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A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

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Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#161

Post by hakre »

klyrs wrote: post #131
mmastrac wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clarified the comment a bit -- I considered that attribution-stripping, but I think you're right that it's more than just that. Tangentially: it's somewhat interesting that we don't consider the source code history in our OSS licenses...

FWIW, I don't see anything wrong with stripping the git history. I think it's stupid and short-sighted, but whatever, it's allowed. One use case I've seen, sometimes you want to pull a single file from another project without a bunch of baggage. Your license should cover the history, in that every source file should bear a license header, going back to the first commit.

> Your license should cover the history, in that every source file should bear a license header, going back to the first commit.

This is one way to do it. Problem remains when these important parts, even whole files - e.g. COPYRIGHT - are removed from the archived copy.

From what the original author reports, this is what happened.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#163

Post by richardfey »

zkldi wrote: post #153

The JS Open Source Community is filled with people grifting things like this. Quite notably, there's a linter called JS Standard Style, which actually has nothing to do with JS Standards. It's marketed as if it was a standard, the fact that it isn't is tucked away in the readme, and also -- the entire project is just a wrapper around someones .eslintrc file, yet barely any credit is given to the ESLint devs who do al…

They copied the idea of gofmt; they could be a bit fairer with attribution to ESLint though.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#164

Post by klyrs »

hakre wrote: post #161
klyrs wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I don't see anything wrong with stripping the git history. I think it's stupid and short-sighted, but whatever, it's allowed. One use case I've seen, sometimes you want to pull a single file from another project without a bunch of baggage. Your license should cover the history, in that every source file should bear a license header, going back to the first commit.

> Your license should cover the history, in that every source file should bear a license header, going back to the first commit. This is one way to do it. Problem remains when these important parts, even whole files - e.g. COPYRIGHT - are removed from the archived copy. From what the original author reports, this is what happened.

I fully agree with that. Stripping licenses is a Bad Thing™.

When I've imported foreign files from other projects that don't have license headers, I give them license headers and also append their LICENSE or COPYRIGHT file into mine; I like belts and suspenders.

Removing history, itself, is not especially problematic. History is for maintenance, merges, and downstream compatibility issues.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#165

Post by hakre »

mmastrac wrote: post #88
gcr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the fact that he also went out of his way to strip the git history at first.

I clarified the comment a bit -- I considered that attribution-stripping, but I think you're right that it's more than just that. Tangentially: it's somewhat interesting that we don't consider the source code history in our OSS licenses...

> it's somewhat interesting that we don't consider the source code history in our OSS licenses

Developing is in the burden of the single developer/project and which kind of version control system is used to produce releases can hardly be mandated by copyright law.

It is only one reason to use a F/L/OS/S license for contributing back, that is taking part in the development project. So on the other hand, it sort of does consider that, but it's merely then in the social interaction.

What so hurtfully happened here is that a collaborator tried to break the ties (forcefully) and was powerful enough to do so.

Sure, this renders the OSS license less effective, and I guess this can be seen or felt by many developers.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#166

Post by ghoward »

hakre wrote: post #155
ghoward wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tangentially: it's somewhat interesting that we don't consider the source code history in our OSS licenses... IIUC, IANAL, we don't have to worry about it. Versions of software can have different licenses, and the license for each version is the license that the repo was under when that version was committed. As far as I know, if you replace every instance of "version" in the previous paragraph with "commit", it st…

> Versions of software can have different licenses, and the license for each version is the license that the repo was under when that version was committed. Not particularly wrong, just adding: There can even be additional licensing terms that aren't documented in the git history so they wouldn't be visible there. And there is another sticky detail: So if the original copy would have violated any of the licensing ter…

Yes, I think your comment adds a lot to mine.

Licensing of version control history might need to have a legal debate, actually.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#167

Post by zkldi »

richardfey wrote: post #163
zkldi wrote: post #153

The JS Open Source Community is filled with people grifting things like this. Quite notably, there's a linter called JS Standard Style, which actually has nothing to do with JS Standards. It's marketed as if it was a standard, the fact that it isn't is tucked away in the readme, and also -- the entire project is just a wrapper around someones .eslintrc file, yet barely any credit is given to the ESLint devs who do al…

They copied the idea of gofmt; they could be a bit fairer with attribution to ESLint though.

I don't really think the idea is copied at all. The idea of formatting code is fairly common. I just think they should stop using deceptive advertising.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#168

Post by dehrmann »

tomxor wrote: post #102
ctvo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolutely crazy thing is the person who caused this doesn't even think they did anything wrong: https://github.com/babel/babel/pull/13783#issuecomment-92724... And there are people supporting their position. I think because JS is such a large tent, there are folks not familiar with licenses and general norms in this space. I don't think it's something that being reasonable and pointing things out wouldn't fix. A…

> I think because JS is such a large tent, there are folks not familiar with licenses and general norms in this space. It's worth pointing out that this is all about a bunch of packages that decorate strings with ANSI colour escape sequences... I'm not saying it's worthless, or that there is nothing wrong in principle - but it's a lot of noise over something easily replicable from scratch - something simple enough th…

Am I right that this is the important part of the library?

https://github.com/jorgebucaran/colorette/blob/d1ff3a7/index...

I agree that the author clearly spent a lot of time polishing it, hence the pride and feeling of betrayal.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#169

Post by fenomas »

cnst wrote: post #154
fenomas wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a fair framing. This isn't left-pad - it's a library that abstracts something people find annoying, and finding the right abstraction can be difficult even if the final code doesn't seem complicated. Add in a few years of bug fixes and whatnot, and it seems pretty rude to dismiss the result as "easily replicable from scratch".

I think it's worth pointing out that these pull requests replace a totally unrelated package with either one of these two packages that claim to be copying each other. The way it was framed was that someone forked a packaged and started replacing all users; not what happened. Also: I don't even use JS, so, I have no idea who these people or libraries are.

I was replying to GP's suggestion that the argument is over relatively trivial code, not to anything about the core dispute.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#170

Post by dehrmann »

judofyr wrote: post #40

What is even going on here? https://github.com/jorgebucaran/colorette/issues/78 . They're arguing about who should have attribution for adding a single "!s &&" to improve performance? What happened with the world where open-source was about creating cool projects together , not about who has the most stars on GitHub? To be honest, this is the general feeling I get from the JavaScript community: Instead of working tog…

What's the term for when people with little to lose in low-stakes conflicts just have at it?
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