I worked at a medium size software company in New York and our team lead would always say "Why make what you can take?" when referring to finding open source code and running with it, regardless of licensing or anything.
TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
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Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
See also https://twitter.com/dodgepong/status/1471528656199692292 and https://twitter.com/dodgepong/status/1471524716477300737 too twitter; didn't read: there's apparently OBS code evident in the decompiled app, and other GPL code as well, and OBS found out independently and are working to resolve it
That's pretty fast for a beta released yesterday. Are the devs actively monitoring and reverse engineering every binary released that related to streaming? Also, where can I get the live studio executable? None of the links I found works, is that public release?
I'm the one on the OBS team who originally found this. I saw a tweet yesterday from someone that's in the beta, and as with any desktop live streaming software (and especially with "Studio" in the name) I was curious if they were using any OBS Studio code or if it was developed all in-house. The download link is available in their JS, you can find the most recent installer link here: https://tron-sg.bytelemon.com/api/sdk/check_update?branch=ma... (note: you probably won't be able to actually use it without being in the beta group)
Without even installing it, opening the setup files showed some immediate red flags, notably the "GameDetour64.dll", "Inject64.exe" and "MediaSDKGetWinDXOffset64.exe" look awfully similar to the way the OBS Studio game capture hooks work with our "graphics-hook64.dll", "inject-helper64.exe" and "get-graphics-offsets64.exe". I don't jump straight in to disassembling everything I come across, but when it's this obvious it begs further investigation, and after some disassembly I was able to confirm that OBS code was present in their binaries.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has been many years since After The Gold Rush was published and we are no closer today than we were then. At some point software engineering will be a real profession but I doubt anyone will take action before some huge catastrophe pushes the issue.
I don't like the idea of gatekeeping, it's hard enough to hire people. In the US we don't really have licensing for engineers (there is PE, but it's not anything close to ubiquitous). I think it's one of the best parts of our engineering/tech culture. You're an engineer based on the skills you employ to solve the problems you do, not because some body of people gave you a slip of paper that says you can employ those…
In the US, PE has made it so the word “engineer” is legally protected, like “doctor”. No one enforces it for software, so I wonder if it’s even enforceable anymore. But the law is there.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, yes, this applies to engineering. But not to software engineering. Personally, I like „software engineering“ as it is — being a free profession where talent counts more than a degree.
>Well, yes, this applies to engineering. But not to software engineering.
Good luck with that here.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#235It'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".
> self-labelled software engineers are you implying there should be requirements to label yourself as an engineer? like a degree in engineering ?
This is already a thing in the US.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#236China, China, China, China
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#237China stealing intellectual property? If only we could have seen this coming!
This is a horrible take. A Chinese company stealing IP is very different from China stealing IP. Google was caught using IP from Sogou for its pinyin IME, but we don't say America stealing IP.
>Sogou for its pinyin IME
What does it mean?
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The use of the word "illegal" seems problematic if this is a contractual dispute over (GPL) license terms No, it's not. > No one seems to be claiming that TikTok actually committed a criminal act “Criminal” is not the same as “illegal”, the latter includes any violation of law whether or not it is criminal.
This definitely looks like egregious and apparently intentional infringement, but violating the GPL is not violating a law in most countries; it's violating a license agreement. Contracts are not law. Therefore, violating the GPL by itself probably isn't illegal (but it could probably become illegal if other statutes, like CFAA or RICO were brought into play.) If I violate deed restrictions on my property by building…
> This is not violating a law; it's violating a license agreement. Contracts are not law.
Following legally-valid contracts outside of any legally-valid excuse is law, which is why breach of contract is a cognizable legal cause of action.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#239It'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".
I wish "software engineer" meant something.
There are CMU/MIT grads using the tittle alongside 3 month bootcamp grads.
I also have to wonder, with the owners of Tik Tok really being ByteDance (字节跳动) if the dissrespect for IP really isn't cultural.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you think companies end up violating GPL. Maybe sometimes it's a heartless executive, but a lot of enterprise software devs are completely unconcerned with licenses. If they can get their hands on it, the license doesn't matter.
I had a senior dev at a past job who did this constantly. And when it was found out how much he actually stole, our entire team was laid off and replaced by the company that did the audit. He just refused to believe that software licenses were real. That and I dont think he could actually code anything from scratch without stealing large swaths of code from open source repositories.
> I had a "senior" dev...
Ftfy.