not agree to these terms you do not have a grant of license for this software." Separately, when I look at the case, it seems to be a provision of service issue, so the software itself should be a red herring. Of course anything can happen in a lawsuit, even one that appears to be as illegitimate as this one.
- smcin 4y ago
  Responding to several people who had asked for context: "Craig Wright’s [UK] lawsuit against multiple Bitcoin developers will go to trial" https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multiple-bitcoin-developers-will-go-to-trial/ https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multip...
nullc 4y ago
A con artist has filed multiple lawsuits in the UK against the current and former (increasingly, as more quit) developers of Bitcoin demanding billions of dollars, part in retaliation for their failure to back up his obviously false claims of being Bitcoin's creator and in part as part of an insane plot to steal billions of dollars in Bitcoin. Unfortunately, his efforts are financed by at least one (and possibly multiple) persons with far more wealth than morals who have been promised a share of the spoils. The poster of the linked article, Wladimir Van der Laan, was one of the most active developers of Bitcoin since 2011. I'm also another early bitcoin developer, now former, and another one of this conman's legal attack targets. A key point about vexatious litigation, especially in places like the UK which lack protections against SLAPPs, is that the attacker doesn't need to win the lawsuit to achieve his goals: He can cause his victims millions of dollars in legal costs, phenomenal impositions on their time and privacy, and great psychological stress-- losing nothing himself but what he paid for his attorneys. Winning or not is more or less incidental, as the culprit here said quite explicitly online before commencing his lawsuits (saying that the intent was to destroy his targets and their families financially and psychologically). That fact that none of us were in the UK or had any dealings in the UK doesn't matter because open source software is available everywhere. For that reason its important that it be possible to discharge frivolous litigation as quickly and efficiently as possible. As open source developers the cost/benefit of publishing our work can be pretty dicey to begin with, so it's important that the licenses we use not gratuitously open up avenues for litigation from the users since there are no revenues to pay for such things as a cost of doing business. In his first lawsuit, he alleged to own billions of dollars in Bitcoin (coins which are already well known to have belonged to the MTGox exchange) and that in 2020-- coincidentally just as his obligations to repay his lenders were coming due-- thieves entered into his home to install a "wifi pineapple" to hack his computers and steal the keys and that when he discovered this "hack" he wipes his computers to clear the compromise, conveniently making sure there would be no evidence of the "hack" or ever owning the coins to begin with. The coins in question have not moved. He then filed a lawsuit against a dozen former and current developers arguing that as developers they have a fiduciary responsibility to introduce a backdoor into the bitcoin cryptosystem to "recover" "his" coins. In three years there has been no comment or apparent action by the police over this theft which, if it were real, would likely be the highest value heist in recorded history. The case seemed obviously baseless to us, owing to obvious falsehood of his claims, the impossibility of his request (people would not adopt this backdoored version, even if anyone was willing to make themself complicit in his attempted theft by writing it for him), the pointlessness of it (he just pay someone to write it (or do it himself, if he could program) and half the defendants had long since stopped working on Bitcoin), the fact that even the police don't have a positive duty to save anyone from harm, and the unambiguous disclaimer of liabilities in our software license -- without which we never would have published it in the first place. And keep in mind that he's already been found by judges in several countries to have perjured himself, submitted faked evidence, etc. in other cases (as shown in this collage of rulings against Wright, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoMUonbXkAEbJbL?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoMUonbXkAEbJbL?format=jpg&name=... ) The trial court agreed ( https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2022/667.html https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2022/667.html ), ruling that his case didn't have more than a fanciful chance of success. But he appealed and the decision was reversed ( https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_CA-2022-001050_1062_2184_Final_Judgment_03-02-2023.pdf https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_... ). He's now gloating on slack and twitter that he's already "won" because we'll be 'ruined' by having to pay the 7-figure cost of his successful appeal and by publishing whatever dirt he can extract from our private data obtained in discovery. (The second lawsuit, which has yet to come before a court alleges that the targets are violating "his" copyright by distributing the Bitcoin "block format" and bitcoin documentation, nevermind the fact that Bitcoin has been released under the MIT expat license since day one, and that this bozo's claims of being Bitcoin's creator are totally discredited and obviously false. He's also filed additional lawsuits against community members and journalists for expressing the view that his claims of having created Bitcoin are false). Regardless of what you think about Bitcoin, the enforceability of the disclaimer of liability is critical to all of open source and the court's unwillingness to summarily dismiss an effort to compel the authorship and publication of a backdoor in a cryptographic security scheme from a supposed user who hopes to benefit from the backdoor should be a concern to all open source developers.
kanzure 4y ago
Maybe it is time to enshrine open-source software development into law, and out of the realm of merely relying on an old copyright hack. It was a very clever hack, of course, but maybe the software industry has outgrown it and needs more legal basis to rely on.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  How do we accomplish that without an army of lobbyists?
  - kanzure 4y ago
    Major corporations have entire strategies built around open-source, with many household names that you know (Facebook, Microsoft, Google, ...). According to random estimates on the internet, open-source software is a $50 billion annual market. There's enough "there" there to get you something.
  - ForHackernews 4y ago
    Hold the entire world's technology industry hostage. Nice multi-billion dollar business you got there, be a real shame if somebody started introducing subtly-breaking bugs into that critical library you use, wouldn't it?
    - kanzure 4y ago
      Well, extortion and blackmail isn't exactly a way of further legitimizing open-source software development.
      - ForHackernews 4y ago
        Works for the copyright industry, doesn't it?
      - voakbasda 4y ago
        What exactly do you think the legal process accomplishes, when you have a bad actor with deep pockets that sues people that do not have equal means to defend themselves?
2h 4y ago
[flagged]
- josephg 4y ago
