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From TFA > Is this a legal document? > No, it isn’t. If the project is under an open source license, it means that everyone can share a copy – even on GitHub

by lloeki 3y ago

From TFA > Is this a legal document? > No, it isn’t. If the project is under an open source license, it means that everyone can share a copy – even on GitHub – of the licensed material under certain conditions. A license restricting this right wouldn’t be open source anymore. However, since GitHub may not respect the terms of licensed code that is hosted on their servers, not uploading the code of others there is, in fact, an ethical choice. emphasis mine. It's a "please be nice", not a "I want to enforce things"

M4v3R 3y ago
I don’t get this argument. “Here’s a legal document we wrote that says that you’re allowed to redistribute our code. But aside from it we’d like to you to not redistribute it on platforms we don’t like for whatever reason. But we won’t spell it out explicitly in the document itself because reasons, instead we’re guilt tripping everyone who does”. I respect developers right to put any restrictions on the code they share with the world. But I believe it should either be explicit or not restricted at all. Either write the license that says exactly what you want or otherwise don’t shame people into the desired behavior. Edit: one could even add a more generic statement to the license stating that it’s forbidden to share the code on any platform that would use it to train their AIs per their ToS, so you don’t need to single out GitHub and potentially others in the future.
- tpxl 3y ago
  There's a ton of stuff people do because they were asked, not because they're legally required.
- xmzx 3y ago
  You don't get ethics and morality not bound by law?
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Ethics is subjective, the law less so. Most people don’t find GitHub to be unethical so the author will have a hard time convincing people without using the license terms.
    - rob74 3y ago
      Well, that's the exact reason why they wrote this page: to explain to people why they think GitHub is unethical, and maybe convince them. It's the same as calls to boycott various other companies: they haven't necessarily done anything illegal, but if you convince enough people not to use their products/services anymore, you might make an impact...
    - proto_lambda 3y ago
      The author really doesn't have to convince anyone, "please don't do $X" is more than enough to state their wish for you not to do $X.
      - mfru 3y ago
        i think it is quite scary that so many in here would just not honor a simple "please don't do it." it is a wish. if someone says "please don't wear shoes in my home" i hope you would honor their very simple and understandable personal wish without setting up a contract for it? i mean, just be a bit more human, please.
        Gigachad 3y ago
        I see it more like an artist telling me “please hang this picture in this orientation” but I prefer it differently and don’t see any reason why me hanging it the way I want in my home affects the author. My copy on GitHub doesn’t detract from their copy.
        matthew9219 3y ago
        My aunt once told me "Please don't think negatively of religious people." Stallman would prefer I not use any closed source software to read his blog, including OS, drivers, web browser, etc. People routinely ignore unreasonable requests. Asking me to not wear shoes in your home is reasonable. Asking me not to give a copy to Joe after telling me I can give a copy to whomever I want is unreasonable.
        3y ago
  - newswasboring 3y ago
    This is neither ethics nor morality, it's just someone's desire. Which is fine, people should have desires towards their society.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  A licensor cannot predict the future. When the GPL was written decades ago, nobody predicted that BigTech would start using it on their servers to offer it as "services", and claim that they didn't need to distribute the source code of the customisations they made because they were (technically) not distributing the software itself but only running it on their servers. Anyone who understood the intent and philosophy of the GPL license understood this as a bogus and unethical argument. But it was believed to be legally tenable (1). So the AGPL license was created to counter this move and preserve the original philosophy of the GPL that users of a software should have access to the source code. (1) Though I don't know if this has been actually tested in court - courts in India have more freedom to broadly interpret social contracts like the GPL, unlike the US courts, and a positive outcome in favour of upholding the license even in such cases could be possible).
  - Juliate 3y ago
    > Anyone who understood the intent and philosophy of the GPL license understood this as a bogus and unethical argument. I disagree here. The idea, intent, philosophy is one (crucial) thing, the resulting practical artefact (here the license) is another. It works exactly as it was designed to work. People/companies modifying GPL software for their own use (internal or external) without redistributing the software itself (so without requirement to redistribute the code) existed before SAAS grew on, only at the time, the small scale of this made it a bargain that was "interesting" only depending on one's capacity/hubris to maintain an internal fork on their own. *aaS hugely tipped the scale, and the side effects, but the mechanics are the same. And yes, that may not have been the original intent, and the AGPL is as valid a license as a reaction to provide a new tool more in line with the original intent, but that doesn't make the use of the existing GPL all within what it actually enables anyone to, invalid or unethical. (but maybe only in a specific perspective of the framework of the original intent)
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  When you decide a license, you can't know what currently existing or future platforms will some day start to violate an aspect of the license or of copyright itself. Does it make sense to add a retroactive clause, then?
- hibbelig 3y ago
  There is no law that says you have to say “Good morning”, but yet parents teach their children to do. How is this case different?
Juliate 3y ago
It would greatly improve by some text revisions: "my code", "We", on a generic page without clear authorship or object, on a dedicated subdomain, on a hosting domain, without a signature or contact or kind of option for a webring. It took me some time to get that this is a generic call (to be followed and reused), still with no clear ownership, rather than a specific claim to a specific code/project (or is it?).
ignoramous 3y ago
Ethically, you'd think Copilot aligns with the ethos Open Source software. It isn't far off that multiple open source Copilot equivalent get as good as the commerical one. And we are all here for it!
Gigachad 3y ago
I don’t have any ethical dilemma by posting some open source code on the site I prefer.
throwaway63086 3y ago
>> Is this a legal document? >> No, it isn’t. My limited understanding of international copyright law is that copyright disclaimers/licenses per Berne Convention are documents stating the author's wishes no different than this one. When a judge is going to be shown this page where the author states his explicit wish to not have his code uploaded code on Github, in direct conflict with his wishes stated in the LICENSE.txt file, I don't see how it will hold up in court as free software code.

