6 ms·

Before anyone mocks this guy (sadly, partly too late), please try to keep in mind that he (a) does have a reasonable right to what he says he wants (to have som

by dewitt 12y ago

Before anyone mocks this guy (sadly, partly too late), please try to keep in mind that he (a) does have a reasonable right to what he says he wants (to have some say in what he believes are his inventions), and (b) it's an illustration that the rules of intellectual property and open source are not always clear, even to those following well-established patterns. While he's inarguably incorrect about quite a number of things, it's always better practice to assume the best of a fellow engineer and treat this as a teaching opportunity, not a cause for pitchforks and belittlement. The package maintainer, threedaymonk, handled it perfectly, imo, by respecting the desires of the individual and not porting it, and closing the issue out quickly without further escalation. While it may have been technically "right" to copy the code, it wouldn't have been worth the damage it would have caused to the person behind it. Credit for handling a unfortunate situation with grace.

rmc 12y ago
> (b) it's an illustration that the rules of intellectual property and open source are not always clear, even to those following well-established patterns. I don't think there is anywhere on the internet that will tell you that you can't copy a BSD licence. How did the original author decide on the BSD?
- Tomte 12y ago
  The problem seems to be that he didn't really decide. It's easy to make a quick decision when releasing software that cannot be taken back. And when you're finally realizing your mistake, you can only resort to what we're seeing here: pleas and threats. And of course, on the whole huge Internet you will always have people who defy you either for legitimate reasons or just out of spite. So it's practically guaranteed that you end up with war. I cannot make up my mind whether we should blame him (for being so nonchalant with the license) or Google (for luring him into this trap without properly educating him on the consequences).
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Blaming Google is, in my opinion, patronizing the author. There's no evidence of them having tried to deceive him, and the BSD is a very well known license. I sympathize with him, but that doesn't mean there must be someone else to blame.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mathetic 12y ago
> While it may have been technically "right" to copy the code, it wouldn't have been worth the damage it would have caused to the person behind it. Well, I will play the devil's advocate. If the code is useful to enough people, then there is damage to everyone else who might have benefited the port. What I understand from his comments is that he does not only not want you to use his implementation but also "his" algorithm as a basis to the port. Now assuming that he has an efficient algorithm to solve the problem, then he basically forbids other people from using the efficient algorithm. So the needs of the community's damage may in fact be more than the individual's. Also say the exact same thing happened with GNU toolchain, does the individual's damage still outweighs the community's? I would not bring this up if his tone in his comments wasn't arrogant despite the fact that he is at fault by not reading making any effort to understand the licence. EDIT: Can down voters care to comment?
- acqq 12y ago
  > If the code is useful to enough people, then there is damage to everyone else who might have benefited the port. So what? There exist enough codes which are licensed under some kind of "open source" license for which you still have to pay to the patent holder if you actually use the code. While "somebody else" can benefit from using it, he/she still has to pay if the patent holder demands so. Not every "open source" license is automatically a "GNU" one. It's not only the moral issue (who benefits) but also the legal one. Even ignoring the legal one, imagine you being in his shoes: you earn money by selling your invention, and for convenience to your clients, you sell them your code. Then somebody asks you to allow him to include your code in some other project which is published under some other "open source license." You agree not knowing what that actually means, for example, because he who asked used misleading language. Later you find out that you misunderstood the effects of that action. Morally, the agreement where one agrees only because he was mislead is certainly not the agreement which has to be enforced. It should be annulled.
  - mathetic 12y ago
    > You agree not knowing what that actually means Exactly. Firstly, kudos to project maintainer for handling the situation gracefully. I respect that he respected M3 creator's wishes. You're quite right in an ideal universe. Ours is far from that. The code for the project is out there, so if someone does not want to pay the programmer, then they will reimplement it in house and no one will ever know about it period. If on the other hand they prefer the port, then there must be a good reason for it such as better compatibility/maintainability/performance/etc. Now let's go to the ideal universe. Well, if everyone abides the rules, then the project creator effectively contaminated other programmers. If someone interested in solving the same problem examined the code thoroughly, then they are influenced by the solution and that is perfectly reasonable because they looked at the code thinking it is under BSD licence. Now that they know they are influenced by the program, they are ethically obliged to avoid solving the problem or they would be infringing author's "copyright" (that is despite the fact that you cannot copyright an algorithm).
metaphorm 12y ago
threedaymonk behaved as a nice, well-intentioned, polite person ought to. however, the copyright claim was completely bogus as was the assertion of control over the algorithm itself. i think we can all agree that being nice and polite to each other is a good thing, as is respecting the wish's of a fellow engineer out of professional courtesy. we shouldn't be confused about the law though. none of those copyright claims were valid.
- alinajaf 12y ago
  > threedaymonk behaved as a nice, well-intentioned, polite person ought to. I work with threedaymonk and the reason that he came across this way is that he is a remarkably nice, well-intentioned, polite person.