  They're right - that isn't an open source license. Its a source-available license. And yeah, I guess we could pack it in and abandon the idea of opensource. But I think thats really sad. I love the fact that opensource code I've written is quietly powering things in companies large and small all over the world. Sure; it'd always be nice to be paid more for my work. But thats still really cool!
  - 2h 4y ago
    > quietly powering things in companies large and small all over the world Thats cool that you feel that way, but I absolutely do not. I dont like the idea of huge companies making millions, while the authors of the software "powering" their business get nothing.
    - josephg 4y ago
      Just to be really clear, if you feel that way I'm glad you're opting out of using opensource licenses. Not everyone wants to be an opensource developer. Not all code needs to be open source to have value. There's nothing wrong with that and that makes complete sense to me. If you ever publish anything to npm / cargo / etc, I hope you make the fact your code isn't opensource very clear. I don't want to accidentally use your code in my projects, in violation of your license.
      - 2h 4y ago
        you are welcome to use my code, as long is its non-commercial use. If you wish to have commercial use, I offer license for that as well for a fee.
        josephg 4y ago
        I understand that; but libraries I publish have dependencies. If one of my dependencies (your library) isn't licensed for commercial use, then my library also can't be used in commercial projects. Thats a decision I want to make intentionally, if at all.
2devnull 4y ago
There is a general takeaway: laws, contracts, etc are not in and of themselves indicative of legal outcomes. Lawyers and process influence legal outcomes. That shouldn’t discourage the use of contracts, licenses, etc. But it should make you prudential when it comes to appropriate level of concern related to legal matters.
tooltitude 4y ago
We have been working on a VS Code extension (link in my profile), which released some time ago. I had a thought that may be we should stick with the approach used by most of the ecosystem, when license is linked from the extension page. However, we decided to show accept/reject dialog. I am glad that we did it this way. I have seen a large number of products (from SaaS to desktop apps) which don't properly ask for license acceptance to reduce sign up friction. They might be affected in the same way (I am not a lawyer).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- midmagico 4y ago
  This is irrelevant, since the theory is that a fiduciary duty exists completely absent any interaction, and any payment, whatsoever, or in the event literally anyone else pays you to do the work (including your employer), you are now a fiduciary of everyone who uses your software in any financial sense whatsoever.
  - tooltitude 4y ago
    So do you mean that limited liability clauses essentially void? This looks really absurd. How could we develop and distribute any software in such a context?
braingenious 4y ago
For those of us that have absolutely no idea why this is on the top of this website: This was posted by a Bitcoin developer. Apparently we are supposed to recognize them by name and immediately remember whatever lawsuits they’re involved in, in the UK.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Apparently it's their blog, they have no responsibility for anybody to understand their posts nor are they required to explain their references....
  - braingenious 4y ago
    I didn’t comment on the existence of the blog post, I commented on a link without context being on the front page of an unrelated website :)
    - HashBasher 4y ago
      I love the sting that HN has for bitcoin. Find me one other HN post that has full context. They're all links with the title of the linked source. This is a link aggregator.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ducktective 4y ago
    No one is at fault here...usually some top comment provides context..this is a link aggregator
  - rosywoozlechan 4y ago
    it's their blog and they're entitled to write it however they want? The author writes some statement on their blog that unexpectedly gets traction on HN and because they didn't anticipate that, they're the bad guy for not writing the blog post as accessible and informative as possible? This person just wanted to note their thoughts down on their personal blog, but now they've wronged you somehow?
asperous 4y ago
Here is a link for context: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-uk-case-against-16-bitcoin-developers-to-go-to-full-trial-report/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-u...
- ratg13 4y ago
  If Craig Wright was Satoshi, as he claims, he should have over a million unspent btc. The only logical conclusion from fighting this battle is that Craig Wright is a liar.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Or he forgot his wallet password. ;)
    - peppermint_gum 4y ago
      This is pretty much what this lawsuit is about. He claims that it's bitcoin developers' fault that he lost access to "his" billions and they should restore it somehow.
- rom-antics 4y ago
  > In 2021, the London High Court gave Craig Wright's lawyers permission to serve papers to the 16 developers, even if they don't reside in the U.K. So what happens if they just don't show up to court? Sure you'll lose by default judgment, and then you can ignore the judgment, right? If I got a court summons from some random country like Sudan or Botswana or the UK I would just ignore it. How could that backfire assuming I don't plan on traveling to Sudan in my lifetime?
  - jahewson 4y ago
    The smart move would be for them to club together and go and win in court, this case seems pretty ridiculous and the premise is very flimsy. Having a loss like this on the books and in case law would be harmful to the ongoing concerns of bitcoin.
solomatov 4y ago
I am not a lawyer, but it seems the issue is the following: - For a contract to work it should be accepted - OSS projects which are just available online, could be download without performing or even reading a license - One of the important clauses to shield from legal liability is limitation of liability clause, i.e. you use the software as is, and won't be able to make the author accountable for damages caused by software - MIT license has such a clause - We now have a precedent when a developer is held liable due to damage allegedly caused by such software Consequences of this precedent are super scary
- dleslie 4y ago
  It's not about damages caused; the suit is over a claim that open source developers have a fiduciary/beneficiary relationship with users, and so have an obligation to act in their users' best interests. In which case, BitCoin devs would need to fork the chain to hand a few hefty wallets over.
  - nullc 4y ago
    > In which case, BitCoin devs would need to fork the chain to hand a few hefty wallets over. It's even worse than that, of course, because creating the backdoored version they demanded wouldn't and couldn't make anyone run it (and it's inconceivable to me that more than a negligible number would-- particularly seeing how there are no automatic updates by design for security reasons). Their position is that we're responsible for it being effective too. I think if it were just a demand to backdoor the software one of the defendants might have done so-- "Here you go, now screw off". But that clearly wouldn't have made the plaintiff go away (and might have landed them in litigation from the actual owners of the assets, even though the backdoor had no effect except maybe the creation of yet another forked blockchain that no one uses).
- nullc 4y ago
