Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The MIT License, Line by Line

writing.kemitchell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 148 posts

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#41

Post by systemvoltage »

torstenvl wrote: post #27
systemvoltage wrote: post #7

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. What’s the reasoning behind asking users to carry around a notice? Why not just let users go without it? Is it for legal reasons or for crediting the authors? I’ve released MIT licensed software before and frankly when someone is using my code, I really don’t care about credit or leaving be…

You're removing the license in that case, which means downstream users aren't informed that they are direct licensees. It's dishonest. Additionally, the Berne Convention recognizes a "moral right" to claim authorship. https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/283698

This is what I was looking for, thanks for the insight. The way I understand this - if I don't put my authorship, it becomes a liability for the users of my code since they have no traceability of where the code came from. Am I reading this right?

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#42

Post by thed »

This article touches a point I have been wondering about regarding the Notice condition: "But web developers, as a whole, haven’t got the memo.".

The JavaScript and npm ecosystem are extremely dependency-heavy. Even if you only take a few yourself, the number of sub-dependencies of even a simple application are often in the hundreds.

Why does "everyone" ignore the attribution of their dependencies and sub-dependencies? Laziness? Risk of getting sued too low? What happens if Oracle buys all the left-pads in the world?

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#43

Post by CameronNemo »

alkonaut wrote: post #20
systemvoltage wrote: post #7

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. What’s the reasoning behind asking users to carry around a notice? Why not just let users go without it? Is it for legal reasons or for crediting the authors? I’ve released MIT licensed software before and frankly when someone is using my code, I really don’t care about credit or leaving be…

How is this “inclusion” typically done for a project that is deployed in compiled format and contains hundreds of libraries with dozens of different licenses? It must be especially difficult on devices where it’s difficult to accept user input or display licenses. In commercial desktop software I have shipped, it has been a section in help>about with a long list of third party libs each showing a text document.

I downloaded trivy (a go CLI tool) recently and they have some tooling to pack up dependency licenses and include them in the release tarball.

It is possible and quite easy, if you plan ahead. Notably, Debian binary packages include extensive copyright information.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#44

Post by torstenvl »

thed wrote: post #42

This article touches a point I have been wondering about regarding the Notice condition: "But web developers, as a whole, haven’t got the memo.". The JavaScript and npm ecosystem are extremely dependency-heavy. Even if you only take a few yourself, the number of sub-dependencies of even a simple application are often in the hundreds. Why does "everyone" ignore the attribution of their dependencies and sub-dependencie…

I'm not following your train of thought here really. Are you saying that people are stripping out the notice from the source code as a matter of course and then redistributing it?

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#45

Post by CameronNemo »

sidpatil wrote: post #40
systemvoltage wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not copy left, but users have the right to see the license "tree" if you will of all the things you've built your code with. I think, as others have pointed out in the replies, 0BSD or MIT-0 is more suitable for me.

> I think, as others have pointed out in the replies, 0BSD or MIT-0 is more suitable for me. Why not go with [CC0] in that case? It's a lot more robust, and recommended by the FSF over options like the Unlicense. [CC0] https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Where is the FSF recommendation? And did they only consider unlicense?

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#46

Post by CameronNemo »

torstenvl wrote: post #25
xixixao wrote: post #8

I was hoping for a discussion of the “substantial portions” term. The explanation focuses on use as a dependency, but what if I take some MIT code and modify it and include it directly in my project? What counts as “substantial portion”?

In general it means "this applies to derivative works." At best, it might provide an argument that APIs aren't covered (now that that's a thing). But copyright law doesn't really recognize "substantial portion" as a term of art (though it's arguably related to one of the prongs of a Fair Use inquiry). IANYL but my personal practice is and would be to ignore the word "substantial."

So if I copy a 3 line example off stackoverflow I may need to add a license disclaimer... Wow.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#47

Post by ghaff »

sidpatil wrote: post #40
systemvoltage wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not copy left, but users have the right to see the license "tree" if you will of all the things you've built your code with. I think, as others have pointed out in the replies, 0BSD or MIT-0 is more suitable for me.

> I think, as others have pointed out in the replies, 0BSD or MIT-0 is more suitable for me. Why not go with [CC0] in that case? It's a lot more robust, and recommended by the FSF over options like the Unlicense. [CC0] https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Note that the OSI does not recommend CC0 however because of its patent language. [1] The OSI didn't reject it but the license was withdrawn after it was presumably clear that it would not be approved.

[1] https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#48

Post by torstenvl »

systemvoltage wrote: post #41
torstenvl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're removing the license in that case, which means downstream users aren't informed that they are direct licensees. It's dishonest. Additionally, the Berne Convention recognizes a "moral right" to claim authorship. https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/283698

This is what I was looking for, thanks for the insight. The way I understand this - if I don't put my authorship, it becomes a liability for the users of my code since they have no traceability of where the code came from. Am I reading this right?

Yeah downstream users wouldn't know that the license text came from someone who can actually license it.

The combination of the copyright and permission notice says

"This is mine AND you can do these things with it if you want."

Claiming ownership by itself does not result in it being open source.

Saying you're giving permissions, but without claiming the right to be able to do so, also does not result in it being open source.

Re: The MIT License, Line by Line

#49

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

torstenvl wrote: post #44
thed wrote: post #42

This article touches a point I have been wondering about regarding the Notice condition: "But web developers, as a whole, haven’t got the memo.". The JavaScript and npm ecosystem are extremely dependency-heavy. Even if you only take a few yourself, the number of sub-dependencies of even a simple application are often in the hundreds. Why does "everyone" ignore the attribution of their dependencies and sub-dependencie…

I'm not following your train of thought here really. Are you saying that people are stripping out the notice from the source code as a matter of course and then redistributing it?

Is that minification?
Post reply on HN