5 ms·

This is a conversation I keep having with people who support permissive licenses. >Oh no, you're allowed to do whatever you want, but you shouldn't. >>Then wh

This is a conversation I keep having with people who support permissive licenses. >Oh no, you're allowed to do whatever you want, but you shouldn't. >>Then why is Amazon allowed to do it if they shouldn't? >It's not polite. >>...

billy99k 2y ago
So the can of worms here now shifts to piracy. Whenever it comes up, a large percentage of people here on HN support it. "you wouldn't have purchased it anyway", "the original authors don't lose anything". The same can be said about using the Apache license and the service here in question. In fact, the difference is that it's completely legal. The original authors don't lose anything.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Not sure what piracy has to do with this. The point is that you've specifically let people do something then when they do it you're upset they did it. If you don't want them to do it, don't explicitly allow them to do it. There are plenty of licenses which would have stopped this.
  - wheels 2y ago
    I voted the grandparent up about the license allowing it. But things being allowed isn't a benchmark for them being decent. I don't think we should stone adulterers. But I also think cheating on your partner can mean you're an asshole.
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      > Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like. -- Edward Thurlow
      - wheels 2y ago
        A fair point. But having the internet turn on you before you get any traction is also probably going to be a death-knell for an early stage company. It doesn't bode well for their ability to make or raise money.
        llm_trw 2y ago
        Which again is not a problem for Amazon. I can't think of a more effective way to entrench a oligopoly: small companies get screwed because if they use open source the way the big girls do they get cancelled, and they can't get big because they can't use open source the way the big girls do.
prnak120 2y ago
It is not that simple. Very few licenses are accepted by, e.g., Linux distributions. If you create your own modified license, for example BSD with two additional clauses that prohibit use for AI training and use in startups without significant modifications then no one will use it. That is the reason why people are forced to release under the extremely permissive licenses and hope for moral behavior by their users. That is the reason why the smug response "You allowed me to do this" isn't sufficient.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  > [...] no one will use it. > That is the reason why people are forced to release under the extremely permissive licenses and hope for moral behavior by their users. No one is forcing you to release source code under permissive licenses. You're literally saying that you're doing it because you want more users. Congratulations on your imaginary internet points. Meanwhile Bezos is very much making non-imaginary money off your work.
- mkesper 2y ago
  That's simply not free software / open source anymore. First of the four freedoms is "to use for any purpose". https://osssoftware.org/blog/free-and-open-source-software-foss-core-principles/ https://osssoftware.org/blog/free-and-open-source-software-f... And we absolutely don't need any more licenses to compare against. https://spdx.org/licenses/ https://spdx.org/licenses/
  - 0x19129 2y ago
    That is so according to the OSI definition. But conditions and the level of exploitation have changed, so first steps like the AGPL have emerged. If the Microsoft-funded OSI does not agree, perhaps we need an OSI-2.0. You will increasingly find developers that disagree with AI exploitation, so a new institution that is not Microsoft-funded would be welcome. That is how the original OSI started before they purged ESR.
    - mkesper 2y ago
wpietri 2y ago
And I think those conversations are worth listening to. Do we want a society where people release a lot of open-source code? Or do we want one where people get tired of doing free labor for greedy jerks, and so stop releasing things openly? Civilization runs on politeness and other things that flow not from our current laws but from respect for others. We ignore that at our peril.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  We're not talking about open source code. We are talking about the MIT license. The two are not the same.
  - wpietri 2y ago
    As long as we're nit-picking, we're talking about the Apache license. But my point isn't about the specific license. It's about one set of people very generously doing lots of labor and publishing the result in hopes of making the world a little better. And then some other people exploiting that for personal gain with no regard for the first group. That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. For example, Gutenberg enabled the creation of the publishing industry. Pirate book publishers saw a way to make some money by exploiting the labor of authors and original publishers for their own gain. That moral problem is why copyright was considered important enough to put into the constitution. [1] Focusing on the specific text of a specific license is missing the point. Both my point and the point of this article, which is why YC is taking heat for backing these guys. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C8-1/ALDE_00013060/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C8-1/...
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      >That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. Pirate book publishers saw a way to make some money by exploiting the labor of authors and original publishers for their own gain. This is a _gross_ misunderstanding of what publishing was like in the first few centuries of the printing press. Copyright laws originated as a form of government censorship and control over the printing press in 15th-16th century Europe. Governments and religious authorities sought to regulate the spread of information by granting exclusive printing privileges to select printers. This allowed them to censor and control what content was published. It was only when the people who were censored won that copyright was invented to keep them from killing everyone involved.
drpossum 2y ago
Not being polite will get you yelled at, as is happening right now, and should not be surprising. Legally there may be nothing and they are welcome to ruin their reputation and suffer the consequences. I find it baffling in conversations I keep having with people that someone thinks that because something is legally permissible, then it is acceptable. It's the same vein of when people cry "free speech" when they said something reprehensible, as if that somehow should protect them from how people react to their horrible statements. I think what is driving this is one the of the fundamental problems with the tech industry and its relationship to society: the ingraining of the assumption that because something is legal to do means it is OK to do. They are not and I think there should be more outrage when something like this tries to slide by.
- tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  Had me in the first half. If free speech is only strict legal protection with no cultural backing then you still can’t reasonably express contrary views and it’s worthless.
  - drpossum 2y ago
    So the fact that it is culturally taboo to, say, use racial obscenities in public discourse (not directed at any particular person) means you think the first amendment is worthless? Because that's a deeply hamfisted belief but is in fact, the world we live in.
    - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
      [dead]
- llm_trw 2y ago
  This sounds like a bunch of unwritten rules that only apply to the poor. Anyone who can ignore people yelling at them from their yacht in international waters is perfectly fine. I guess random lynchings are a way to pass the time when you are completely powerless by choice.