  > We now have a precedent when a developer is held liable due to damage allegedly caused by such software Forced to go to a full trial over it, instead of being able discharge it on a summary basis. This sounds a lot better, but in terms of the impact it's not clear how much better it is-- the cost from this will be almost entirely in defending it.
coldtea 4y ago
>I strongly regret it. It is a fool’s game in retrospect. The no-warranty clause apparently doesn’t hold up in court (at least in the UK) Doesn't it? Has anybody been succesfully sued for anything from a non-customer using his open source MIT-licensed software?
- spac 4y ago
  they are now
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Key point being the "succesfully" qualifier Though, as I understood from reading comments here, the UK legal system is so fucked up and medieval that they don't have to win to succeed at their goal. So much for Magna Carta
    - nullc 4y ago
      It's also true in the US that you can damage someone gravely through a lawsuit that's ultimately unsuccessful. The UK appears to be worse, both through the total absence of anti-SLAPP protections but also because norms that make it more process-bound willing to entertain such a weak case. The UK "loser pays" model seems like it would be a benefit, but since the norm that they only pay 70% and that your share can be diminished by presenting a comprehensive case (diminished by every argument you lose) the incentives are complicated and its far from clear to me that it doesn't make it worse.
dannyboland 4y ago
Would publishing code under a limited company be a viable approach to avoid liabilities from OSS? Of course it shouldn’t be necessary, I’m just trying to think of a practical way for an individual to avoid this scenario.
- dleslie 4y ago
  Nope; in fact, the MIT license isn't really of consequence here except in that it doesn't address a possible fiduciary/beneficiary relationship with users.
- tooltitude 4y ago
  As far as I remember, the author of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Protecting/dp/0596517963 https://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Pro... Recommended a scheme to shield OSS developers from liability. I am not a lawyer, so it looked a bit overly cautious to me, but it seems that was a good idea.
  - tooltitude 4y ago
    See the chapter 14 called incorporating as non-profit. He mentions a case where Gaim (a messenger software) developers were sued by AOL.
- nullc 4y ago
  Some of the defendants (the developers of Bitcoin ABC now called eCash, an alternative cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin and its blockchain) had organized their development under an LLC. Hasn't helped so far, though in the unlikely event that the case is ultimately lost it might help them constrain recovery of damages to the assets of the LLC. I think in general structural improvement like that are most effective against 'honest' opponents-- someone whos goal is to win and recover their costs and damages. A legal structure that limits liability makes recovery less likely, so they don't bring the action at all. For an opponent who's goal is to harass and ultimately crush the opposition, I think that kind of tool is probably less effective. It's also harder to justify doing when you're just following a volunteer passion over something speculative and worthless (as was the case of the Bitcoin related defendants-- almost all of whom started close to the beginning of Bitcoin). [And as an aside: to the extent that development is done on an uncompensated purely voluntary basis, it would be difficulty to legitimize the LLC, e.g. little to no income or expenses or other documentation that the LLC is anything but a piece of paper.]
throwaway69123 4y ago
Wouldnt this be easily fixed by putting in a clause that defines the consideration to acquire warranty. "WARRENTY CAN BE PURCHASED FROM ALL CONTRIBUTORS FOR EQUAL PAYMENTS OF THE ENTIRE ANNUAL GLOBAL GDP AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE IN US DOLLARS"
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
  Not every jurisdiction allows disclaiming the various possible implied warranties (such as the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose).
  - throwaway69123 4y ago
    What if contributors formed a nonprofit LLC in a favorable jurisdiction and then all the liability would rest on this assetless organization.
    - nullc 4y ago
      He's suing the defendants as individuals even where an LLC exists and was a real entity -- the developers of some of the bitcoin alternatives being sued performed their development work as a business. It may ultimately be that if the case was lost and the plaintiff tried to domesticate their judgement the LLC would successfully act as a shield. But you dun screwed up if that's what ultimately saved you. The advantage of these structures is that they make you less likely to get sued in the first place, since they potentially bound the recovery. -- but that doesn't obviously work against a vexatious litigant whose real goal isn't to win by merit and whos case isn't being funded by an attorney operating on contingency. What you're suggesting also might be at rather large risk of being ignored by the court as pretext, or esp to the extent that it's not pretext, would be viewed by developers as compromising their independence, which is quite important to them. There is no shortage of alternative structures that you could imagine putting in place if you knew in advance that this would happen ... but if every time you went to contribute to a piece of open source you needed to first form a non-profit it's pretty clear that there wouldn't be any open source! :)
- 4y ago
rigelbm 4y ago
Not A Lawyer. The Court of Appeals decided to take this case to trial because it is novel and will probably serve as precedent for future cases. There has been no decision on liability and what not. Author is a bit overreacting. Sure, it's annoying and all to have to defend yourself. But seems unplausible that a decision would be made to ignore license for liability given all the repercussions, not just to this case, but to the software industry as a whole.
- Blackthorn 4y ago
  It's not "annoying", it's ruinously expensive.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  I’m not concerned that the case will result in a decision voiding the liability clause of the MIT license in the UK. That seems so unlikely as to be amusing we’re even discussing it. I’m concerned that any court… at least any court with a reputation remotely in the realm of “not a plainly obvious farce intentionally designed to boast its illegitimacy for intimidation purposes”… would pick a precedent-setting case of this magnitude, where the defendant is anything but flanked by an army of lawyers. By all means, set the obvious precedent. But there has got to be a case which isn’t set up to probably ruin the life of an eventually vindicated open source developer defendant. Edit: and I should also clarify I’m not concerned about crypto or whatever. I’m concerned that anyone at all working on clearly warranty-free software can have their lives sucked up into a case of national and probably international impact just because some court decides to make an example of their plaintiff.
- chippiewill 4y ago
  > The Court of Appeals decided to take this case to trial because it is novel and will probably serve as precedent for future cases. They didn't decide to take it to trial for this reason. If they needed it for precedent they'd just wait for the next case instead. They decided the case needs to go to trial because there are questions around fiduciary responsibility that they can't answer without a trial.
  - 4y ago
risk_factor 4y ago
