9 ms·

Do open source licences cover the Ship of Theseus?

146 points by edent 3y ago

brudgers 3y ago
If it matters ethically, then asking the question already provides the answer because foregoing actions which might be gotten away with is what it means to act ethically. If it matters legally pay your attorney for legal advice, because there is no government agency that enforces licenses, the degree to which a license matters is the degree to which someone is willing to lawyer up. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  You're just punting on the question. To rephrase, does it matter ethically, legally, or at all? (Yes, I understand that if you're basing a business off it then it matters legally differently than if you're just hacking away on a hobby project, but the law covers all things and ethics is not confined to hobbies.)
  - brudgers 3y ago
    None of it matters to me enough to pay a lawyer. Because I am not in the circumstances described in the question. Or your comment. All three cases, yours, the article, and mine depend on the specific facts.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > If it matters ethically When you use the word 'it', are you referring to "giving credit", or the question "Do I need to give credit"? The former would mean "If giving credit matters ethically, then asking the question provides the answer [which is yes.]". But that's just asking the same question as OP. Does giving credit matter? The latter would mean "If you felt like you might need to give credit, that the answer to that question matters ethically, then that provides the answer [which is yes, you need to give credit]". But that sounds wrong to me. That kind of logic would turn every positive impulse into an instant obligation.
  - brudgers 3y ago
    Every ‘it’ is the same. Ethical behavior is erring on the side of caution in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, or doubt. That’s what makes it ethical behavior. Giving unnecessary credit is not unethical.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Donating to and volunteering for every good cause you see, every time you see it, will bankrupt you and deprive you of sleep pretty fast. You can't err on the side of nicety in every single situation. If an argument depends on there being no cost, then you're not actually making an ethical determination, you're just saying "better safe than sorry". Caution and ethics are not the same thing.
      - brudgers 3y ago
        I didn’t say anything about volunteering.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Your argument was that I should err on the side of ethical behavior every time I'm at all unsure, right? Donating or volunteering is more ethical than not donating or volunteering, right? If both of those are true, then every time I consider donating or volunteering I would be obligated to do it.
        brudgers 3y ago
        I have been explaining. I am not arguing. It is fine by me for us to have differences of opinion.
resoluteteeth 3y ago
I think the whole idea of "clean-room reverse engineering" is essentially predicated on the idea that copyright would indeed apply to a scenario where you take a copyrighted work and incrementally replace all the individual pieces
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  That's funny - I think the opposite! Clean-room reverse engineering would give you the same indivisible line of code (background-color: #xyz;) so it can't be required... or can it?
  - resoluteteeth 3y ago
    I'm thinking of stuff like the re-implementation of the IBM bios where the re-implementation had to effectively match a certain undocumented specification but not necessarily follow the actual implementation from the original bios but in some sense clean-room reverse engineering does necessarily entail that certain things will be identical, and I guess the scenario in the article could be describing a situation where none of the final product matches the original template at all, so maybe it is slightly different, and in that case I guess there wouldn't be a copyright issue at all? It would be more like how when movies are made they tend to use existing music as a placeholder until the final music is made, and it doesn't seem like anyone considers the final movie to require a license from the creator of the placeholder song even though the direction of the final work is often strongly influenced by its pacing
- tobyjsullivan 3y ago
  Back in the IBM BIOS days, they were writing machine code. Basically a series of operation codes (ie, numbers). Two people trying to implement the same complex system were almost guaranteed to produce the same code for several components. A clean-room procedure offers a verifiable defense that the duplication was not a result of copying. Today we use much higher level languages so it’s trivial to write the same code a hundred different ways. I’m not sure a clean room is worth the effort other than to force the engineer to not be lazy and copy. All that said, there’s also copyright rules covering derivative works. I’m sure there’s plenty of precedent in literature to cover “copying without actually copying” but I wouldn’t know how that works.
kuratkull 3y ago
50/50 imho. You still change what was there to begin with,and it made you structure your new additions into the one created by the author. Basically if you look at your code evolve in eg. Git commits, you see how it evolves out of the licensed code, thus carrying the license with each commit. Not sure how I feel about that though in extreme cases like yours. Someone can create a "hello world" file and add a license to it, how should we handle that?
jrochkind1 3y ago
Legally in the US it's a question of whether copyright was violated or not when you copy a tiny bit. I'm not a lawyer but I feel confident in saying that you can copy a background color without a license, because a background color alone is definitely not copyrightable. But in the grey area... it's a grey area. There is lots of case law we could look at, but ultimately it depends on what a judge or jury would think if anyone took you to court. And sometimes they do surprising things. Which is why for well-resourced commercial operations (that have more to lose and more to gain), they don't take the risk. In this case... is anyone going to even notice or get mad if they notice you took 40% of a free HTML template for some random not-million-dollar website? Probabably not? If they do, then saying sorry and adding the attribution will probably suffice? That's the legal situation. I think it is reasonable to ask an ethical question separated from legality, which is a different question. Sometimes I ask the authors of open-source-licensed things what they would think about my use.
- brookst 3y ago
  Colors are not copyrightable, but they can be protected by trademarks: https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-2012-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-...
  - jrochkind1 3y ago
    True. As the article you linked to explains, a trademark on a color would prevent you from using the color(s) in ways that compete or confuse with the original company/product, but not any use of a color at all. It almost definitely isn't going to apply to the bg color an open sourced HTML template chose.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Though, to be more precise, it's protecting colors as part of the trade dress of a brand. In general, some especially vigilant trademark enforcement aside, you can use the color so long as it's not being used in a way that could plausibly cause confusion with the trademark holder.
- xen2xen1 3y ago
grayhatter 3y ago
