5 ms·

This is 6 months old, so it doesn't seem like it went anywhere. Probably because the greater internet has no motivation to oppose moving content to a non-comme

by smackfu 12y ago

This is 6 months old, so it doesn't seem like it went anywhere. Probably because the greater internet has no motivation to oppose moving content to a non-commercial license.

mikeash 12y ago
I think it speaks to a different mindset from what we as programmers are used to. Licensing is a pretty big deal for us. Virtually every programmer has some sort of opinion on GPL vs BSD vs public domain vs whatever. Open source projects can live or die because of their license. Wikis are basically open source projects with natural language instead of code. But I get the impression that few wiki contributors care that much about licenses. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's because code is more modular and flexible. If you write a useful open source library, the license you put on it can have huge implications for what products end up using it. There's no wiki equivalent to e.g. large quantities of BSD code being used to build a smartphone that sells hundreds of millions of units.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  In programming, when you reuse others' work product it's considered good engineering practice. We call it "not reinventing the wheel." In most professions where the work product is in a natural language, reusing significant portions of others' work is called "plagiarism", and is considered a serious ethical violation. Reusing small portions for the sake of making a point, on the other hand, is covered by fair use rules. So yeah, licensing concerns might be a mostly irrelevant detail. The big questions about when you can and cannot reuse others' work product are already covered by a rigorously socially-enforced ethical standard, and the law. Both of those are more powerful than mere contracts in their own way.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Think about free textbooks, which may be commercially printed (of course you have to pay for a physical object) but are also available online under CC-BY-SA. If something is well explained in, say, Wikipedia, I can lift it and put it directly into the textbook, with a credit, making only the small tweaks necessary to make it flow in context. This can be hugely valuable, but tacking on NC means no one can ever sell those physical copies (which some people prefer). I kind of hope this situation doesn't arise with TV Tropes, but you never know...
  - fdej 12y ago
    I don't see the distinction you're trying to make here. It's plagiarism to copy someone's code without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's code if you give attribution. It's plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text if you give attribution. In either case, copying someone else's code or natural text is potentially copyright infringement, but that's a different matter.
    - eric_cc 12y ago
      / * @author BigDave1974 over at SlashDot */
  - tjr 12y ago
    I wonder if it would make sense to sell reusable chunks of text, like libraries of code.
- eric_cc 12y ago
  I'm a programmer and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - I have no opinion on licensing and could not tell you a single thing about any one license. Are there really that many people knowledgable about different licenses?
  - acheron 12y ago
    Nah, you're not an idiot. There's a tendency on HN of people saying "all programmers" to mean "programmers who live in Silicon Valley, use open source tools to write web apps funded by ad eyeballs, and put all their code on Github". Witness the countless posts about "why should I interview when I can point to a Github account", or that article yesterday about "articles every programmer should read" that had something about SEO in it (and then the replies from people unable to see why that was silly), etc.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      That's kind of funny, since I'm nowhere near Silicon Valley and don't even identify with that crowd, I rarely do any web work, and write plenty of proprietary code. (Ironically, web apps are an area where you can generally get away with not knowing anything about open source licenses, since you're not redistributing the programs you make.) I merely observe that programmers generally use third party libraries, and that doing so requires at least a basic understanding of the license terms. Maybe there are a lot of people out there writing code who never touch external code?
      - TuringTest 12y ago
        (Ironically, web apps are an area where you can generally get away with not knowing anything about open source licenses, since you're not redistributing the programs you make.) Except if you happen to use something under an Affero GPL license, in which case you really should know about it. But yes, those project are rare.
        mikeash 12y ago
labster 12y ago
Original author here: You're right. It hasn't gone anywhere in 6 months, because there's no real angle on getting involved in a legal dispute. There's no money to be gained in suing TVT. And forcing them to take content offline hurts the commons perhaps more than it helps it. The motivation behind the original blog was at least partially catharsis -- there really are no good options for copyright enforcement of open content. Sure, if it was a few lousy pages, TV Tropes could stand to lose them, but I'm talking about core pages like "Anime" and several tropes of legend initially written by my colleague. Sure I could send a DCMA request, but they'd have every reason to fight it, and what then? Hire lawyers? Try to delete content that people thought was legal and amended, but actually turned into infringing content? Get them to delete pages on works of fiction of which I am a fan? All of the options are awful except one: getting people to leave that illegal and immoral site. True morality isn't about protecting children's delicate eyes from textual metapornography, it's about giving back to the people who give to you -- and not just taking more from them. I recommend either All The Tropes or the Tropes Mirror Wiki on Wikia.