by lloeki 3y ago

M4v3R 3y ago

I don’t get this argument. “Here’s a legal document we wrote that says that you’re allowed to redistribute our code. But aside from it we’d like to you to not redistribute it on platforms we don’t like for whatever reason. But we won’t spell it out explicitly in the document itself because reasons, instead we’re guilt tripping everyone who does”. I respect developers right to put any restrictions on the code they share with the world. But I believe it should either be explicit or not restricted at all. Either write the license that says exactly what you want or otherwise don’t shame people into the desired behavior. Edit: one could even add a more generic statement to the license stating that it’s forbidden to share the code on any platform that would use it to train their AIs per their ToS, so you don’t need to single out GitHub and potentially others in the future.

tpxl 3y ago
There's a ton of stuff people do because they were asked, not because they're legally required.
xmzx 3y ago
You don't get ethics and morality not bound by law?
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Ethics is subjective, the law less so. Most people don’t find GitHub to be unethical so the author will have a hard time convincing people without using the license terms.
  - rob74 3y ago
    Well, that's the exact reason why they wrote this page: to explain to people why they think GitHub is unethical, and maybe convince them. It's the same as calls to boycott various other companies: they haven't necessarily done anything illegal, but if you convince enough people not to use their products/services anymore, you might make an impact...
  - proto_lambda 3y ago
    The author really doesn't have to convince anyone, "please don't do $X" is more than enough to state their wish for you not to do $X.
    - mfru 3y ago
      i think it is quite scary that so many in here would just not honor a simple "please don't do it." it is a wish. if someone says "please don't wear shoes in my home" i hope you would honor their very simple and understandable personal wish without setting up a contract for it? i mean, just be a bit more human, please.
      - Gigachad 3y ago
        I see it more like an artist telling me “please hang this picture in this orientation” but I prefer it differently and don’t see any reason why me hanging it the way I want in my home affects the author. My copy on GitHub doesn’t detract from their copy.
      - matthew9219 3y ago
        My aunt once told me "Please don't think negatively of religious people." Stallman would prefer I not use any closed source software to read his blog, including OS, drivers, web browser, etc. People routinely ignore unreasonable requests. Asking me to not wear shoes in your home is reasonable. Asking me not to give a copy to Joe after telling me I can give a copy to whomever I want is unreasonable.
        3y ago
- newswasboring 3y ago
  This is neither ethics nor morality, it's just someone's desire. Which is fine, people should have desires towards their society.
webmobdev 3y ago
A licensor cannot predict the future. When the GPL was written decades ago, nobody predicted that BigTech would start using it on their servers to offer it as "services", and claim that they didn't need to distribute the source code of the customisations they made because they were (technically) not distributing the software itself but only running it on their servers. Anyone who understood the intent and philosophy of the GPL license understood this as a bogus and unethical argument. But it was believed to be legally tenable (1). So the AGPL license was created to counter this move and preserve the original philosophy of the GPL that users of a software should have access to the source code. (1) Though I don't know if this has been actually tested in court - courts in India have more freedom to broadly interpret social contracts like the GPL, unlike the US courts, and a positive outcome in favour of upholding the license even in such cases could be possible).
- Juliate 3y ago
  > Anyone who understood the intent and philosophy of the GPL license understood this as a bogus and unethical argument. I disagree here. The idea, intent, philosophy is one (crucial) thing, the resulting practical artefact (here the license) is another. It works exactly as it was designed to work. People/companies modifying GPL software for their own use (internal or external) without redistributing the software itself (so without requirement to redistribute the code) existed before SAAS grew on, only at the time, the small scale of this made it a bargain that was "interesting" only depending on one's capacity/hubris to maintain an internal fork on their own. *aaS hugely tipped the scale, and the side effects, but the mechanics are the same. And yes, that may not have been the original intent, and the AGPL is as valid a license as a reaction to provide a new tool more in line with the original intent, but that doesn't make the use of the existing GPL all within what it actually enables anyone to, invalid or unethical. (but maybe only in a specific perspective of the framework of the original intent)
the_gipsy 3y ago
When you decide a license, you can't know what currently existing or future platforms will some day start to violate an aspect of the license or of copyright itself. Does it make sense to add a retroactive clause, then?
hibbelig 3y ago
There is no law that says you have to say “Good morning”, but yet parents teach their children to do. How is this case different?

Juliate 3y ago

It would greatly improve by some text revisions: "my code", "We", on a generic page without clear authorship or object, on a dedicated subdomain, on a hosting domain, without a signature or contact or kind of option for a webring. It took me some time to get that this is a generic call (to be followed and reused), still with no clear ownership, rather than a specific claim to a specific code/project (or is it?).

ignoramous 3y ago

Ethically, you'd think Copilot aligns with the ethos Open Source software. It isn't far off that multiple open source Copilot equivalent get as good as the commerical one. And we are all here for it!

Gigachad 3y ago

I don’t have any ethical dilemma by posting some open source code on the site I prefer.

throwaway63086 3y ago

>> Is this a legal document? >> No, it isn’t. My limited understanding of international copyright law is that copyright disclaimers/licenses per Berne Convention are documents stating the author's wishes no different than this one. When a judge is going to be shown this page where the author states his explicit wish to not have his code uploaded code on Github, in direct conflict with his wishes stated in the LICENSE.txt file, I don't see how it will hold up in court as free software code.