The only responsability is for attribution? Then I think you have an ethical and contractual obligation to include it. Ship of Theseus or not, the ship you're currently riding on only exists because of their work. Even if you believe like me, that the current author is entitled to both primary authorship and ownership. Had you never started from their work, no ship, or an entirely different ship would exist instead. Even if there's so little left of the original that it's meaningless, you should still credit them if for historical context alone. Credit isn't a zero sum game. You don't lose value by including others contributions. You should be proud to accept credit for your work! You should be willing to share that credit as widely as you're able. And no one should ever feel guilty for standing on the shoulders of giants.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I wouldn't bother for a background color. For something more substantial but still minimal, I'd probably figure no skin off my nose to give credit. There is a bit of a rub if the original is under a copyleft license and you want to release under a permissive license. Giving attribution could be a bit of a red flag--and maybe it should be unless the code that made it into the final product really is minimal.
latexr 3y ago
> Is anyone seriously going to argue that I stole half a dozen bytes? The license itself might provide a clue. For example, the MIT license¹ says (emphasis mine): > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Half a dozen bytes are unlikely to constitute a “substantial portion” of the software. ¹ https://opensource.org/license/mit/ https://opensource.org/license/mit/
- Tomte 3y ago
  The LGPL has this provision: "You may convey such object code under terms of your choice, provided that, if the incorporated material is not limited to numerical parameters, data structure layouts and accessors, or small macros, inline functions and templates (ten or fewer lines in length), [...]"
  - Asooka 3y ago
    Hm. Newlines are not required in many programming languages. I could see someone trying to skirt this by first converting the code to a single line, publishing that under LGPL, then taking that single line and modifying it however they like in their proprietary licensed software.
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      I’m sure a judge will be very pleased with your code that has fifteen semicolons on the same line to skirt this rule.
- edent 3y ago
  How many bytes is substantial? Or is it percentage based?
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
The cleanroom idea is a very good starting point. The famous example is the IBM bios the company reverse engineered. One of the execs had read the IBM spec, so they "sealed off" a couple of other engineers who were not allowed to talk to (anyone? the guy who read the spec?) And then this people used reverse engineering techniques to build a bios that did the same as the working one they had, but all they could see was electrical currents coming out of the pins etc. So I think copyright law would allow you to look at a web page and, without viewing the source rebuild the page from scratch (ie box is red and 12 pixels wide) The more interesting part is what happens if one person writes a 1,000 lines of open source licensed code, then another comes along and writes a different 800 lines replacing each of the original lines but with the same output. That's much more a ship of theseus - but really it's a moot point - the second person would (have to?) release each new "plank" under an open source license. So depending on the license I guess you can chnage the license by replacing all the original code with new code under a new license. Hmm - I see ... I think there is some implication here - that you could not (as easily?) build the new lines of code if you did not have the "scaffolding" of the original there - and I suspect that might be the way to argue the ship is still originally theseus ?
- jefftk 3y ago
  More on Compaq's reverse engineering: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-computers-skirted-ibms-patents-and-gave-rise-to-eisa/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp...
- jahewson 3y ago
  The best answer is “it depends”. Almost any trick a layman can think of to work around a license is probably wrong. A mindless transliteration of those 800 lines is likely a derivative work, whereas a thoughtful re-creation likely isn’t. Copying an API for compatibility is regarded as a derived work but permitted as fair use (Oracle vs Google). There’s also the notion of de minimis copying were a very (very!) small portion of a work is regarded as insubstantial - maybe a line or two, again see Oracle vs Google.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  > And then this people used reverse engineering techniques to build a bios that did the same as the working one they had, but all they could see was electrical currents coming out of the pins etc. > So I think copyright law would allow you to look at a web page and, without viewing the source rebuild the page from scratch (ie box is red and 12 pixels wide) What I don't exactly see is, how the hell do you prove you didn't just rip off the original and pretended you never saw it? In fact if you knew what the original was it would be easier to use different methods that would otherwise likely be duplicated because people go for the obvious solution first.
JamesLeonis 3y ago
IANAL, but common open source licenses is a Yes. Non-licensed works are legally murkier. You have a derivative work based on the original. The author retains the copyright, but has granted some permissions within the license document. What you can and can't do will be spelled out there. For example, the MIT license expressly permits modification and sublicensing [0]. The GNU GPL3 is even more explicit, giving definitions to modify, distribute, their permissions, and the requirements for both [1]. Double-check what the terms of the license give you explicitly. What if their is no license? I think that gets closer to the heart of the article. Imagine you come across a website design you like. What are the permissions for their HTML or CSS? By definition the distributor controls all aspects under copyright. But if you only use a small part, you can defend yourself under Fair Use. But this is murky legal territory, as Entertainment companies and individuals have sued each other over Music Samples and their relevant copyright and licensing. [0]: https://mit-license.org/ https://mit-license.org/ [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
layer8 3y ago
As a sibling comment notes, one important aspect is whether the copied portion is something copyrightable in the first place. In particular, whether it exceeds the threshold of originality [0], which at least in the US requires "some minimal degree of creativity". It’s rather unlikely for "half a dozen bytes" to meet that criterion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality
- jahewson 3y ago
  That’s not the right way to approach this. There’s no way to subdivide a copyrightable work into portions that become uncopyrightable. Otherwise one could simply split up the work, free themselves of copyright, and reassemble the pieces. A work is by definition an assembly of pieces; it is not meaningful to talk about copyright at the piece level. The way it actually works is that very small portions of a work are still under copyright but their copying is regarded as de minimis, so small as to be permitted. For example, sampling a single snare dum hit from a song. Copying a color is even less than that, it’s like copying a single word from a book, it’s a piece from which the work is made up but it’s not a work, it’s not even a portion of a work.
23B1 3y ago
Historically, the "reasonable person" standard has been sufficient for a handful of things like obscenity, IP, and other nuanced things. I wonder how much that will change in the age of AI!
- pessimizer 3y ago
  "Reasonable person" is not a good standard for anything nuanced. Sometimes you need a "moron in a hurry" to eliminate all nuance.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Always speak on the internet as if the least reasonable person in the world gave your words the least charitable interpretation possible.
  - 23B1 3y ago
    Yes, this is why there are so many lawyers in the world. Ain't it grand?! /s
caseysoftware 3y ago