I hope that developers will not respond by updating their open source licenses. “This software may not be used by craig Wright or any organisation affiliated with him, nor any developers associated with his companies in any way including vendors, contractors and employees” Would be a real shame.
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
The good news is that this is the UK court system. Unless I'm mistaken, the loser is ultimately responsible for the victor's court fees, and in this case, the other party claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, so I think we can pretty safely assume that the other party will win and presumable recover a lot of his expenses (perhaps someone from the UK can let me know how incorrect I am?). Unfortunately, it will likely be quite traumatic and expensive to get through the trial first.
- kanzure 4y ago
  > I think we can pretty safely assume that the other party will win https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/06/29/uk-court-orders-bitcoinorg-to-remove-white-paper-following-craig-wright-lawsuit/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/06/29/uk-court-orders-... "Unfortunately, the court rules allowed for me to be sued pseudonymously, however, I couldn't defend myself pseudonymously. So I was put in an impossible situation of losing my privacy or losing the case in a default judgment. It sucks, but there's nothing more I could have done, really."
  - CobrastanJorji 4y ago
    Ah, so they had to choose between publishing their identity or losing (and therefore owing 35,000 pounds in court fees)? Well, that does suck.
    - nullc 4y ago
      Cobra attempted to pay the 35k GBP but they returned it because he wouldn't identify himself, claiming that AML laws prevented them from accepting the payment without his identity. The 35k was an amount the judge awarded pending a cost assessment from Wright's opposition. The fees were then increased to ~£600k after they submitted the cost assessment, which Cobra attempted to challenge but was denied again on the basis of anonymous parties having no due process rights in the the UK. I have no idea if Cobra has the means to pay such a large amount, if they'd even take it either, but even if he did-- it would be terrible and not just for him personally since all that money would be sunk back into suing other Bitcoin community members.
not2b 4y ago
There is no alternative license text that could protect against something like this if the UK courts really want cases like this to proceed to trial. The problem is not the MIT license, so suggestions for alternative license texts aren't really relevant. The issue seems to be: some crank claims he lost a lot of money and he wants to somehow force the Bitcoin developers to get him his money back. If judges don't understand the technical issues, they can punt and say "let's have a trial to work this out", ignoring how expensive this will be. edited to add "claims he" based on a comment
- globalreset 4y ago
  Didn't loose any money. He is lying he ever had them. Multiple judges in multiple cases identifies his forgeries and lies. He is a serious fraud, but has some deep money behind him, so he can bully people via legal system.
  - simonebrunozzi 4y ago
    You mean Laanwj, the author of the post? Can you provide more details? Edit: I see that you were referring to Wright, not to Laanwj.
- nullc 4y ago
  It's not entirely clear to me that improvements to the license text couldn't help. For example, increasing its strength to an indemnification might have been effective here (at the very least it would put us in a good position to start demanding that he pay the cost of our defense right out of the gate). It's somewhat common for commercial click-wrap agreements to include indemnifications now, but it probably shouldn't be-- they're potentially unfair and over-powered which is why I haven't tried my hand at drafting language. But you're right that the license isn't the primary problem as they can't do something about an excessively dysfunctional legal system. The UK courts already have a pretty bad reputation internationally in other areas, such as in abusing them for defamation lawsuits resulting in US legislative action to block them (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act ).
- 4y ago
gavinhoward 4y ago
Oh boy. I just made a change to my licenses ([1]) to fight something like this. It basically makes the license null and void if any part of the disclaimer is not recognized by law. [2] And because of this, I'm going to expedite getting these licenses picked over by a lawyer. Nevertheless, I'm not working on any more FOSS until that lawyer says it's safe or the UK pulls back from absurdity. [1]: https://yzena.com/licenses/ https://yzena.com/licenses/ [2]: https://yzena.com/yzena-viral-user-license/#legality-of-disclaimer https://yzena.com/yzena-viral-user-license/#legality-of-disc...
- ProAm 4y ago
  Can you not just add a clause that says this product is not allowed to be used in the UK?
  - gavinhoward 4y ago
    I could, but I would like to strive for generality and cover other problematic countries at the same time.
  - justusw 4y ago
    It would have a hard time meeting the open source definition, if that is the intention here, which I assume. > 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups > The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
    - ProAm 4y ago
      But the license does nothing for you in the UK, so time for change? I appreciate and like the intention behind being open source, but intentions and actions are not always on par.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  May as well not leave the house, too. There is danger out there. In all seriousness, aren’t you overreacting a bit?
modriano 4y ago
Oh, this is about Craig "Faketoshi" Wright? Based on the ALAB (All Lawyers Are Bastards) episode on this case [0], I thought that Wright was caught in a bunch of obvious lies, tax fraud, and other fraudulent representations to the court and Wright would just be annihilated in court. Is this guy really trying to move this case forward? [0] https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the-perfect-client https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the-p...
- jesterman 4y ago
  He has moved it forward. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-uk-case-against-16-bitcoin-developers-to-go-to-full-trial-report/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-u... All developers can/will be served papers (and forced to travel to the UK?)
ratandtan 4y ago
[dead]
antiquark 4y ago
We need a new open source license: UAYOR: Use At Your Own Risk. "This software will cause death, destruction, financial loss, and will make people think you're uncool for using it."
jnsaff2 4y ago
So wright is claiming that devs should get him 111k btc based on them having to take the users best interest into account. 111k is like half a percent of btc? Them changing the code to hand over 111k would have severe adverse effect on the value lost to the rest of the btc holders. The trust lost should wipe out all value of all btc. So the main claim that users best interest has to be upheld is bunk. He is not the only user. Personally I am quite torn. From the OSS side this trial is obviously tragic and a shame. Then again it would be hilarious it btc would finally die because something like this.
jwilk 4y ago
It looks like in the mean time, the site disappeared. Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20230206215930/https://laanwj.github.io/2023/02/06/regrets.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230206215930/https://laanwj.gi...
jerry1979 4y ago
Does anyone know of an open source license that geo-fences countries like the UK?

