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TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

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Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#131

Post by ashtonkem »

SergeAx wrote: post #64
jaywalk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBS is willing to work with TikTok to get them into compliance. That would either mean open-sourcing the software or paying for a license.

Is there a way to buy oneself out of GPL license? I beleive there's not.

You can legally dual license if you have ownership over all the code in question. This is common for open source industrial software; pay for a different license so you can embed it in a closed source project. The GPL doesn’t restrict you from offering the same code with a different license if you own it.

Often the issue is that some projects don’t require contributors to sign over copyright ownership as part of contributing. So you have a project that’s licensed uniformly, but each contributor still owns their individual contribution. Unwinding this after the fact can be a nightmare, as it involves either finding every contributor and asking them to sign over their code, or manually removing every bit of code you don’t own as a project.

This is why a lot of bigger projects require you sign a contributors agreement that assigns copyright before you can contribute to the main repo. Doing this in advance saves the project a lot of headaches down the road if dual licensing is deemed useful. This is true even if you want to license under two different open source licenses, as only the copyright holder can change the license.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#132

Post by mysterydip »

addingnumbers wrote: post #78
ghusbands wrote: post #9

People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not problematic. Ben Torrell (an OBS developer) notes later in the thread that there is indeed GPL code compiled into TikTok's executables; since source is not available and they have not got another license, it is unlicensed and hence illegal.

People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not problematic because the tweet in the HN link is idiocy. They show one URL in one installer script with an obsproject.com domain and conclude, from the presence of that URL alone, that the entire project is a whole cloth copy of OBS. That URL is nothing but a 302 redirect to the directx runtime at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Download/confirmation.aspx?i... The…

Why would a company the size of tiktok want to depend on some open source project maintaining a URL? Would they be liable if it instead redirected to malware?

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#133

Post by 29083011397778 »

ghaff wrote: post #102
markus_zhang wrote: post #94

Open source software license should include a clause saying that it is mandatory for commercial users to pay a certain amount of contribution annually, let's say 0.01% of gross revenue? So if they find it too expensively they can simply turn away and build their own, which is good for whoever get the chance to do some lower level programming, and if they find it OK the open source authors/maintainers can get some goo…

Then it's not an open source software license.

I suspect you're conflating Free, Libre, and Open-Source Software. The first can be free (as in beer), the second free (as in you can do whatever you please with it), and the last is that the source is publicly available.

GP's proposition would be Open-Source, but not FLOSS IIUC

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#134

Post by vlovich123 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #104
vlovich123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fact it’s only the users who have standing to request the source. The author’s have standing to sue for copyright infringement.

Not at all true. It's copyright infringement if you're not following a license contract, of which the GPL is.

The GPL contract only says you have to distribute source to the users you give binaries to. The only people who can ask for said source are the people receiving those binaries and the only people who have standing to sue when that doesn’t happen is the copyright owners.

That’s why you can use GPL software in your private CI system and not need to give anyone the source code.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#135

Post by criddell »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #114
criddell wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be like this everywhere, but in the US all software engineers are self-labelled. It's not like medical doctor (MD) or professional engineer (PE) where the title actually implies some license to practice.

Common misconception, but Software Engineer is actually a licensed profession in many states (with vague industry exemptions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_professio... But virtually nobody does it. The NCEES even abandoned their Software Engineer licensing exam a few years ago because nobody was taking it.

> Software Engineer is actually a licensed profession in many states

Last time I looked, I couldn't find any. Some states tried for a while, but I think they all gave up.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#136

Post by azeirah »

dodgepong wrote: post #72
jaywalk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OBS is willing to work with TikTok to get them into compliance. That would either mean open-sourcing the software or paying for a license.

Paying for a license would be nearly impossible, as the OBS team would need every contributor to sign a CLA to give the OBS team the rights to relicense/dual-license the OBS code base.

Would be nice if the contributors could get some money for it

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#137

Post by johnebgd »

vlovich123 wrote: post #101
kaetemi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. Pay someone to write it from scratch. Basically, it's practically (not ethically) fair game to use GPL in commercial software, until someone catches you. The only repercussion that the license provides is that your license is revoked until you resolve the violation (for the first violation). Meanwhile, you got to release your product, and by the time you got caught you've had enough time to implement it yourself…

That’s not the only repercussion. They can sue for copyright infringement and there can be large fines.

Not a lawyer but seems like source projects would have a hard time showing damages since they don’t charge for the software.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#138

Post by [deleted] »

addingnumbers wrote: post #78
ghusbands wrote: post #9

People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not problematic. Ben Torrell (an OBS developer) notes later in the thread that there is indeed GPL code compiled into TikTok's executables; since source is not available and they have not got another license, it is unlicensed and hence illegal.

People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not problematic because the tweet in the HN link is idiocy. They show one URL in one installer script with an obsproject.com domain and conclude, from the presence of that URL alone, that the entire project is a whole cloth copy of OBS. That URL is nothing but a 302 redirect to the directx runtime at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Download/confirmation.aspx?i... The…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#139

Post by k12sosse »

anthk wrote: post #125
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common misconception, but Software Engineer is actually a licensed profession in many states (with vague industry exemptions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_professio... But virtually nobody does it. The NCEES even abandoned their Software Engineer licensing exam a few years ago because nobody was taking it.

In Europe being an engineer has civil accountability on issues. You can be fined really high if you hire a self-called engineer without a proper degree. Or at least decades of alleged experience in the field.

Especially without the accountability. Call yourself a software engineer? Did your code break? Is it vulnerable to exploits? What was the damage? Did you ship it knowing it was not fit for public usage? Congratulations! you're no longer allowed to program for a living and the state is suing you and your employer for damages.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#140

Post by skeeter2020 »

oliwarner wrote: post #70

It's concerning how many self-labelled software engineers on Twitter are chipping in with comments like "it's open source so it's fair game" or "they just need to add attribution".

In many jurisidictions "Engineer" is a licensed and regulated title, and their professional organizations have tried to regulate it, but lost the war. We know have actual engineering programs that focus on software and 6-week bootcamps graduating people who claim to be "Software Engineers", so add it to the list of appropriated words right next to "Geek".
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