I did something similar to this years ago. I forked a GPL'd project that had been BSD prior to that and wanted to flip it back to BSD. I contacted the people who had contributed since the license change and got most of them to agree to a relicense but was left with ~900 lines of code that wasn't going to change. I worked with an IP attorney and came up with a strategy that worked in my case (but don't blindly apply it to yours): - I wrote unit tests for every single one of those functions to confirm/validate the behavior. - Then I deleted all 900 lines of code and committed it. - Then I wrote code to make the unit tests pass again. It was painful but that kept it tightly scoped and I could "prove" the behavior hadn't changed AND that I didn't use the original code. There's an argument that the unit tests could be a "derivative work" but they were not part of the original system, did not change or add functionality to the system, and did not impact its performance so we discounted that concern. The more pressing was that - as an open source project - and the guy doing the audit, I had reviewed the GPL implementation and had access to it at any time. What helped me there is that I made a point of using more modern language constructs and patterns which improved the performance of those functions by 30-90% and I resolved a number of buggy edge cases and other problems so it was clearly "substantially different" in implementation. This was never tested in a lawsuit and do NOT take the above as a definitive solution.
- earhart 3y ago
  Just curious - what was your motivation?
- dtech 3y ago
  Interesting, this does sound a bit like clean-room reverse engineering which is a tried-and-true method for reproduction without breaking copyright, but you having access to and having reviewed the GPL implementation would break that mold.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    It is very similar in spirit to how mp3 patents were worked around back on the late 90s / early 00s. Of course copyright and patents are different beasts, so this similarity is probably legally insignificant.
tiberious726 3y ago
This is not the ship of Theseus, the a correct application of that concept would be rewriting the gdb module by module, testing each step of the way, and then falsely pretending that the gpl wouldn't apply even after 100% of the original code is replaced
manicennui 3y ago
"Is anyone seriously going to argue that I stole half a dozen bytes?" There are many companies that would love to be able to sue and get settlements for such nonsense.
- saghm 3y ago
  Slightly more than "half a dozen bytes", and copyright rather than license but see the "rangeCheck" allegation from Oracle back in their trial against Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc.#First_District_Court_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... > The copyright phase started on April 16, 2012, and consisted of several distinct claims of infringement: a nine-line rangeCheck function, several test files, the structure, sequence and organization (SSO) of the Java (API), and the API documentation > ... > Alsup did agree with the jury that the rangeCheck function and eight security files were a copyright infringement, but the only relief available was statutory damages up to a maximum of US$150,000 The damages were small (and included some other files beyond just the 9-line function), but from my(obligatorily disclaimed as non-lawyer) understanding, there is legal precedent that copying a nine-line function. (I had a little trouble digging up the exact line lines of code since I don't know offhand where to find the Java standard library sources, but if anyone is curious, I did find them in this blogpost: https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/ https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/)
  - yeputons 3y ago
    IIRC, the lawsuit was not primarily about rangeCheck function, it was just one of dozen points. If you've got time, check out the full 62-page solution, it's a really nice read even if you're not a lawyer: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf . Of course, it does not mean you (or me) understands it correctly. But it does contain everything you want, starting from background and some facts. The main opinion and relevant facts are on pages 5-40. Dissenting opinion is on pages 44+. An interesting quote from there: > Oracle spent years developing a programming library that successfully attracted software developers, thus enhancing the value of Oracle’s products[1]. Google sought a license to use the library in Android, the operating system it was developing for mobile phones. But when the companies could not agree on terms, Google simply copied verbatim 11,500 lines of code from the library. As a result, it erased 97.5% of the value of Oracle’s partnership with Amazon, made tens of billions of dollars, and established its position as the owner of the largest mobile operating system in the world. > ... > Oracle gave developers free access to these methods to encourage them to write programs for the Java platform. In return, developers were required to make their programs compatible with the Java platform on any device. Developers were encouraged to make improvements to the platform, but they were required to release beneficial modifications to the public. If a company wanted to customize the platform and keep those customizations secret for business purposes, it had to pay for a separate license.
einpoklum 3y ago
It's quite possible that this will be answered by people's behavior in practice rather than by philosophizing about it. If FOSS projects develop which include tiny bits from copyrighted pieces of software, and they are not challenged for long enough, and see wide use - then the answer will be effectively "yes". If people steer clear of doing this and ask permission for every little bit used - then that will be the custom, and those who don't might end up in court.
gumby 3y ago
The post isn't really about the ship of theseus case. Most comments are about the cases discussed in the post, but the SoT case is worth mention as that case seems pretty clear:* 1. If the code started with was *GPL'ed, each edit resulted in a GPL'ed piece of code, thus the final edit was a change to a GPL'd piece of code and the result is GPLed. This is basically no different from doing the same with a proprietary library you'd licensed from a vendor. Because you looked at the code to begin with you couldn't make the "clean room implementation" argument even if every line were different. 2. MIT or related licenses: just depends on whether what remains is "substantial". * modulo the effect of interested lawyers, of course.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Is 1) actually clear though? I'm unaware of it ever having been tested and upheld in court in a SoT situation. And while it's easy to argue that it should be upheld because that's what the license says, it's also just as easy to argue that it shouldn't. Because it's easy to argue that a chain of derivation loses all meaning under copyright law once there are no recognizable elements of the original work. Quite simply, making a claim of copyright infringement requires elements of the original being used. If no original elements exist, then no license can bind, no matter what path it took to get there. Just because you put something in a license doesn't mean it's enforceable.
  - gumby 3y ago
    Yes, I think it's pretty clear (though yes, a lawyer can bring anything up). The basis is the propriety code case I mentioned which has been well litigated over the decades, its clear definition of "derived work" (in particular for the ToS case, not calling into it) and the implication of derivation vs clean room (discussed by others in this thread). When people try to attack the GPL in court it's typically over it being a contract of adhesion, enforceability, or applicability of calling into it (none of which are an issue in this discussion). The aspects I mention above are too well trodden. (I'm talking about the USA only, of course, and I assume you, the author of the post are too).
- joshuaissac 3y ago
tunesmith 3y ago