238 points by nullc 4y ago

This acceptance of this lawsuit is so egregious that all Open Source licenses should explicitly exclude the U.K. for distribution. Let's see how their economy will work then.

Veen 4y ago
Why don't you wait to see how the court case is resolved before you throw your dummy? It's entirely possible the court will rule against Wright, setting a precedent that protects developers from this sort of legal action.
- Tuna-Fish 4y ago
  The fact that this goes to trial is alone enough to be disastrous. There are serious costs to defending yourself in a foreign country. And if you fail to do so, a default judgement can be entered against you.

nhchris 4y ago

Can somebody elaborate? The article claims the MIT license's no-warranty clause has been voided in the UK, but provides no details or a source.

asfarley 4y ago
Yeah this really needs some context.
- midmagico 4y ago
  Look down a bit, nullc wrote a large paragraph explaining what's going on.
jsnell 4y ago
As a non-lawyer, I don't think it's correct to say that it has been voided. My reading of the appeals judgement is that there is no case law either way on whether open source developers could be considered to have a fiduciary duty to stakeholders (or under what circumstances that duty would exist), but there is at least a plausible case to be made. To establish precedent in a situation where none exists, the trial should proceed.
- spac 4y ago
  do you have a link handy for the appeals judgement?
  - jsnell 4y ago
    From nullc's comment: https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_CA-2022-001050_1062_2184_Final_Judgment_03-02-2023.pdf https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_...
    - gumby 4y ago
      But if you click on that link you will not find the word "warranty" used in any way, and in fact the bases of the case seem not to involve any warranty-like responsibility at all. So I'm confused. The situation described in nullc's comment seem pretty horrible!
      - yw3410 4y ago
        The term used is fiduciary duty/responsibility.
        gumby 4y ago
        Thank you. Reading your comment, and then the link in nullc's comment, where the warranty language is included at para 110, it is clear that the warranty is not actually the issue but the disclaimer of liability. I wonder if the license were modified to add, "if you do not agree to these terms you do not have a grant of license for this software." Separately, when I look at the case, it seems to be a provision of service issue, so the software itself should be a red herring. Of course anything can happen in a lawsuit, even one that appears to be as illegitimate as this one.
smcin 4y ago
Responding to several people who had asked for context: "Craig Wright’s [UK] lawsuit against multiple Bitcoin developers will go to trial" https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multiple-bitcoin-developers-will-go-to-trial/ https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multip...

nullc 4y ago

A con artist has filed multiple lawsuits in the UK against the current and former (increasingly, as more quit) developers of Bitcoin demanding billions of dollars, part in retaliation for their failure to back up his obviously false claims of being Bitcoin's creator and in part as part of an insane plot to steal billions of dollars in Bitcoin. Unfortunately, his efforts are financed by at least one (and possibly multiple) persons with far more wealth than morals who have been promised a share of the spoils. The poster of the linked article, Wladimir Van der Laan, was one of the most active developers of Bitcoin since 2011. I'm also another early bitcoin developer, now former, and another one of this conman's legal attack targets. A key point about vexatious litigation, especially in places like the UK which lack protections against SLAPPs, is that the attacker doesn't need to win the lawsuit to achieve his goals: He can cause his victims millions of dollars in legal costs, phenomenal impositions on their time and privacy, and great psychological stress-- losing nothing himself but what he paid for his attorneys. Winning or not is more or less incidental, as the culprit here said quite explicitly online before commencing his lawsuits (saying that the intent was to destroy his targets and their families financially and psychologically). That fact that none of us were in the UK or had any dealings in the UK doesn't matter because open source software is available everywhere. For that reason its important that it be possible to discharge frivolous litigation as quickly and efficiently as possible. As open source developers the cost/benefit of publishing our work can be pretty dicey to begin with, so it's important that the licenses we use not gratuitously open up avenues for litigation from the users since there are no revenues to pay for such things as a cost of doing business. In his first lawsuit, he alleged to own billions of dollars in Bitcoin (coins which are already well known to have belonged to the MTGox exchange) and that in 2020-- coincidentally just as his obligations to repay his lenders were coming due-- thieves entered into his home to install a "wifi pineapple" to hack his computers and steal the keys and that when he discovered this "hack" he wipes his computers to clear the compromise, conveniently making sure there would be no evidence of the "hack" or ever owning the coins to begin with. The coins in question have not moved. He then filed a lawsuit against a dozen former and current developers arguing that as developers they have a fiduciary responsibility to introduce a backdoor into the bitcoin cryptosystem to "recover" "his" coins. In three years there has been no comment or apparent action by the police over this theft which, if it were real, would likely be the highest value heist in recorded history. The case seemed obviously baseless to us, owing to obvious falsehood of his claims, the impossibility of his request (people would not adopt this backdoored version, even if anyone was willing to make themself complicit in his attempted theft by writing it for him), the pointlessness of it (he just pay someone to write it (or do it himself, if he could program) and half the defendants had long since stopped working on Bitcoin), the fact that even the police don't have a positive duty to save anyone from harm, and the unambiguous disclaimer of liabilities in our software license -- without which we never would have published it in the first place. And keep in mind that he's already been found by judges in several countries to have perjured himself, submitted faked evidence, etc. in other cases (as shown in this collage of rulings against Wright, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoMUonbXkAEbJbL?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FoMUonbXkAEbJbL?format=jpg&name=... ) The trial court agreed ( https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2022/667.html https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2022/667.html ), ruling that his case didn't have more than a fanciful chance of success. But he appealed and the decision was reversed ( https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_CA-2022-001050_1062_2184_Final_Judgment_03-02-2023.pdf https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_... ). He's now gloating on slack and twitter that he's already "won" because we'll be 'ruined' by having to pay the 7-figure cost of his successful appeal and by publishing whatever dirt he can extract from our private data obtained in discovery. (The second lawsuit, which has yet to come before a court alleges that the targets are violating "his" copyright by distributing the Bitcoin "block format" and bitcoin documentation, nevermind the fact that Bitcoin has been released under the MIT expat license since day one, and that this bozo's claims of being Bitcoin's creator are totally discredited and obviously false. He's also filed additional lawsuits against community members and journalists for expressing the view that his claims of having created Bitcoin are false). Regardless of what you think about Bitcoin, the enforceability of the disclaimer of liability is critical to all of open source and the court's unwillingness to summarily dismiss an effort to compel the authorship and publication of a backdoor in a cryptographic security scheme from a supposed user who hopes to benefit from the backdoor should be a concern to all open source developers.

kanzure 4y ago

Maybe it is time to enshrine open-source software development into law, and out of the realm of merely relying on an old copyright hack. It was a very clever hack, of course, but maybe the software industry has outgrown it and needs more legal basis to rely on.

epicureanideal 4y ago
How do we accomplish that without an army of lobbyists?
- kanzure 4y ago
  Major corporations have entire strategies built around open-source, with many household names that you know (Facebook, Microsoft, Google, ...). According to random estimates on the internet, open-source software is a $50 billion annual market. There's enough "there" there to get you something.
- ForHackernews 4y ago
  Hold the entire world's technology industry hostage. Nice multi-billion dollar business you got there, be a real shame if somebody started introducing subtly-breaking bugs into that critical library you use, wouldn't it?
  - kanzure 4y ago
    Well, extortion and blackmail isn't exactly a way of further legitimizing open-source software development.
    - ForHackernews 4y ago
      Works for the copyright industry, doesn't it?
    - voakbasda 4y ago
      What exactly do you think the legal process accomplishes, when you have a bad actor with deep pockets that sues people that do not have equal means to defend themselves?

