3 ms·
IIRC, GNU Units was once the center of a small controversy. Google (still, AFAIK) offers unit conversion as a part of their search box; you can type a unit con
by teddyh 3y ago
IIRC, GNU Units was once the center of a small controversy. Google (still, AFAIK) offers unit conversion as a part of their search box; you can type a unit conversion into Google and get a conversion done. Some people noted this, wondered about what the backend might be, and typed some stuff in which was known to trigger a then-present bug in GNU Units. And wouldn’t you know it, Google showed the same bug. This was all well and good, since GNU Units uses GPL, not the AGPL (which did not even exist at the time). But then some time later, Google fixed the bug; the unit conversion could no longer be triggered to exhibit the bug. But no fix for GNU Units was forthcoming from Google. At the time, this was surprising and cause for some hullabaloo, since Google was still ostensibly in their “Don’t be evil” stage.
(Disclaimer: I only heard about all of this via the rumor mill; some details may be wrong or omitted.)
- beardog 3y agoThis is why I AGPL my projects even if i feel like it isn't likely to be used as a network backend.
- creatonez 3y agoWhat's nice about AGPL is that, as per Google's policy, it serves as an automatic ban from your software being used at Google, including non-networked applications like Android. Some people have said this is a downside or that Google's policy represents a red flag about the license itself, I see it as a good thing that the license makes them nervous.
- jonathankoren 3y agoMaybe the ripped out GNU Units. Never know, since they never distributed it.
- Shawnj2 3y agoIt’s also possible they fixed the bug in some other way that didn’t involve touching GNU Units, like using a different conversion program only for requests that could trigger the big.