This distantly reminds me of the Jonathan Coulson / Glee situation that happened a few years back. Basically, a recording of his came out that had the lyrics to "Baby Got Back", but against music that was entirely fresh and original. And then later, Glee had a scene with a (really weird) a cappella group that did a cover of Coulton's recording - his music, but with the Baby Got Back lyrics. The show gave Coulson zero credit, didn't ask his permission, didn't give him any compensation, and I believe didn't give him any notice ahead of time. (I'm typing this all from memory, so I'm sure I might have some details wrong, but that's the thrust.) So the question is, should they have? It turns out it depends entirely on how the creation process was described. There's an old songwriting exercise where you take a song, and then write entirely different music for the lyrics, and then write new lyrics for the song. Presto, it's a whole new song, and there's nothing wrong with that songwriting process. You can do the reverse where you write new lyrics for the old music, and then new music for the new lyrics, too. Coulson could have easily written that new music for "Baby Got Back", and then written new lyrics for it, and copyrighted the song. And then, I'm not sure, but he possibly could have then released the version with the "Baby Got Back" lyrics as a joke/parody of his song, and it still would have been his song. But since he released his version as a cover of "Baby Got Back", all Fox had to do was "steal" his version, pay the royalties to Sir Mix-A-Lot, and cut out Coulton entirely.
- AceJohnny2 3y ago
  (tiny correction: It's Jonathan Coulton. Coulson is the Marvel SHIELD agent)
  - swyx 3y ago
    and he has made very good niche nerd humor songs (and has a wonderful voice) https://www.youtube.com/@jcoulton/videos https://www.youtube.com/@jcoulton/videos loved his time as the musical support for Ask Me Another in NYC https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510299/ask-me-another https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510299/ask-me-another (now dead, sadly)
- joshuaissac 3y ago
  > Coulson could have easily written that new music for "Baby Got Back", and then written new lyrics for it, and copyrighted the song. Why wouldn't Coulton have the copyright on his version of the song? If I create a derivative work, I would own the copyright on the modifications, so I would have thought that Coulton would similarly own the copyright on his music. For example, if I take Apache-licensed source code, add my own modifications, and release my work under the GPL v3 (as is permitted by both licences), someone else cannot reuse my work under the terms of the Apache licence, just because it is a derivative work of something licensed under the Apache licence. They would have to follow the GPL if they wanted to use my version. So how is that different to Fox reusing Coulton's work without his permission?
slowhadoken 3y ago
Aristotle would probably say yeah it’s the sand code
trhr 3y ago
I once got fired over a single line of PHP that they "traced back to" whatever came before stackexchange. This was in the before-times when people didn't rip things off the internet all day long. Companies were really worried about intellectual property when they needed to reduce headcount. I don't even remember what the line of code did. I remember it was something absolutely trivial and common though, like trimming the first and last character off a string, then splitting it on a delimiter. They called it "specialized functionality" that "matched character for character with copyrighted code." I called it "overreacting to two good developers both typing the same exact 30 characters in a row."
- klyrs 3y ago
  This is why I always put my name and my employer's name in every function/variable name. (heavy sarcasm)
- parpfish 3y ago
  That’s nuts. Sometimes if I find a weird hack solution on S/O, I’ll add a comment that permalinks to the thread that fixed it in order to prevent a Chestertons fence problem. Maybe I should stop doing that?
  - lionkor 3y ago
    SO content is public domain, so not usually a problem Edit: I stand corrected, its not public domain.
    - shagie 3y ago
      SO content is NOT public domain. It is CC BY-SA (some version). This requires attribution. > Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. Additionally, the province of code on Stack Overflow is not always clean. It is quite possible to find code on SO that was originally under a GPL license without the necessary "this is GPL code" (and really shouldn't be on SO because of license laundering in the first place).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
praptak 3y ago
Two exact same strings of bits may have different statuses because of how they were produced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986 Once you take that into account the copyrighted Ship of Theseus becomes less of a paradox.
ineedasername 3y ago
Considering my ability to turn a block of beautiful code into spaghetti, the answer is yes-- I always leave in the original attribution /s
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
Open source licenses are quite clear. We needn't appeal to overused-by-nerds buzzwordy Greek paradoxes, just read the license and carry on.
twic 3y ago
Surely the greatest example of a Ship of Theseus in software is BSD Unix itself? It started out as a small set of patches to AT&T Unix, then grew to a large set of patches, then in the early '90s all the AT&T code was removed, precisely to avoid AT&T licensing.
Alan_Dillman 3y ago
>Could they prove that I copied that single line from them? Would anyone care? A year from now, you could decide to write something, and the obvious appears in your mind, and you type it out. It just happens to be identical to a line that you've read from a licensed document. Did you copy it? Were you inventing, or remembering? Did you copy/paste from your own mind? Should you attribute the one who lugged the block of marble last year? What about last week? Everything you'll ever think is informed by everything you've thunk before. This is a good reason for the law to not care about small things.
efitz 3y ago
This discussion makes the whole idea of software licensing (of any sort) seem silly to me.
yeputons 3y ago
Not sure about open-source licenses specifically, but as for Ship of Theseus, _bits have color_. One sequence of bits may be a license violation, and the exact sequence of bits obtained through different means may be not a license violation. See https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 and discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24917679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24917679 and older
lfowles 3y ago
One of my top stackoverflow posts is asking about this same situation. The resolution was simply "email the author asking for permission to relicense my new ship"!
cdibona 3y ago
So once you reduce the remaining pieces of the ship to api calls or interfaces or simply constant definitions, you'll find that copyright still attaches, but that's okay. The whole point of the final rulings in the oracle/google trial is that is indeed copywritten by the author, but fair use. So source code stanzas that are ...well...totally banal or generic aren't actually suddenly not covered by copyright, but the argument you'd make (after fourteen years in court in googles case) is that it is fair use, wether that copyright is under open source or proprietary licenses. There isn't a magical ability to declare something a derivative work when it isn't, just because it's open source/copyleft. That said, when engineers or pms came to me asking to remove copyright attribution, I almost always said no.
userbinator 3y ago
At what point do you say "this has changed so much that it is no longer necessary to abide by the original licence"? Questions like these are why Imaginary Property is such a horrible quagmire. If you look closely enough, everything is a derivative work, and recent developments with things like LLMs has given this topic prominence. Everyone has absorbed countless amounts of copyrighted material in the course of their education, and can make use of it even if they don't remember the author.
sriku 3y ago
I wonder if a criterion based on "did it get you monetary value" is useful to make these judgements. If you take a css color line from a page, could you have chosen another color to equal effect or chosen this line from somewhere else (i.e. is it common knowledge)? Is the color so unique that it would take someone a lot of money to have figured out that that was the "right" color? If you take some code and then rewrite a substantial part of it, did it save you time? (= Money) ... that you would've spent had you not had that code to start with?