lpsz 12y ago
The package maintainer, as you said, handled this very gracefully. Yeah, the author is likely in the wrong/gray (IANAL). But I can't help but be disappointed that posters below immediately jump to "Well, it should be free anyway!" "Why is he protecting his code?" "Here is an evil oppressor trying to keep something valuable to himself." Here is a developer who tried to build a living using his own software, something many of us aspire to do. Why are we so quick to throw him under the bus? Is it because we instinctively always want to "defend the underdog"?
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > Here is a developer who tried to build a living using his own software, something many of us aspire to do. Why are we so quick to throw him under the bus? Because he published it under a license he apparently never intended to honor. It's like trying to charge someone for a free sample after they've eaten it.
  - vacri 12y ago
    He was mistaken about what that license meant, not dishonourable. He intended to honour what he thought the license meant, and wasn't performing some sort of shell game. Threedaymonk took the best course in honouring what the original author intended, rather than the mistakenly-applied licensing. FOSS licenses are confusing to people who don't live and breathe them. One other example from quite a few years back was when SugarCRM open-sourced their code and put it under a GPL license. They thought it meant 'you get to see what we're doing', but after a couple of competitors forked off it (we used vTiger, from memory), they got a short, sharp lesson in 'what the GPL means'. Their code from that point on was not GPL'd.
cbd1984 12y ago
The best way to deal with this is to quietly take this person aside and explain to them how this stuff works. For one, people likely aren't going to be as charitable the second time he does this, and, for two, unless and until he understands what he's doing with licenses, he's a potential land mine to any project he contributes to. CS courses need more courses on how licensing works, and by "more" I mean "some non-zero number". It's useful to know even if you never enter the FOSS world.
- dkuntz2 12y ago
  I disagree. While knowing what these licenses are, how they work, and some pros and cons of each is nice, it's decidedly not computer science. There's no traditional CS courses I can think of that this would fit in, except for maybe an ethics in CS course, which not all schools have.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Scientists have an obligation to understand the legal, ethical, and social context of their work. So if no "traditional" CS course would fit a discussion of software licenses and copyright, a new course is needed. This is even more true for software engineering, but even a scientist who only knows science is in danger of being exploited or of damaging the reputation of his/her community.
  - lake99 12y ago
    This can easily be accommodated in a Software Engineering course. Project (and library) licenses are as important a matter as project lifecycle.
  - kevan 12y ago
    I believe most CS students would benefit greatly from this type of class. The topic may not perfectly fit into pure computer science topics but it's something that anyone who writes code will run into during their career and should have a basic understanding of. Another (albeit more absurd) example is version control. You can successfully argue that it's not a computer science topic, but anyone graduating with a CS degree will be much better off in the real world having learned about it.
nlksnclds 12y ago
>assume the best of a fellow engineer Quit calling yourselves that: you're all web developers, not engineers. At the end of the day, 95% of what people on HN do revolves around making pretty websites for the internet. You have not taken the FE exam, you did not study engineering, you are not certified as an engineer. This is just the latest way that CS graduates are trying to self aggrandize and de-trivialize their profession.
- iN7h33nD 12y ago
  I would say "making pretty websites" is still engineering because they are working with machines to design and manufacture [0]. This makes anyone who does it an engineer. I find it rather offensive to generalize everyone on HN into one category. I have read comments from people in all stages of life and many different professions and we do not need this kind of talk. [0] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/engineering http://www.thefreedictionary.com/engineering
- schlarpc 12y ago
  There is nothing to stop a software developer from taking the "other disciplines" FE and the "software engineering" PE.
  - nlksnclds 12y ago
    Absolutely, but in the context of HN's "silicon valley hacker" culture, that seems pretty unlikely here.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      How much of the hardware and software you're using now was originally conceived and designed by credentialed PEs and FEs? You can walk up to Woz and tell him he wasn't an "engineer" when he designed the original Apple hardware, but you can't possibly expect anyone with a clue to take you seriously.
- mynameisvlad 12y ago
  Unless you are in some specific locations such as Canada, where the term "engineer" is tightly controlled, then you can call yourself whatever the fuck you want. "Software engineer" does not imply any of the things you said in the United States. I can call myself a software ninja if I wanted to. That doesn't mean I practiced the art of ninjas. I can call myself a code monkey. That doesn't mean I'm actually a monkey. It's just a fucking title, so get over it. If that's my actual title at a company then I'm going to use it publicly too.
matt_heimer 12y ago
If you wanted something like what he wants, are there any licenses that limit the scope of derivatives? Or are you best off using a No Derivatives license with a contact for permission notice?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- djur 12y ago
  Someone could still reimplement the algorithm based on a description. You can't copyright algorithms. You can (sometimes) patent them, which the original author apparently tried to do. The claim would have been based on that patent rather than on copyright. (Edited some details I was wrong about)