billy99k 2y ago

So the can of worms here now shifts to piracy. Whenever it comes up, a large percentage of people here on HN support it. "you wouldn't have purchased it anyway", "the original authors don't lose anything". The same can be said about using the Apache license and the service here in question. In fact, the difference is that it's completely legal. The original authors don't lose anything.

llm_trw 2y ago
Not sure what piracy has to do with this. The point is that you've specifically let people do something then when they do it you're upset they did it. If you don't want them to do it, don't explicitly allow them to do it. There are plenty of licenses which would have stopped this.
- wheels 2y ago
  I voted the grandparent up about the license allowing it. But things being allowed isn't a benchmark for them being decent. I don't think we should stone adulterers. But I also think cheating on your partner can mean you're an asshole.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    > Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like. -- Edward Thurlow
    - wheels 2y ago
      A fair point. But having the internet turn on you before you get any traction is also probably going to be a death-knell for an early stage company. It doesn't bode well for their ability to make or raise money.
      - llm_trw 2y ago
        Which again is not a problem for Amazon. I can't think of a more effective way to entrench a oligopoly: small companies get screwed because if they use open source the way the big girls do they get cancelled, and they can't get big because they can't use open source the way the big girls do.

prnak120 2y ago

It is not that simple. Very few licenses are accepted by, e.g., Linux distributions. If you create your own modified license, for example BSD with two additional clauses that prohibit use for AI training and use in startups without significant modifications then no one will use it. That is the reason why people are forced to release under the extremely permissive licenses and hope for moral behavior by their users. That is the reason why the smug response "You allowed me to do this" isn't sufficient.

llm_trw 2y ago
> [...] no one will use it. > That is the reason why people are forced to release under the extremely permissive licenses and hope for moral behavior by their users. No one is forcing you to release source code under permissive licenses. You're literally saying that you're doing it because you want more users. Congratulations on your imaginary internet points. Meanwhile Bezos is very much making non-imaginary money off your work.
mkesper 2y ago
That's simply not free software / open source anymore. First of the four freedoms is "to use for any purpose". https://osssoftware.org/blog/free-and-open-source-software-foss-core-principles/ https://osssoftware.org/blog/free-and-open-source-software-f... And we absolutely don't need any more licenses to compare against. https://spdx.org/licenses/ https://spdx.org/licenses/
- 0x19129 2y ago
  That is so according to the OSI definition. But conditions and the level of exploitation have changed, so first steps like the AGPL have emerged. If the Microsoft-funded OSI does not agree, perhaps we need an OSI-2.0. You will increasingly find developers that disagree with AI exploitation, so a new institution that is not Microsoft-funded would be welcome. That is how the original OSI started before they purged ESR.
  - mkesper 2y ago

wpietri 2y ago

And I think those conversations are worth listening to. Do we want a society where people release a lot of open-source code? Or do we want one where people get tired of doing free labor for greedy jerks, and so stop releasing things openly? Civilization runs on politeness and other things that flow not from our current laws but from respect for others. We ignore that at our peril.

llm_trw 2y ago
We're not talking about open source code. We are talking about the MIT license. The two are not the same.
- wpietri 2y ago
  As long as we're nit-picking, we're talking about the Apache license. But my point isn't about the specific license. It's about one set of people very generously doing lots of labor and publishing the result in hopes of making the world a little better. And then some other people exploiting that for personal gain with no regard for the first group. That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. For example, Gutenberg enabled the creation of the publishing industry. Pirate book publishers saw a way to make some money by exploiting the labor of authors and original publishers for their own gain. That moral problem is why copyright was considered important enough to put into the constitution. [1] Focusing on the specific text of a specific license is missing the point. Both my point and the point of this article, which is why YC is taking heat for backing these guys. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C8-1/ALDE_00013060/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C8-1/...
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    >That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. Pirate book publishers saw a way to make some money by exploiting the labor of authors and original publishers for their own gain. This is a _gross_ misunderstanding of what publishing was like in the first few centuries of the printing press. Copyright laws originated as a form of government censorship and control over the printing press in 15th-16th century Europe. Governments and religious authorities sought to regulate the spread of information by granting exclusive printing privileges to select printers. This allowed them to censor and control what content was published. It was only when the people who were censored won that copyright was invented to keep them from killing everyone involved.

drpossum 2y ago

Not being polite will get you yelled at, as is happening right now, and should not be surprising. Legally there may be nothing and they are welcome to ruin their reputation and suffer the consequences. I find it baffling in conversations I keep having with people that someone thinks that because something is legally permissible, then it is acceptable. It's the same vein of when people cry "free speech" when they said something reprehensible, as if that somehow should protect them from how people react to their horrible statements. I think what is driving this is one the of the fundamental problems with the tech industry and its relationship to society: the ingraining of the assumption that because something is legal to do means it is OK to do. They are not and I think there should be more outrage when something like this tries to slide by.

tightbookkeeper 2y ago
Had me in the first half. If free speech is only strict legal protection with no cultural backing then you still can’t reasonably express contrary views and it’s worthless.
- drpossum 2y ago
  So the fact that it is culturally taboo to, say, use racial obscenities in public discourse (not directed at any particular person) means you think the first amendment is worthless? Because that's a deeply hamfisted belief but is in fact, the world we live in.
  - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
    [dead]
llm_trw 2y ago
This sounds like a bunch of unwritten rules that only apply to the poor. Anyone who can ignore people yelling at them from their yacht in international waters is perfectly fine. I guess random lynchings are a way to pass the time when you are completely powerless by choice.