146 points by edent 3y ago

If it matters ethically, then asking the question already provides the answer because foregoing actions which might be gotten away with is what it means to act ethically. If it matters legally pay your attorney for legal advice, because there is no government agency that enforces licenses, the degree to which a license matters is the degree to which someone is willing to lawyer up. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

ComputerGuru 3y ago
You're just punting on the question. To rephrase, does it matter ethically, legally, or at all? (Yes, I understand that if you're basing a business off it then it matters legally differently than if you're just hacking away on a hobby project, but the law covers all things and ethics is not confined to hobbies.)
- brudgers 3y ago
  None of it matters to me enough to pay a lawyer. Because I am not in the circumstances described in the question. Or your comment. All three cases, yours, the article, and mine depend on the specific facts.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Dylan16807 3y ago
> If it matters ethically When you use the word 'it', are you referring to "giving credit", or the question "Do I need to give credit"? The former would mean "If giving credit matters ethically, then asking the question provides the answer [which is yes.]". But that's just asking the same question as OP. Does giving credit matter? The latter would mean "If you felt like you might need to give credit, that the answer to that question matters ethically, then that provides the answer [which is yes, you need to give credit]". But that sounds wrong to me. That kind of logic would turn every positive impulse into an instant obligation.
- brudgers 3y ago
  Every ‘it’ is the same. Ethical behavior is erring on the side of caution in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, or doubt. That’s what makes it ethical behavior. Giving unnecessary credit is not unethical.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Donating to and volunteering for every good cause you see, every time you see it, will bankrupt you and deprive you of sleep pretty fast. You can't err on the side of nicety in every single situation. If an argument depends on there being no cost, then you're not actually making an ethical determination, you're just saying "better safe than sorry". Caution and ethics are not the same thing.
    - brudgers 3y ago
      I didn’t say anything about volunteering.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Your argument was that I should err on the side of ethical behavior every time I'm at all unsure, right? Donating or volunteering is more ethical than not donating or volunteering, right? If both of those are true, then every time I consider donating or volunteering I would be obligated to do it.
        brudgers 3y ago
        I have been explaining. I am not arguing. It is fine by me for us to have differences of opinion.

resoluteteeth 3y ago

I think the whole idea of "clean-room reverse engineering" is essentially predicated on the idea that copyright would indeed apply to a scenario where you take a copyrighted work and incrementally replace all the individual pieces

ComputerGuru 3y ago
That's funny - I think the opposite! Clean-room reverse engineering would give you the same indivisible line of code (background-color: #xyz;) so it can't be required... or can it?
- resoluteteeth 3y ago
  I'm thinking of stuff like the re-implementation of the IBM bios where the re-implementation had to effectively match a certain undocumented specification but not necessarily follow the actual implementation from the original bios but in some sense clean-room reverse engineering does necessarily entail that certain things will be identical, and I guess the scenario in the article could be describing a situation where none of the final product matches the original template at all, so maybe it is slightly different, and in that case I guess there wouldn't be a copyright issue at all? It would be more like how when movies are made they tend to use existing music as a placeholder until the final music is made, and it doesn't seem like anyone considers the final movie to require a license from the creator of the placeholder song even though the direction of the final work is often strongly influenced by its pacing
tobyjsullivan 3y ago
Back in the IBM BIOS days, they were writing machine code. Basically a series of operation codes (ie, numbers). Two people trying to implement the same complex system were almost guaranteed to produce the same code for several components. A clean-room procedure offers a verifiable defense that the duplication was not a result of copying. Today we use much higher level languages so it’s trivial to write the same code a hundred different ways. I’m not sure a clean room is worth the effort other than to force the engineer to not be lazy and copy. All that said, there’s also copyright rules covering derivative works. I’m sure there’s plenty of precedent in literature to cover “copying without actually copying” but I wouldn’t know how that works.

kuratkull 3y ago

50/50 imho. You still change what was there to begin with,and it made you structure your new additions into the one created by the author. Basically if you look at your code evolve in eg. Git commits, you see how it evolves out of the licensed code, thus carrying the license with each commit. Not sure how I feel about that though in extreme cases like yours. Someone can create a "hello world" file and add a license to it, how should we handle that?

jrochkind1 3y ago

Legally in the US it's a question of whether copyright was violated or not when you copy a tiny bit. I'm not a lawyer but I feel confident in saying that you can copy a background color without a license, because a background color alone is definitely not copyrightable. But in the grey area... it's a grey area. There is lots of case law we could look at, but ultimately it depends on what a judge or jury would think if anyone took you to court. And sometimes they do surprising things. Which is why for well-resourced commercial operations (that have more to lose and more to gain), they don't take the risk. In this case... is anyone going to even notice or get mad if they notice you took 40% of a free HTML template for some random not-million-dollar website? Probabably not? If they do, then saying sorry and adding the attribution will probably suffice? That's the legal situation. I think it is reasonable to ask an ethical question separated from legality, which is a different question. Sometimes I ask the authors of open-source-licensed things what they would think about my use.

brookst 3y ago
Colors are not copyrightable, but they can be protected by trademarks: https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-2012-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-...
- jrochkind1 3y ago
  True. As the article you linked to explains, a trademark on a color would prevent you from using the color(s) in ways that compete or confuse with the original company/product, but not any use of a color at all. It almost definitely isn't going to apply to the bg color an open sourced HTML template chose.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Though, to be more precise, it's protecting colors as part of the trade dress of a brand. In general, some especially vigilant trademark enforcement aside, you can use the color so long as it's not being used in a way that could plausibly cause confusion with the trademark holder.
xen2xen1 3y ago

grayhatter 3y ago

The only responsability is for attribution? Then I think you have an ethical and contractual obligation to include it. Ship of Theseus or not, the ship you're currently riding on only exists because of their work. Even if you believe like me, that the current author is entitled to both primary authorship and ownership. Had you never started from their work, no ship, or an entirely different ship would exist instead. Even if there's so little left of the original that it's meaningless, you should still credit them if for historical context alone. Credit isn't a zero sum game. You don't lose value by including others contributions. You should be proud to accept credit for your work! You should be willing to share that credit as widely as you're able. And no one should ever feel guilty for standing on the shoulders of giants.