by smackfu 12y ago

This is 6 months old, so it doesn't seem like it went anywhere. Probably because the greater internet has no motivation to oppose moving content to a non-commercial license.

mikeash 12y ago

I think it speaks to a different mindset from what we as programmers are used to. Licensing is a pretty big deal for us. Virtually every programmer has some sort of opinion on GPL vs BSD vs public domain vs whatever. Open source projects can live or die because of their license. Wikis are basically open source projects with natural language instead of code. But I get the impression that few wiki contributors care that much about licenses. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's because code is more modular and flexible. If you write a useful open source library, the license you put on it can have huge implications for what products end up using it. There's no wiki equivalent to e.g. large quantities of BSD code being used to build a smartphone that sells hundreds of millions of units.

bunderbunder 12y ago
In programming, when you reuse others' work product it's considered good engineering practice. We call it "not reinventing the wheel." In most professions where the work product is in a natural language, reusing significant portions of others' work is called "plagiarism", and is considered a serious ethical violation. Reusing small portions for the sake of making a point, on the other hand, is covered by fair use rules. So yeah, licensing concerns might be a mostly irrelevant detail. The big questions about when you can and cannot reuse others' work product are already covered by a rigorously socially-enforced ethical standard, and the law. Both of those are more powerful than mere contracts in their own way.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Think about free textbooks, which may be commercially printed (of course you have to pay for a physical object) but are also available online under CC-BY-SA. If something is well explained in, say, Wikipedia, I can lift it and put it directly into the textbook, with a credit, making only the small tweaks necessary to make it flow in context. This can be hugely valuable, but tacking on NC means no one can ever sell those physical copies (which some people prefer). I kind of hope this situation doesn't arise with TV Tropes, but you never know...
- fdej 12y ago
  I don't see the distinction you're trying to make here. It's plagiarism to copy someone's code without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's code if you give attribution. It's plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text if you give attribution. In either case, copying someone else's code or natural text is potentially copyright infringement, but that's a different matter.
  - eric_cc 12y ago
    / * @author BigDave1974 over at SlashDot */
- tjr 12y ago
  I wonder if it would make sense to sell reusable chunks of text, like libraries of code.
eric_cc 12y ago
I'm a programmer and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - I have no opinion on licensing and could not tell you a single thing about any one license. Are there really that many people knowledgable about different licenses?
- acheron 12y ago
  Nah, you're not an idiot. There's a tendency on HN of people saying "all programmers" to mean "programmers who live in Silicon Valley, use open source tools to write web apps funded by ad eyeballs, and put all their code on Github". Witness the countless posts about "why should I interview when I can point to a Github account", or that article yesterday about "articles every programmer should read" that had something about SEO in it (and then the replies from people unable to see why that was silly), etc.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    That's kind of funny, since I'm nowhere near Silicon Valley and don't even identify with that crowd, I rarely do any web work, and write plenty of proprietary code. (Ironically, web apps are an area where you can generally get away with not knowing anything about open source licenses, since you're not redistributing the programs you make.) I merely observe that programmers generally use third party libraries, and that doing so requires at least a basic understanding of the license terms. Maybe there are a lot of people out there writing code who never touch external code?
    - TuringTest 12y ago
      (Ironically, web apps are an area where you can generally get away with not knowing anything about open source licenses, since you're not redistributing the programs you make.) Except if you happen to use something under an Affero GPL license, in which case you really should know about it. But yes, those project are rare.
      - mikeash 12y ago

labster 12y ago

Original author here: You're right. It hasn't gone anywhere in 6 months, because there's no real angle on getting involved in a legal dispute. There's no money to be gained in suing TVT. And forcing them to take content offline hurts the commons perhaps more than it helps it. The motivation behind the original blog was at least partially catharsis -- there really are no good options for copyright enforcement of open content. Sure, if it was a few lousy pages, TV Tropes could stand to lose them, but I'm talking about core pages like "Anime" and several tropes of legend initially written by my colleague. Sure I could send a DCMA request, but they'd have every reason to fight it, and what then? Hire lawyers? Try to delete content that people thought was legal and amended, but actually turned into infringing content? Get them to delete pages on works of fiction of which I am a fan? All of the options are awful except one: getting people to leave that illegal and immoral site. True morality isn't about protecting children's delicate eyes from textual metapornography, it's about giving back to the people who give to you -- and not just taking more from them. I recommend either All The Tropes or the Tropes Mirror Wiki on Wikia.