2h 4y ago

[flagged]

josephg 4y ago
They're right - that isn't an open source license. Its a source-available license. And yeah, I guess we could pack it in and abandon the idea of opensource. But I think thats really sad. I love the fact that opensource code I've written is quietly powering things in companies large and small all over the world. Sure; it'd always be nice to be paid more for my work. But thats still really cool!
- 2h 4y ago
  > quietly powering things in companies large and small all over the world Thats cool that you feel that way, but I absolutely do not. I dont like the idea of huge companies making millions, while the authors of the software "powering" their business get nothing.
  - josephg 4y ago
    Just to be really clear, if you feel that way I'm glad you're opting out of using opensource licenses. Not everyone wants to be an opensource developer. Not all code needs to be open source to have value. There's nothing wrong with that and that makes complete sense to me. If you ever publish anything to npm / cargo / etc, I hope you make the fact your code isn't opensource very clear. I don't want to accidentally use your code in my projects, in violation of your license.
    - 2h 4y ago
      you are welcome to use my code, as long is its non-commercial use. If you wish to have commercial use, I offer license for that as well for a fee.
      - josephg 4y ago
        I understand that; but libraries I publish have dependencies. If one of my dependencies (your library) isn't licensed for commercial use, then my library also can't be used in commercial projects. Thats a decision I want to make intentionally, if at all.

2devnull 4y ago

There is a general takeaway: laws, contracts, etc are not in and of themselves indicative of legal outcomes. Lawyers and process influence legal outcomes. That shouldn’t discourage the use of contracts, licenses, etc. But it should make you prudential when it comes to appropriate level of concern related to legal matters.

tooltitude 4y ago

We have been working on a VS Code extension (link in my profile), which released some time ago. I had a thought that may be we should stick with the approach used by most of the ecosystem, when license is linked from the extension page. However, we decided to show accept/reject dialog. I am glad that we did it this way. I have seen a large number of products (from SaaS to desktop apps) which don't properly ask for license acceptance to reduce sign up friction. They might be affected in the same way (I am not a lawyer).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
midmagico 4y ago
This is irrelevant, since the theory is that a fiduciary duty exists completely absent any interaction, and any payment, whatsoever, or in the event literally anyone else pays you to do the work (including your employer), you are now a fiduciary of everyone who uses your software in any financial sense whatsoever.
- tooltitude 4y ago
  So do you mean that limited liability clauses essentially void? This looks really absurd. How could we develop and distribute any software in such a context?

braingenious 4y ago

For those of us that have absolutely no idea why this is on the top of this website: This was posted by a Bitcoin developer. Apparently we are supposed to recognize them by name and immediately remember whatever lawsuits they’re involved in, in the UK.

coldtea 4y ago
Apparently it's their blog, they have no responsibility for anybody to understand their posts nor are they required to explain their references....
- braingenious 4y ago
  I didn’t comment on the existence of the blog post, I commented on a link without context being on the front page of an unrelated website :)
  - HashBasher 4y ago
    I love the sting that HN has for bitcoin. Find me one other HN post that has full context. They're all links with the title of the linked source. This is a link aggregator.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ducktective 4y ago
  No one is at fault here...usually some top comment provides context..this is a link aggregator
- rosywoozlechan 4y ago
  it's their blog and they're entitled to write it however they want? The author writes some statement on their blog that unexpectedly gets traction on HN and because they didn't anticipate that, they're the bad guy for not writing the blog post as accessible and informative as possible? This person just wanted to note their thoughts down on their personal blog, but now they've wronged you somehow?

asperous 4y ago

Here is a link for context: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-uk-case-against-16-bitcoin-developers-to-go-to-full-trial-report/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-u...

ratg13 4y ago
If Craig Wright was Satoshi, as he claims, he should have over a million unspent btc. The only logical conclusion from fighting this battle is that Craig Wright is a liar.
- layer8 4y ago
  Or he forgot his wallet password. ;)
  - peppermint_gum 4y ago
    This is pretty much what this lawsuit is about. He claims that it's bitcoin developers' fault that he lost access to "his" billions and they should restore it somehow.
rom-antics 4y ago
> In 2021, the London High Court gave Craig Wright's lawyers permission to serve papers to the 16 developers, even if they don't reside in the U.K. So what happens if they just don't show up to court? Sure you'll lose by default judgment, and then you can ignore the judgment, right? If I got a court summons from some random country like Sudan or Botswana or the UK I would just ignore it. How could that backfire assuming I don't plan on traveling to Sudan in my lifetime?
- jahewson 4y ago
  The smart move would be for them to club together and go and win in court, this case seems pretty ridiculous and the premise is very flimsy. Having a loss like this on the books and in case law would be harmful to the ongoing concerns of bitcoin.

solomatov 4y ago

I am not a lawyer, but it seems the issue is the following: - For a contract to work it should be accepted - OSS projects which are just available online, could be download without performing or even reading a license - One of the important clauses to shield from legal liability is limitation of liability clause, i.e. you use the software as is, and won't be able to make the author accountable for damages caused by software - MIT license has such a clause - We now have a precedent when a developer is held liable due to damage allegedly caused by such software Consequences of this precedent are super scary

dleslie 4y ago
It's not about damages caused; the suit is over a claim that open source developers have a fiduciary/beneficiary relationship with users, and so have an obligation to act in their users' best interests. In which case, BitCoin devs would need to fork the chain to hand a few hefty wallets over.
- nullc 4y ago
  > In which case, BitCoin devs would need to fork the chain to hand a few hefty wallets over. It's even worse than that, of course, because creating the backdoored version they demanded wouldn't and couldn't make anyone run it (and it's inconceivable to me that more than a negligible number would-- particularly seeing how there are no automatic updates by design for security reasons). Their position is that we're responsible for it being effective too. I think if it were just a demand to backdoor the software one of the defendants might have done so-- "Here you go, now screw off". But that clearly wouldn't have made the plaintiff go away (and might have landed them in litigation from the actual owners of the assets, even though the backdoor had no effect except maybe the creation of yet another forked blockchain that no one uses).
nullc 4y ago
> We now have a precedent when a developer is held liable due to damage allegedly caused by such software Forced to go to a full trial over it, instead of being able discharge it on a summary basis. This sounds a lot better, but in terms of the impact it's not clear how much better it is-- the cost from this will be almost entirely in defending it.