by dewitt 12y ago

rmc 12y ago

> (b) it's an illustration that the rules of intellectual property and open source are not always clear, even to those following well-established patterns. I don't think there is anywhere on the internet that will tell you that you can't copy a BSD licence. How did the original author decide on the BSD?

Tomte 12y ago
The problem seems to be that he didn't really decide. It's easy to make a quick decision when releasing software that cannot be taken back. And when you're finally realizing your mistake, you can only resort to what we're seeing here: pleas and threats. And of course, on the whole huge Internet you will always have people who defy you either for legitimate reasons or just out of spite. So it's practically guaranteed that you end up with war. I cannot make up my mind whether we should blame him (for being so nonchalant with the license) or Google (for luring him into this trap without properly educating him on the consequences).
- icebraining 12y ago
  Blaming Google is, in my opinion, patronizing the author. There's no evidence of them having tried to deceive him, and the BSD is a very well known license. I sympathize with him, but that doesn't mean there must be someone else to blame.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mathetic 12y ago

> While it may have been technically "right" to copy the code, it wouldn't have been worth the damage it would have caused to the person behind it. Well, I will play the devil's advocate. If the code is useful to enough people, then there is damage to everyone else who might have benefited the port. What I understand from his comments is that he does not only not want you to use his implementation but also "his" algorithm as a basis to the port. Now assuming that he has an efficient algorithm to solve the problem, then he basically forbids other people from using the efficient algorithm. So the needs of the community's damage may in fact be more than the individual's. Also say the exact same thing happened with GNU toolchain, does the individual's damage still outweighs the community's? I would not bring this up if his tone in his comments wasn't arrogant despite the fact that he is at fault by not reading making any effort to understand the licence. EDIT: Can down voters care to comment?

acqq 12y ago
> If the code is useful to enough people, then there is damage to everyone else who might have benefited the port. So what? There exist enough codes which are licensed under some kind of "open source" license for which you still have to pay to the patent holder if you actually use the code. While "somebody else" can benefit from using it, he/she still has to pay if the patent holder demands so. Not every "open source" license is automatically a "GNU" one. It's not only the moral issue (who benefits) but also the legal one. Even ignoring the legal one, imagine you being in his shoes: you earn money by selling your invention, and for convenience to your clients, you sell them your code. Then somebody asks you to allow him to include your code in some other project which is published under some other "open source license." You agree not knowing what that actually means, for example, because he who asked used misleading language. Later you find out that you misunderstood the effects of that action. Morally, the agreement where one agrees only because he was mislead is certainly not the agreement which has to be enforced. It should be annulled.
- mathetic 12y ago
  > You agree not knowing what that actually means Exactly. Firstly, kudos to project maintainer for handling the situation gracefully. I respect that he respected M3 creator's wishes. You're quite right in an ideal universe. Ours is far from that. The code for the project is out there, so if someone does not want to pay the programmer, then they will reimplement it in house and no one will ever know about it period. If on the other hand they prefer the port, then there must be a good reason for it such as better compatibility/maintainability/performance/etc. Now let's go to the ideal universe. Well, if everyone abides the rules, then the project creator effectively contaminated other programmers. If someone interested in solving the same problem examined the code thoroughly, then they are influenced by the solution and that is perfectly reasonable because they looked at the code thinking it is under BSD licence. Now that they know they are influenced by the program, they are ethically obliged to avoid solving the problem or they would be infringing author's "copyright" (that is despite the fact that you cannot copyright an algorithm).

metaphorm 12y ago

threedaymonk behaved as a nice, well-intentioned, polite person ought to. however, the copyright claim was completely bogus as was the assertion of control over the algorithm itself. i think we can all agree that being nice and polite to each other is a good thing, as is respecting the wish's of a fellow engineer out of professional courtesy. we shouldn't be confused about the law though. none of those copyright claims were valid.

alinajaf 12y ago
> threedaymonk behaved as a nice, well-intentioned, polite person ought to. I work with threedaymonk and the reason that he came across this way is that he is a remarkably nice, well-intentioned, polite person.

