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Lerna relicences to protest ICE

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Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#91

Post by augbog »

jancsika wrote: post #21

This is about as effective as ripping an arm off your shirt and throwing it in the vicinity of an ICE agent. The result of that effort will be a day fielding questions from everyone but ICE about what the heck is wrong with your shirt.

The main goal is less to hurt the companies that are supporting ICE by not allowing them to use an open source project, but actually bring a lot more awareness that these companies DO IN FACT support ICE. I had no idea Palantir was working on the technology to help deport people

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-en...

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#92

Post by negativegate »

village-idiot wrote: post #77
ggreer wrote: post #6

How can they change the license without getting the approval of everyone who contributed code? It doesn't look like they required contributors to sign CLAs.

MIT allows sublicensing explicitly. It's why you can include MIT licensed code in proprietary software, something that the GPL is designed to prevent. What you can't do is retroactively apply this to old code. The named entities could use older versions of the code, but in newer versions the new license would apply.

What stops someone from forking it and re-sublicensing it back to vanilla MIT?

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#93

Post by mikl »

yellowapple wrote: post #65

So, if I'm understanding this correctly: - Lerna is no longer free software (per the FSF's definitions) or open source software (per the OSI's definitions), so calling it "open source" is inaccurate - Lerna is effectively illegal to host on GitHub, since its license terms prevent GitHub's parent company (Microsoft) from being able to legally distribute it in source form - Lerna probably can't relicense anyway without…

Yeah, I can’t see how Github can host Lerna with this license, since Github is clearly “any subsidiary thereof”.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#94

Post by dplgk »

chomp wrote: post #68
eindiran wrote: post #2

I'd be very happy if someone could present a counter argument to this: this is something expressly against the spirit of the MIT license and Lerna should not continue claiming that the software is MIT licensed. https://opensource.org/osd In particular, this seems like a pretty explicit violation of the "no discrimination against field of endeavor" clause. Here is the text of the MIT license: " Permission is hereby gr…

MIT allows for the sublicensing to a more restrictive license. I have no idea how this would play out in court, but it looks like this is allowed. Pretty scummy move though for people who don't agree with this maintainers politics, and very concerning for ANY company who does anything that the maintainers could potentially disagree with. I'd avoid this project now, or use an older MIT-only commit. EDIT: Thought about…

Is it politics when human rights are violated? I don't think it's "politics" to oppose children separated from their parents.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#95

Post by alanh »

I’m just here to point out that this boneheaded effort makes no effort to solve for the following cases:

- Companies becoming “collaborators” in the future

- Companies that are on the list ceasing “collaboration” with ICE

The latter is especially dumb when you figure it is the exact outcome this move is trying to inspire.

This leaves aside more fundamental questions of enforceability and so forth.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#96

Post by mbo »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #30

Slightly off-topic, but: anyone know where I can find a solid debate / discussion on the political issues raised by illegal immigration in the U.S.? My own views lean pretty strongly towards one end of the spectrum, and I simply can't understand why people would hold the opposite views. So I suspect I'm missing something.

If your views skew right perhaps checking out a liberal podcast like Pod Save America, or a leftist podcast Chapo Trap House or Citations Needed. If they skew left, Crowder, Shapiro, Jones or Limbaugh ought to do it.

Like, these won't be "solid debate and discussion" but you'll definitely work out why people hold opposite views quickly.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#97

Post by dragonwriter »

dplgk wrote: post #94
chomp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT allows for the sublicensing to a more restrictive license. I have no idea how this would play out in court, but it looks like this is allowed. Pretty scummy move though for people who don't agree with this maintainers politics, and very concerning for ANY company who does anything that the maintainers could potentially disagree with. I'd avoid this project now, or use an older MIT-only commit. EDIT: Thought about…

Is it politics when human rights are violated? I don't think it's "politics" to oppose children separated from their parents.

> Is it politics when human rights are violated?

Absolutely. The most important politics.

Of course, using “politics” as a dismissal of importance is only a technique to protect the political status quo from a challenge one cannot otherwise defend against.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#98

Post by village-idiot »

negativegate wrote: post #92
village-idiot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT allows sublicensing explicitly. It's why you can include MIT licensed code in proprietary software, something that the GPL is designed to prevent. What you can't do is retroactively apply this to old code. The named entities could use older versions of the code, but in newer versions the new license would apply.

What stops someone from forking it and re-sublicensing it back to vanilla MIT?

IANAL, but I believe that a sub-license has to be more restrictive than the parent license.

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#99

Post by lliamander »

eindiran wrote: post #2

I'd be very happy if someone could present a counter argument to this: this is something expressly against the spirit of the MIT license and Lerna should not continue claiming that the software is MIT licensed. https://opensource.org/osd In particular, this seems like a pretty explicit violation of the "no discrimination against field of endeavor" clause. Here is the text of the MIT license: " Permission is hereby gr…

A explanation for why carving out exceptions for evil people in open source licenses ultimately harms the ecosystem:

- http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8106

- https://www.fsf.org/patrons/licensing/20050211.html

Re: Lerna relicences to protest ICE

#100

Post by aeorgnoieang »

dragonwriter wrote: post #97
dplgk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it politics when human rights are violated? I don't think it's "politics" to oppose children separated from their parents.

> Is it politics when human rights are violated? Absolutely. The most important politics. Of course, using “politics” as a dismissal of importance is only a technique to protect the political status quo from a challenge one cannot otherwise defend against.

I think there's a legitimate desire in wanting to avoid "politics". It's a more specific instance of avoiding the trap described by 'perfect is the enemy of good'. Here's a good Tumblr post to which I linked earlier today in a similar HN thread:

- [The Grey Tribe — Activism, Accessibility, Setting Good...](https://the-grey-tribe.tumblr.com/post/175038067648/activism...)

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