coldtea 4y ago

>I strongly regret it. It is a fool’s game in retrospect. The no-warranty clause apparently doesn’t hold up in court (at least in the UK) Doesn't it? Has anybody been succesfully sued for anything from a non-customer using his open source MIT-licensed software?

spac 4y ago
they are now
- coldtea 4y ago
  Key point being the "succesfully" qualifier Though, as I understood from reading comments here, the UK legal system is so fucked up and medieval that they don't have to win to succeed at their goal. So much for Magna Carta
  - nullc 4y ago
    It's also true in the US that you can damage someone gravely through a lawsuit that's ultimately unsuccessful. The UK appears to be worse, both through the total absence of anti-SLAPP protections but also because norms that make it more process-bound willing to entertain such a weak case. The UK "loser pays" model seems like it would be a benefit, but since the norm that they only pay 70% and that your share can be diminished by presenting a comprehensive case (diminished by every argument you lose) the incentives are complicated and its far from clear to me that it doesn't make it worse.

dannyboland 4y ago

Would publishing code under a limited company be a viable approach to avoid liabilities from OSS? Of course it shouldn’t be necessary, I’m just trying to think of a practical way for an individual to avoid this scenario.

dleslie 4y ago
Nope; in fact, the MIT license isn't really of consequence here except in that it doesn't address a possible fiduciary/beneficiary relationship with users.
tooltitude 4y ago
As far as I remember, the author of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Protecting/dp/0596517963 https://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Pro... Recommended a scheme to shield OSS developers from liability. I am not a lawyer, so it looked a bit overly cautious to me, but it seems that was a good idea.
- tooltitude 4y ago
  See the chapter 14 called incorporating as non-profit. He mentions a case where Gaim (a messenger software) developers were sued by AOL.
nullc 4y ago
Some of the defendants (the developers of Bitcoin ABC now called eCash, an alternative cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin and its blockchain) had organized their development under an LLC. Hasn't helped so far, though in the unlikely event that the case is ultimately lost it might help them constrain recovery of damages to the assets of the LLC. I think in general structural improvement like that are most effective against 'honest' opponents-- someone whos goal is to win and recover their costs and damages. A legal structure that limits liability makes recovery less likely, so they don't bring the action at all. For an opponent who's goal is to harass and ultimately crush the opposition, I think that kind of tool is probably less effective. It's also harder to justify doing when you're just following a volunteer passion over something speculative and worthless (as was the case of the Bitcoin related defendants-- almost all of whom started close to the beginning of Bitcoin). [And as an aside: to the extent that development is done on an uncompensated purely voluntary basis, it would be difficulty to legitimize the LLC, e.g. little to no income or expenses or other documentation that the LLC is anything but a piece of paper.]

throwaway69123 4y ago

Wouldnt this be easily fixed by putting in a clause that defines the consideration to acquire warranty. "WARRENTY CAN BE PURCHASED FROM ALL CONTRIBUTORS FOR EQUAL PAYMENTS OF THE ENTIRE ANNUAL GLOBAL GDP AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE IN US DOLLARS"

SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
Not every jurisdiction allows disclaiming the various possible implied warranties (such as the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose).
- throwaway69123 4y ago
  What if contributors formed a nonprofit LLC in a favorable jurisdiction and then all the liability would rest on this assetless organization.
  - nullc 4y ago
    He's suing the defendants as individuals even where an LLC exists and was a real entity -- the developers of some of the bitcoin alternatives being sued performed their development work as a business. It may ultimately be that if the case was lost and the plaintiff tried to domesticate their judgement the LLC would successfully act as a shield. But you dun screwed up if that's what ultimately saved you. The advantage of these structures is that they make you less likely to get sued in the first place, since they potentially bound the recovery. -- but that doesn't obviously work against a vexatious litigant whose real goal isn't to win by merit and whos case isn't being funded by an attorney operating on contingency. What you're suggesting also might be at rather large risk of being ignored by the court as pretext, or esp to the extent that it's not pretext, would be viewed by developers as compromising their independence, which is quite important to them. There is no shortage of alternative structures that you could imagine putting in place if you knew in advance that this would happen ... but if every time you went to contribute to a piece of open source you needed to first form a non-profit it's pretty clear that there wouldn't be any open source! :)
4y ago

rigelbm 4y ago

Not A Lawyer. The Court of Appeals decided to take this case to trial because it is novel and will probably serve as precedent for future cases. There has been no decision on liability and what not. Author is a bit overreacting. Sure, it's annoying and all to have to defend yourself. But seems unplausible that a decision would be made to ignore license for liability given all the repercussions, not just to this case, but to the software industry as a whole.