lpsz 12y ago

The package maintainer, as you said, handled this very gracefully. Yeah, the author is likely in the wrong/gray (IANAL). But I can't help but be disappointed that posters below immediately jump to "Well, it should be free anyway!" "Why is he protecting his code?" "Here is an evil oppressor trying to keep something valuable to himself." Here is a developer who tried to build a living using his own software, something many of us aspire to do. Why are we so quick to throw him under the bus? Is it because we instinctively always want to "defend the underdog"?

ceejayoz 12y ago
> Here is a developer who tried to build a living using his own software, something many of us aspire to do. Why are we so quick to throw him under the bus? Because he published it under a license he apparently never intended to honor. It's like trying to charge someone for a free sample after they've eaten it.
- vacri 12y ago
  He was mistaken about what that license meant, not dishonourable. He intended to honour what he thought the license meant, and wasn't performing some sort of shell game. Threedaymonk took the best course in honouring what the original author intended, rather than the mistakenly-applied licensing. FOSS licenses are confusing to people who don't live and breathe them. One other example from quite a few years back was when SugarCRM open-sourced their code and put it under a GPL license. They thought it meant 'you get to see what we're doing', but after a couple of competitors forked off it (we used vTiger, from memory), they got a short, sharp lesson in 'what the GPL means'. Their code from that point on was not GPL'd.

cbd1984 12y ago

The best way to deal with this is to quietly take this person aside and explain to them how this stuff works. For one, people likely aren't going to be as charitable the second time he does this, and, for two, unless and until he understands what he's doing with licenses, he's a potential land mine to any project he contributes to. CS courses need more courses on how licensing works, and by "more" I mean "some non-zero number". It's useful to know even if you never enter the FOSS world.

dkuntz2 12y ago
I disagree. While knowing what these licenses are, how they work, and some pros and cons of each is nice, it's decidedly not computer science. There's no traditional CS courses I can think of that this would fit in, except for maybe an ethics in CS course, which not all schools have.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Scientists have an obligation to understand the legal, ethical, and social context of their work. So if no "traditional" CS course would fit a discussion of software licenses and copyright, a new course is needed. This is even more true for software engineering, but even a scientist who only knows science is in danger of being exploited or of damaging the reputation of his/her community.
- lake99 12y ago
  This can easily be accommodated in a Software Engineering course. Project (and library) licenses are as important a matter as project lifecycle.
- kevan 12y ago
  I believe most CS students would benefit greatly from this type of class. The topic may not perfectly fit into pure computer science topics but it's something that anyone who writes code will run into during their career and should have a basic understanding of. Another (albeit more absurd) example is version control. You can successfully argue that it's not a computer science topic, but anyone graduating with a CS degree will be much better off in the real world having learned about it.

nlksnclds 12y ago

>assume the best of a fellow engineer Quit calling yourselves that: you're all web developers, not engineers. At the end of the day, 95% of what people on HN do revolves around making pretty websites for the internet. You have not taken the FE exam, you did not study engineering, you are not certified as an engineer. This is just the latest way that CS graduates are trying to self aggrandize and de-trivialize their profession.

iN7h33nD 12y ago
I would say "making pretty websites" is still engineering because they are working with machines to design and manufacture [0]. This makes anyone who does it an engineer. I find it rather offensive to generalize everyone on HN into one category. I have read comments from people in all stages of life and many different professions and we do not need this kind of talk. [0] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/engineering http://www.thefreedictionary.com/engineering
schlarpc 12y ago
There is nothing to stop a software developer from taking the "other disciplines" FE and the "software engineering" PE.
- nlksnclds 12y ago
  Absolutely, but in the context of HN's "silicon valley hacker" culture, that seems pretty unlikely here.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    How much of the hardware and software you're using now was originally conceived and designed by credentialed PEs and FEs? You can walk up to Woz and tell him he wasn't an "engineer" when he designed the original Apple hardware, but you can't possibly expect anyone with a clue to take you seriously.
mynameisvlad 12y ago
Unless you are in some specific locations such as Canada, where the term "engineer" is tightly controlled, then you can call yourself whatever the fuck you want. "Software engineer" does not imply any of the things you said in the United States. I can call myself a software ninja if I wanted to. That doesn't mean I practiced the art of ninjas. I can call myself a code monkey. That doesn't mean I'm actually a monkey. It's just a fucking title, so get over it. If that's my actual title at a company then I'm going to use it publicly too.

matt_heimer 12y ago

If you wanted something like what he wants, are there any licenses that limit the scope of derivatives? Or are you best off using a No Derivatives license with a contact for permission notice?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
djur 12y ago
Someone could still reimplement the algorithm based on a description. You can't copyright algorithms. You can (sometimes) patent them, which the original author apparently tried to do. The claim would have been based on that patent rather than on copyright. (Edited some details I was wrong about)