ghaff 3y ago
I wouldn't bother for a background color. For something more substantial but still minimal, I'd probably figure no skin off my nose to give credit. There is a bit of a rub if the original is under a copyleft license and you want to release under a permissive license. Giving attribution could be a bit of a red flag--and maybe it should be unless the code that made it into the final product really is minimal.

latexr 3y ago

> Is anyone seriously going to argue that I stole half a dozen bytes? The license itself might provide a clue. For example, the MIT license¹ says (emphasis mine): > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Half a dozen bytes are unlikely to constitute a “substantial portion” of the software. ¹ https://opensource.org/license/mit/ https://opensource.org/license/mit/

Tomte 3y ago
The LGPL has this provision: "You may convey such object code under terms of your choice, provided that, if the incorporated material is not limited to numerical parameters, data structure layouts and accessors, or small macros, inline functions and templates (ten or fewer lines in length), [...]"
- Asooka 3y ago
  Hm. Newlines are not required in many programming languages. I could see someone trying to skirt this by first converting the code to a single line, publishing that under LGPL, then taking that single line and modifying it however they like in their proprietary licensed software.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    I’m sure a judge will be very pleased with your code that has fifteen semicolons on the same line to skirt this rule.
edent 3y ago
How many bytes is substantial? Or is it percentage based?

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

The cleanroom idea is a very good starting point. The famous example is the IBM bios the company reverse engineered. One of the execs had read the IBM spec, so they "sealed off" a couple of other engineers who were not allowed to talk to (anyone? the guy who read the spec?) And then this people used reverse engineering techniques to build a bios that did the same as the working one they had, but all they could see was electrical currents coming out of the pins etc. So I think copyright law would allow you to look at a web page and, without viewing the source rebuild the page from scratch (ie box is red and 12 pixels wide) The more interesting part is what happens if one person writes a 1,000 lines of open source licensed code, then another comes along and writes a different 800 lines replacing each of the original lines but with the same output. That's much more a ship of theseus - but really it's a moot point - the second person would (have to?) release each new "plank" under an open source license. So depending on the license I guess you can chnage the license by replacing all the original code with new code under a new license. Hmm - I see ... I think there is some implication here - that you could not (as easily?) build the new lines of code if you did not have the "scaffolding" of the original there - and I suspect that might be the way to argue the ship is still originally theseus ?

jefftk 3y ago
More on Compaq's reverse engineering: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-computers-skirted-ibms-patents-and-gave-rise-to-eisa/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp...
jahewson 3y ago
The best answer is “it depends”. Almost any trick a layman can think of to work around a license is probably wrong. A mindless transliteration of those 800 lines is likely a derivative work, whereas a thoughtful re-creation likely isn’t. Copying an API for compatibility is regarded as a derived work but permitted as fair use (Oracle vs Google). There’s also the notion of de minimis copying were a very (very!) small portion of a work is regarded as insubstantial - maybe a line or two, again see Oracle vs Google.
moffkalast 3y ago
> And then this people used reverse engineering techniques to build a bios that did the same as the working one they had, but all they could see was electrical currents coming out of the pins etc. > So I think copyright law would allow you to look at a web page and, without viewing the source rebuild the page from scratch (ie box is red and 12 pixels wide) What I don't exactly see is, how the hell do you prove you didn't just rip off the original and pretended you never saw it? In fact if you knew what the original was it would be easier to use different methods that would otherwise likely be duplicated because people go for the obvious solution first.

JamesLeonis 3y ago

IANAL, but common open source licenses is a Yes. Non-licensed works are legally murkier. You have a derivative work based on the original. The author retains the copyright, but has granted some permissions within the license document. What you can and can't do will be spelled out there. For example, the MIT license expressly permits modification and sublicensing [0]. The GNU GPL3 is even more explicit, giving definitions to modify, distribute, their permissions, and the requirements for both [1]. Double-check what the terms of the license give you explicitly. What if their is no license? I think that gets closer to the heart of the article. Imagine you come across a website design you like. What are the permissions for their HTML or CSS? By definition the distributor controls all aspects under copyright. But if you only use a small part, you can defend yourself under Fair Use. But this is murky legal territory, as Entertainment companies and individuals have sued each other over Music Samples and their relevant copyright and licensing. [0]: https://mit-license.org/ https://mit-license.org/ [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

layer8 3y ago

As a sibling comment notes, one important aspect is whether the copied portion is something copyrightable in the first place. In particular, whether it exceeds the threshold of originality [0], which at least in the US requires "some minimal degree of creativity". It’s rather unlikely for "half a dozen bytes" to meet that criterion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

jahewson 3y ago
That’s not the right way to approach this. There’s no way to subdivide a copyrightable work into portions that become uncopyrightable. Otherwise one could simply split up the work, free themselves of copyright, and reassemble the pieces. A work is by definition an assembly of pieces; it is not meaningful to talk about copyright at the piece level. The way it actually works is that very small portions of a work are still under copyright but their copying is regarded as de minimis, so small as to be permitted. For example, sampling a single snare dum hit from a song. Copying a color is even less than that, it’s like copying a single word from a book, it’s a piece from which the work is made up but it’s not a work, it’s not even a portion of a work.

23B1 3y ago

Historically, the "reasonable person" standard has been sufficient for a handful of things like obscenity, IP, and other nuanced things. I wonder how much that will change in the age of AI!

pessimizer 3y ago
"Reasonable person" is not a good standard for anything nuanced. Sometimes you need a "moron in a hurry" to eliminate all nuance.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Always speak on the internet as if the least reasonable person in the world gave your words the least charitable interpretation possible.
- 23B1 3y ago
  Yes, this is why there are so many lawyers in the world. Ain't it grand?! /s

caseysoftware 3y ago

I did something similar to this years ago. I forked a GPL'd project that had been BSD prior to that and wanted to flip it back to BSD. I contacted the people who had contributed since the license change and got most of them to agree to a relicense but was left with ~900 lines of code that wasn't going to change. I worked with an IP attorney and came up with a strategy that worked in my case (but don't blindly apply it to yours): - I wrote unit tests for every single one of those functions to confirm/validate the behavior. - Then I deleted all 900 lines of code and committed it. - Then I wrote code to make the unit tests pass again. It was painful but that kept it tightly scoped and I could "prove" the behavior hadn't changed AND that I didn't use the original code. There's an argument that the unit tests could be a "derivative work" but they were not part of the original system, did not change or add functionality to the system, and did not impact its performance so we discounted that concern. The more pressing was that - as an open source project - and the guy doing the audit, I had reviewed the GPL implementation and had access to it at any time. What helped me there is that I made a point of using more modern language constructs and patterns which improved the performance of those functions by 30-90% and I resolved a number of buggy edge cases and other problems so it was clearly "substantially different" in implementation. This was never tested in a lawsuit and do NOT take the above as a definitive solution.

