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AFAIK Attribution is the minimal requirement for all the free/libre/open source licenses, as well as (almost?[1]) all of the open content licenses. If you plag

AFAIK Attribution is the minimal requirement for all the free/libre/open source licenses, as well as (almost?[1]) all of the open content licenses. If you plagiarize, you will also tend to automatically violate both copyright law and most licenses, including BSD, MIT, and GPL. The GPLv3 is a bit more complicated than the other two, but section 4 and 5 state that you must include "appropriate copyright notices", which means full attribution. Here's a more in depth discussion specific to the GPLv3: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4577/does-gplv3-require-attribution https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4577/does-gpl... [1] (edit) I was thinking that CC-0 (being close to PD) would not require attribution. But on looking it up, it's a bit more complicated. (edit 2) In general I don't think "that is understood" holds. If you plagiarize copyrighted content, you might be breaking one or more laws. Depending on what you did exactly, how much you did, and how nasty the other party is feeling: you may be forced to take "your" work down, delete it outright, hand it over to the other party, pay damages, pay a large fine, or even go to jail. (edit 3) I agree that plagiarism by itself need not be illegal in some contexts. But if you then distribute your plagiarized work (which is very easy to end up doing these days), you do end up infringing copyright law.

kazinator 4y ago
FOSS licenses typically require the preservation of the copyright clause. They are not mainly doing this for attribution rights, but to preserve the licensing terms: copied works (perhaps with modification) are licensed to subsequent users the same way. This has the side effect of discouraging plagiarism, since it's hard to present something as being exclusively your product if someone's copyright license is prominently displayed. The USA copyright law doesn't mention the word "plagiarism", though there is a small section in it entitled "Rights of certain authors to attribution and integrity". I'm pretty sure FOSS licenses are not relying on this. They rely on the idea that the license lapses if any of its terms are not met. When the license lapses, then the right to redistribute is revoked. A lawsuit revolving around someone removing copyright notices would most liklely be based on unauthorized reproduction (the license to redistribute is not granted to someone who removes the notices), not violating attribution rights (license to redistribute is unconditionally granted, but authors retain attribution rights, which are being stepped on). Software licenses as a broader class not limited to FOSS do not necessarily discourage plagiarism. In proprietary software, it's common to be able to license a software component on such terms that its authors need not be mentioned anywhere; neither the binary build of the program, nor any accompanying documentation have to display any notices related to the licensed part. If you license parts of a program in this way, and say that you wrote all of it, that is plagiarism. In an academic setting, it could get you disciplined and kicked out of school. Homework writing services probably license their solutions on similar terms (out of necessity): you may present the purchased solution as your own work. Free software writers are not mainly concerned with plagiarism. You're encouraged to take a program and make it yours, if it doesn't work the way you want it. You may add your own name to the copyright notice if you make more than just trivial changes, and if you add new files that are not a derived work of the program, you can use your own license for them, provided it's compatible. Someone who, in redistributing some code, neglected some requirement stated in its free license isn't ipso facto a plagiarist: i.e. isn't guilty of fraudulently presenting the entire program as their sole creation. Situations in which that is the case will be painfully obvious. Therefore, in summary, it's basically just trolling to throw around the word "plagiarism" when someone made a mistake or oversight in some redistributing use of a program.

kazinator 4y ago

FOSS licenses typically require the preservation of the copyright clause. They are not mainly doing this for attribution rights, but to preserve the licensing terms: copied works (perhaps with modification) are licensed to subsequent users the same way. This has the side effect of discouraging plagiarism, since it's hard to present something as being exclusively your product if someone's copyright license is prominently displayed. The USA copyright law doesn't mention the word "plagiarism", though there is a small section in it entitled "Rights of certain authors to attribution and integrity". I'm pretty sure FOSS licenses are not relying on this. They rely on the idea that the license lapses if any of its terms are not met. When the license lapses, then the right to redistribute is revoked. A lawsuit revolving around someone removing copyright notices would most liklely be based on unauthorized reproduction (the license to redistribute is not granted to someone who removes the notices), not violating attribution rights (license to redistribute is unconditionally granted, but authors retain attribution rights, which are being stepped on). Software licenses as a broader class not limited to FOSS do not necessarily discourage plagiarism. In proprietary software, it's common to be able to license a software component on such terms that its authors need not be mentioned anywhere; neither the binary build of the program, nor any accompanying documentation have to display any notices related to the licensed part. If you license parts of a program in this way, and say that you wrote all of it, that is plagiarism. In an academic setting, it could get you disciplined and kicked out of school. Homework writing services probably license their solutions on similar terms (out of necessity): you may present the purchased solution as your own work. Free software writers are not mainly concerned with plagiarism. You're encouraged to take a program and make it yours, if it doesn't work the way you want it. You may add your own name to the copyright notice if you make more than just trivial changes, and if you add new files that are not a derived work of the program, you can use your own license for them, provided it's compatible. Someone who, in redistributing some code, neglected some requirement stated in its free license isn't ipso facto a plagiarist: i.e. isn't guilty of fraudulently presenting the entire program as their sole creation. Situations in which that is the case will be painfully obvious. Therefore, in summary, it's basically just trolling to throw around the word "plagiarism" when someone made a mistake or oversight in some redistributing use of a program.