Blackthorn 4y ago
It's not "annoying", it's ruinously expensive.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
I’m not concerned that the case will result in a decision voiding the liability clause of the MIT license in the UK. That seems so unlikely as to be amusing we’re even discussing it. I’m concerned that any court… at least any court with a reputation remotely in the realm of “not a plainly obvious farce intentionally designed to boast its illegitimacy for intimidation purposes”… would pick a precedent-setting case of this magnitude, where the defendant is anything but flanked by an army of lawyers. By all means, set the obvious precedent. But there has got to be a case which isn’t set up to probably ruin the life of an eventually vindicated open source developer defendant. Edit: and I should also clarify I’m not concerned about crypto or whatever. I’m concerned that anyone at all working on clearly warranty-free software can have their lives sucked up into a case of national and probably international impact just because some court decides to make an example of their plaintiff.
chippiewill 4y ago
> The Court of Appeals decided to take this case to trial because it is novel and will probably serve as precedent for future cases. They didn't decide to take it to trial for this reason. If they needed it for precedent they'd just wait for the next case instead. They decided the case needs to go to trial because there are questions around fiduciary responsibility that they can't answer without a trial.
- 4y ago

risk_factor 4y ago

I hope that developers will not respond by updating their open source licenses. “This software may not be used by craig Wright or any organisation affiliated with him, nor any developers associated with his companies in any way including vendors, contractors and employees” Would be a real shame.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

The good news is that this is the UK court system. Unless I'm mistaken, the loser is ultimately responsible for the victor's court fees, and in this case, the other party claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, so I think we can pretty safely assume that the other party will win and presumable recover a lot of his expenses (perhaps someone from the UK can let me know how incorrect I am?). Unfortunately, it will likely be quite traumatic and expensive to get through the trial first.

kanzure 4y ago
> I think we can pretty safely assume that the other party will win https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/06/29/uk-court-orders-bitcoinorg-to-remove-white-paper-following-craig-wright-lawsuit/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/06/29/uk-court-orders-... "Unfortunately, the court rules allowed for me to be sued pseudonymously, however, I couldn't defend myself pseudonymously. So I was put in an impossible situation of losing my privacy or losing the case in a default judgment. It sucks, but there's nothing more I could have done, really."
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  Ah, so they had to choose between publishing their identity or losing (and therefore owing 35,000 pounds in court fees)? Well, that does suck.
  - nullc 4y ago
    Cobra attempted to pay the 35k GBP but they returned it because he wouldn't identify himself, claiming that AML laws prevented them from accepting the payment without his identity. The 35k was an amount the judge awarded pending a cost assessment from Wright's opposition. The fees were then increased to ~£600k after they submitted the cost assessment, which Cobra attempted to challenge but was denied again on the basis of anonymous parties having no due process rights in the the UK. I have no idea if Cobra has the means to pay such a large amount, if they'd even take it either, but even if he did-- it would be terrible and not just for him personally since all that money would be sunk back into suing other Bitcoin community members.

not2b 4y ago

There is no alternative license text that could protect against something like this if the UK courts really want cases like this to proceed to trial. The problem is not the MIT license, so suggestions for alternative license texts aren't really relevant. The issue seems to be: some crank claims he lost a lot of money and he wants to somehow force the Bitcoin developers to get him his money back. If judges don't understand the technical issues, they can punt and say "let's have a trial to work this out", ignoring how expensive this will be. edited to add "claims he" based on a comment

globalreset 4y ago
Didn't loose any money. He is lying he ever had them. Multiple judges in multiple cases identifies his forgeries and lies. He is a serious fraud, but has some deep money behind him, so he can bully people via legal system.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  You mean Laanwj, the author of the post? Can you provide more details? Edit: I see that you were referring to Wright, not to Laanwj.
nullc 4y ago
It's not entirely clear to me that improvements to the license text couldn't help. For example, increasing its strength to an indemnification might have been effective here (at the very least it would put us in a good position to start demanding that he pay the cost of our defense right out of the gate). It's somewhat common for commercial click-wrap agreements to include indemnifications now, but it probably shouldn't be-- they're potentially unfair and over-powered which is why I haven't tried my hand at drafting language. But you're right that the license isn't the primary problem as they can't do something about an excessively dysfunctional legal system. The UK courts already have a pretty bad reputation internationally in other areas, such as in abusing them for defamation lawsuits resulting in US legislative action to block them (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act ).
4y ago

gavinhoward 4y ago

Oh boy. I just made a change to my licenses ([1]) to fight something like this. It basically makes the license null and void if any part of the disclaimer is not recognized by law. [2] And because of this, I'm going to expedite getting these licenses picked over by a lawyer. Nevertheless, I'm not working on any more FOSS until that lawyer says it's safe or the UK pulls back from absurdity. [1]: https://yzena.com/licenses/ https://yzena.com/licenses/ [2]: https://yzena.com/yzena-viral-user-license/#legality-of-disclaimer https://yzena.com/yzena-viral-user-license/#legality-of-disc...

ProAm 4y ago
Can you not just add a clause that says this product is not allowed to be used in the UK?
- gavinhoward 4y ago
  I could, but I would like to strive for generality and cover other problematic countries at the same time.
- justusw 4y ago
  It would have a hard time meeting the open source definition, if that is the intention here, which I assume. > 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups > The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
  - ProAm 4y ago
    But the license does nothing for you in the UK, so time for change? I appreciate and like the intention behind being open source, but intentions and actions are not always on par.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
May as well not leave the house, too. There is danger out there. In all seriousness, aren’t you overreacting a bit?

modriano 4y ago

Oh, this is about Craig "Faketoshi" Wright? Based on the ALAB (All Lawyers Are Bastards) episode on this case [0], I thought that Wright was caught in a bunch of obvious lies, tax fraud, and other fraudulent representations to the court and Wright would just be annihilated in court. Is this guy really trying to move this case forward? [0] https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the-perfect-client https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the-p...

jesterman 4y ago
He has moved it forward. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-uk-case-against-16-bitcoin-developers-to-go-to-full-trial-report/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/03/craig-wrights-u... All developers can/will be served papers (and forced to travel to the UK?)

ratandtan 4y ago

[dead]

antiquark 4y ago

We need a new open source license: UAYOR: Use At Your Own Risk. "This software will cause death, destruction, financial loss, and will make people think you're uncool for using it."

jnsaff2 4y ago

So wright is claiming that devs should get him 111k btc based on them having to take the users best interest into account. 111k is like half a percent of btc? Them changing the code to hand over 111k would have severe adverse effect on the value lost to the rest of the btc holders. The trust lost should wipe out all value of all btc. So the main claim that users best interest has to be upheld is bunk. He is not the only user. Personally I am quite torn. From the OSS side this trial is obviously tragic and a shame. Then again it would be hilarious it btc would finally die because something like this.

jwilk 4y ago

It looks like in the mean time, the site disappeared. Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20230206215930/https://laanwj.github.io/2023/02/06/regrets.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230206215930/https://laanwj.gi...

jerry1979 4y ago

Does anyone know of an open source license that geo-fences countries like the UK?