earhart 3y ago
Just curious - what was your motivation?
dtech 3y ago
Interesting, this does sound a bit like clean-room reverse engineering which is a tried-and-true method for reproduction without breaking copyright, but you having access to and having reviewed the GPL implementation would break that mold.
- dspillett 3y ago
  It is very similar in spirit to how mp3 patents were worked around back on the late 90s / early 00s. Of course copyright and patents are different beasts, so this similarity is probably legally insignificant.

tiberious726 3y ago

This is not the ship of Theseus, the a correct application of that concept would be rewriting the gdb module by module, testing each step of the way, and then falsely pretending that the gpl wouldn't apply even after 100% of the original code is replaced

manicennui 3y ago

"Is anyone seriously going to argue that I stole half a dozen bytes?" There are many companies that would love to be able to sue and get settlements for such nonsense.

saghm 3y ago
Slightly more than "half a dozen bytes", and copyright rather than license but see the "rangeCheck" allegation from Oracle back in their trial against Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc.#First_District_Court_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... > The copyright phase started on April 16, 2012, and consisted of several distinct claims of infringement: a nine-line rangeCheck function, several test files, the structure, sequence and organization (SSO) of the Java (API), and the API documentation > ... > Alsup did agree with the jury that the rangeCheck function and eight security files were a copyright infringement, but the only relief available was statutory damages up to a maximum of US$150,000 The damages were small (and included some other files beyond just the 9-line function), but from my(obligatorily disclaimed as non-lawyer) understanding, there is legal precedent that copying a nine-line function. (I had a little trouble digging up the exact line lines of code since I don't know offhand where to find the Java standard library sources, but if anyone is curious, I did find them in this blogpost: https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/ https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/)
- yeputons 3y ago
  IIRC, the lawsuit was not primarily about rangeCheck function, it was just one of dozen points. If you've got time, check out the full 62-page solution, it's a really nice read even if you're not a lawyer: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf . Of course, it does not mean you (or me) understands it correctly. But it does contain everything you want, starting from background and some facts. The main opinion and relevant facts are on pages 5-40. Dissenting opinion is on pages 44+. An interesting quote from there: > Oracle spent years developing a programming library that successfully attracted software developers, thus enhancing the value of Oracle’s products[1]. Google sought a license to use the library in Android, the operating system it was developing for mobile phones. But when the companies could not agree on terms, Google simply copied verbatim 11,500 lines of code from the library. As a result, it erased 97.5% of the value of Oracle’s partnership with Amazon, made tens of billions of dollars, and established its position as the owner of the largest mobile operating system in the world. > ... > Oracle gave developers free access to these methods to encourage them to write programs for the Java platform. In return, developers were required to make their programs compatible with the Java platform on any device. Developers were encouraged to make improvements to the platform, but they were required to release beneficial modifications to the public. If a company wanted to customize the platform and keep those customizations secret for business purposes, it had to pay for a separate license.

einpoklum 3y ago

It's quite possible that this will be answered by people's behavior in practice rather than by philosophizing about it. If FOSS projects develop which include tiny bits from copyrighted pieces of software, and they are not challenged for long enough, and see wide use - then the answer will be effectively "yes". If people steer clear of doing this and ask permission for every little bit used - then that will be the custom, and those who don't might end up in court.

gumby 3y ago

The post isn't really about the ship of theseus case. Most comments are about the cases discussed in the post, but the SoT case is worth mention as that case seems pretty clear:* 1. If the code started with was *GPL'ed, each edit resulted in a GPL'ed piece of code, thus the final edit was a change to a GPL'd piece of code and the result is GPLed. This is basically no different from doing the same with a proprietary library you'd licensed from a vendor. Because you looked at the code to begin with you couldn't make the "clean room implementation" argument even if every line were different. 2. MIT or related licenses: just depends on whether what remains is "substantial". * modulo the effect of interested lawyers, of course.

crazygringo 3y ago
Is 1) actually clear though? I'm unaware of it ever having been tested and upheld in court in a SoT situation. And while it's easy to argue that it should be upheld because that's what the license says, it's also just as easy to argue that it shouldn't. Because it's easy to argue that a chain of derivation loses all meaning under copyright law once there are no recognizable elements of the original work. Quite simply, making a claim of copyright infringement requires elements of the original being used. If no original elements exist, then no license can bind, no matter what path it took to get there. Just because you put something in a license doesn't mean it's enforceable.
- gumby 3y ago
  Yes, I think it's pretty clear (though yes, a lawyer can bring anything up). The basis is the propriety code case I mentioned which has been well litigated over the decades, its clear definition of "derived work" (in particular for the ToS case, not calling into it) and the implication of derivation vs clean room (discussed by others in this thread). When people try to attack the GPL in court it's typically over it being a contract of adhesion, enforceability, or applicability of calling into it (none of which are an issue in this discussion). The aspects I mention above are too well trodden. (I'm talking about the USA only, of course, and I assume you, the author of the post are too).
joshuaissac 3y ago

tunesmith 3y ago

This distantly reminds me of the Jonathan Coulson / Glee situation that happened a few years back. Basically, a recording of his came out that had the lyrics to "Baby Got Back", but against music that was entirely fresh and original. And then later, Glee had a scene with a (really weird) a cappella group that did a cover of Coulton's recording - his music, but with the Baby Got Back lyrics. The show gave Coulson zero credit, didn't ask his permission, didn't give him any compensation, and I believe didn't give him any notice ahead of time. (I'm typing this all from memory, so I'm sure I might have some details wrong, but that's the thrust.) So the question is, should they have? It turns out it depends entirely on how the creation process was described. There's an old songwriting exercise where you take a song, and then write entirely different music for the lyrics, and then write new lyrics for the song. Presto, it's a whole new song, and there's nothing wrong with that songwriting process. You can do the reverse where you write new lyrics for the old music, and then new music for the new lyrics, too. Coulson could have easily written that new music for "Baby Got Back", and then written new lyrics for it, and copyrighted the song. And then, I'm not sure, but he possibly could have then released the version with the "Baby Got Back" lyrics as a joke/parody of his song, and it still would have been his song. But since he released his version as a cover of "Baby Got Back", all Fox had to do was "steal" his version, pay the royalties to Sir Mix-A-Lot, and cut out Coulton entirely.

