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I've Just Liberated My Modules

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Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#701

Post by overgard »

icelancer wrote: post #517
overgard wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only in the most narrow sense. His cause, whatever it is, isn't furthered, but now everyone involved (including him) looks bad, and a lot of innocent people have had their time wasted fixing something that shouldn't have broken. It's a loss for everyone involved. He looks petty and untrustworthy, npm looks amateurish, kik gets bad publicity, and everyone using this junk is stuck with their face in their palms.

And how do you look, having used a package manager that allows such an action without preparing for this eventuality?

Your point eludes me. I guess you're implying I'm stupid for having trusted a standard well known tool?

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#702

Post by opello »

jimjimjim wrote: post #448

I am obviously a old fossilized ancient developer. This situation seems like insanity. not the unpublishing part. the part where the thing that you require to sell/publish/do your job isn't under control or isn't stored within your organization. Am i wrong in thinking that you should just have a local copy of all of your source code dependencies. would it really take that much longer?

Not wrong at all. Certainly would have saved people here.

Maybe there's a commentary about progress and the quality of the infrastructure that some incident hasn't made people cache dependencies yet...

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#703

Post by esquivalience »

kilotaras wrote: post #548
ubernostrum wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still be jailed for contempt of the order, though. "I've found a clever workaround for court orders" doesn't work around that bit.

Would that work if you did it before the court order?

No.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#704

Post by Tyr42 »

ufmace wrote: post #684
Klathmon wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that doesn't change anything. The fact that in JS land it would be it's a standalone module means you get more choice in what you need (no need to pull down 100 programs if you only need 1 or 2).

More choice, but now you need 50 different modules from 50 different authors to duplicate what would be in one good standard library, any of which could have bugs or be pulled out from under you for a multitude of reasons that are beyond your control. Choice can be a bad thing too - when there are 10 different modules for doing a moderately complex thing, you have to figure out which one is best for your project, and…

But also, if you're shipping things to users browsers, please cut out all the stuff you don't use. I don't want to download 100 extra module's worth of JS code because it was bundled.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#705

Post by icebraining »

lmm wrote: post #585
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty interesting. I wonder if it's within npm's legal right to distribute someone else's IP in such a way that they do not desire. Granted the license is WTFPL but does that include taking over the IP itself?

> Granted the license is WTFPL but does that include taking over the IP itself? In some jurisdictions you have "moral rights" in addition to your copyright - but even in those, I'd expect the WTFPL constitutes a license to falsely claim authorship of the covered code. I mean, the text pretty clearly authorizes you to do so on its face, and courts lean pretty strongly towards reading words under their plain, normal me…

IANAL either, but moral rights are often (usually?) inalienable, so I doubt any license can waive them in those jurisdictions.

That said, I don't think "un-unpublishing" code (even under your own account) is the same as claiming ownership, just redistribution.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#706

Post by icebraining »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #434
Allan_Smithee wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... which part of "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO" is actually unclear here? Is there a word or phrase that you're not grasping? "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO" clearly includes not only taking over the IP but also RE-LICENSING IT under whatever terms you like. That's kind of what "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO". Do. What ever the fuck. You want to. How is this unclear? I'm kind of baffled.

Licensing doesn't really have anything to do with copyright / trademark / IP in general. It just grants you the ability to use something in the way specified. I'm not aware of case law where a license has been able to move the original IP from one party to another; I've only heard of that happening through standard legal documents. But I also pointed out that I wasn't sure how it would shake out anyway and was seekin…

But why are you saying the copyright was transferred? I don't see anything that implies that. Someone got a copy of the code under an irrevocable license that grants them to right to re-publish it, and that's what they are doing.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#707

Post by minitech »

skeoh wrote: post #534
minitech wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s also the whole point of using a function. (For what it’s worth, I changed it from this to show off ES6.) function repeat(s, times) { return new Array(times + 1).join(s); } function padLeft(s, width, padCharacter) { var d = width - s.length; return d

Sure. And it's easy to copy and paste into a few different projects that you maintain. What happens, however, when you decide to use multiple characters instead of a single character (to create a pattern for example)? Now your padding is two or more times as long as needed. So you write a little extra logic but now you have to update multiple projects to implement that same change. I think what's great about external…

> What happens, however, when you decide to use multiple characters instead of a single character (to create a pattern for example)?

Then you can’t use left-pad, because it doesn’t support that and you don’t maintain it. So you make your own module to suit your needs, which is a very good thing and returns somewhat to the actual point, which is that anyone can make their own left-pad that matches the existing module, so the author’s wishes wouldn’t have a huge impact even if they were that the module stayed down, which they weren’t. Phew!

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#708

Post by esquivalience »

jonathankoren wrote: post #372
bluefox wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very good question. I was going to make the argument that the author merely continued what NPM Inc. started, and that if you fault him, you should also fault NPM Inc., but then I noticed that NPM Inc. didn't unpublish his module, but transfered the name to another account, which is much worse, if you think about it. The ultimate conclusion is that if it's anyone's fault, it is the fault of the person who re…

> I noticed that NPM Inc. didn't unpublish his module, but transfered the name to another account, which is much worse, if you think about it. Jesus. This is a disaster. At this point, the only responsible thing to do is to avoid NPM.

I feel like the best way to avoid a disaster like this is for developers to avoid using registered brand names when they write their packages.

It's not difficult, since there are all sorts of rights brand owners can't get you on.

1. You don't really need a catchy name for an open source project, since you're not in competition for funds. Call it something descriptive. Descriptive words can't usually be protected, so you should be fine.

2. In most countries, using your personal name is fine irrespective of any IP rights.

3. If you want to use a catchy name anyway, check on the USPTO TESS database for registered rights. If any are live, choose another name.

Remember when Groupon tried to register Gnome for software applications[0], and the open source community (rightly) came out in force supporting the Gnome foundation? But when it's the other way round, it makes no difference.

The problem isn't IP law, it's just bias.

[0] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2846632/groupon-decides-to-le...

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#709

Post by therealmarv »

vincent_s wrote: post #539
nordsieck wrote: post #157

One interesting thing to me, is that it is pretty clear that the kik lawyers pretty dramatically over enforced their trademark. For those who don't know, the purpose of trademarks is to prevent customer confusion; essentially we don't want people to be able to sell cheap knock-offs of someone else's thing without the general public being able to easily distinguish between them. In practical terms, trademarks are "sco…

Most Germans wouldn't know that kik is also a chat app ;-) "KiK is the largest textile discounter chain in Germany and operates about 3,200 stores in Germany, Austria (since 1998), Slovenia and Czech Republic (since 2007), Hungary and Slovakia (since 2008), Croatia (since 2011) and Poland (since March 2012)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiK

This shows the claims from kik messenger are not valid, at least in Germany.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#710

Post by [deleted] »

profmonocle wrote: post #181
_nfin wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we need gpg signed packages :> And... all packages should be namespaced under the author who published them. And... I kind of want to say "once it's published, it's forever".

> And... I kind of want to say "once it's published, it's forever". This is effectively the norm with more traditional, curated package managers. Say I release a piece of open source software, and some Linux distro adds it to their package manager. Under a typical open source license, I have no legal right to ask them to stop distributing it. They can just say "sorry, you licensed this code to us under X license and…

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