AceJohnny2 3y ago
(tiny correction: It's Jonathan Coulton. Coulson is the Marvel SHIELD agent)
- swyx 3y ago
  and he has made very good niche nerd humor songs (and has a wonderful voice) https://www.youtube.com/@jcoulton/videos https://www.youtube.com/@jcoulton/videos loved his time as the musical support for Ask Me Another in NYC https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510299/ask-me-another https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510299/ask-me-another (now dead, sadly)
joshuaissac 3y ago
> Coulson could have easily written that new music for "Baby Got Back", and then written new lyrics for it, and copyrighted the song. Why wouldn't Coulton have the copyright on his version of the song? If I create a derivative work, I would own the copyright on the modifications, so I would have thought that Coulton would similarly own the copyright on his music. For example, if I take Apache-licensed source code, add my own modifications, and release my work under the GPL v3 (as is permitted by both licences), someone else cannot reuse my work under the terms of the Apache licence, just because it is a derivative work of something licensed under the Apache licence. They would have to follow the GPL if they wanted to use my version. So how is that different to Fox reusing Coulton's work without his permission?

slowhadoken 3y ago

Aristotle would probably say yeah it’s the sand code

trhr 3y ago

I once got fired over a single line of PHP that they "traced back to" whatever came before stackexchange. This was in the before-times when people didn't rip things off the internet all day long. Companies were really worried about intellectual property when they needed to reduce headcount. I don't even remember what the line of code did. I remember it was something absolutely trivial and common though, like trimming the first and last character off a string, then splitting it on a delimiter. They called it "specialized functionality" that "matched character for character with copyrighted code." I called it "overreacting to two good developers both typing the same exact 30 characters in a row."

klyrs 3y ago
This is why I always put my name and my employer's name in every function/variable name. (heavy sarcasm)
parpfish 3y ago
That’s nuts. Sometimes if I find a weird hack solution on S/O, I’ll add a comment that permalinks to the thread that fixed it in order to prevent a Chestertons fence problem. Maybe I should stop doing that?
- lionkor 3y ago
  SO content is public domain, so not usually a problem Edit: I stand corrected, its not public domain.
  - shagie 3y ago
    SO content is NOT public domain. It is CC BY-SA (some version). This requires attribution. > Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. Additionally, the province of code on Stack Overflow is not always clean. It is quite possible to find code on SO that was originally under a GPL license without the necessary "this is GPL code" (and really shouldn't be on SO because of license laundering in the first place).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

praptak 3y ago

Two exact same strings of bits may have different statuses because of how they were produced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986 Once you take that into account the copyrighted Ship of Theseus becomes less of a paradox.

ineedasername 3y ago

Considering my ability to turn a block of beautiful code into spaghetti, the answer is yes-- I always leave in the original attribution /s

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

Open source licenses are quite clear. We needn't appeal to overused-by-nerds buzzwordy Greek paradoxes, just read the license and carry on.

twic 3y ago

Surely the greatest example of a Ship of Theseus in software is BSD Unix itself? It started out as a small set of patches to AT&T Unix, then grew to a large set of patches, then in the early '90s all the AT&T code was removed, precisely to avoid AT&T licensing.

Alan_Dillman 3y ago

>Could they prove that I copied that single line from them? Would anyone care? A year from now, you could decide to write something, and the obvious appears in your mind, and you type it out. It just happens to be identical to a line that you've read from a licensed document. Did you copy it? Were you inventing, or remembering? Did you copy/paste from your own mind? Should you attribute the one who lugged the block of marble last year? What about last week? Everything you'll ever think is informed by everything you've thunk before. This is a good reason for the law to not care about small things.

efitz 3y ago

This discussion makes the whole idea of software licensing (of any sort) seem silly to me.

yeputons 3y ago

Not sure about open-source licenses specifically, but as for Ship of Theseus, _bits have color_. One sequence of bits may be a license violation, and the exact sequence of bits obtained through different means may be not a license violation. See https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 and discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24917679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24917679 and older

lfowles 3y ago

One of my top stackoverflow posts is asking about this same situation. The resolution was simply "email the author asking for permission to relicense my new ship"!

cdibona 3y ago

So once you reduce the remaining pieces of the ship to api calls or interfaces or simply constant definitions, you'll find that copyright still attaches, but that's okay. The whole point of the final rulings in the oracle/google trial is that is indeed copywritten by the author, but fair use. So source code stanzas that are ...well...totally banal or generic aren't actually suddenly not covered by copyright, but the argument you'd make (after fourteen years in court in googles case) is that it is fair use, wether that copyright is under open source or proprietary licenses. There isn't a magical ability to declare something a derivative work when it isn't, just because it's open source/copyleft. That said, when engineers or pms came to me asking to remove copyright attribution, I almost always said no.

userbinator 3y ago

At what point do you say "this has changed so much that it is no longer necessary to abide by the original licence"? Questions like these are why Imaginary Property is such a horrible quagmire. If you look closely enough, everything is a derivative work, and recent developments with things like LLMs has given this topic prominence. Everyone has absorbed countless amounts of copyrighted material in the course of their education, and can make use of it even if they don't remember the author.

sriku 3y ago

I wonder if a criterion based on "did it get you monetary value" is useful to make these judgements. If you take a css color line from a page, could you have chosen another color to equal effect or chosen this line from somewhere else (i.e. is it common knowledge)? Is the color so unique that it would take someone a lot of money to have figured out that that was the "right" color? If you take some code and then rewrite a substantial part of it, did it save you time? (= Money) ... that you would've spent had you not had that code to start with?