China stealing intellectual property? If only we could have seen this coming!
Like American companies leeching off immigrants is any different
TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
261–270 of 543 posts
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Open source software is a name for free software which was intended to make it sound less ideologically loaded.
Libre software, on the other hand, is a name for free software intended to make it less ambiguous while preserving ideology.
Anyone who claims otherwise is either: a) trying to be an ideological purist fighting with those not following their ideology to the maximum, or b) trying to mislead you to try and devalue the terms, or has been misled by (a) or (b).
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#263TikTok is in China. There is no such thing as illegal forks their. Half their economy is based on stealing IP and mass producing it cheaply. Any laws or legality is just lip service to shut up companies and governments that complain.
The American operations of TikTok have to follow American law and have to follow orders given by an American court.
They will then have to comply or leave the American market.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#264It'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".
It's reminiscent of people adding "no copyright intended" (sic) when posting other people's music online. It seems like intuitions about copyright have been shifting, even if the law hasn't.
No, it's that no one assumes the MIT License is the default one that every open source project ever uses.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#265Earlier 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.
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.
I think part of the problem is that compared to more traditional forms of engineering, software engineering is still really young and not as rigorous. Right now, _nobody_ can write code without any bugs it in whatsoever. If we banned people who wrote buggy code, pretty soon we'd have no software engineers left. Regardless of whether you think that's a good idea, it seems pretty clear that at the very least there is a lot of demand for programmers, so it's unlikely the industry would get behind limiting that further in such a drastic way.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's reminiscent of people adding "no copyright intended" (sic) when posting other people's music online. It seems like intuitions about copyright have been shifting, even if the law hasn't.
At the least, the internet eventually realized that "you must delete your video game ROMs within 24 hours of obtaining them" is not a valid legal stance.
Oh that jogs forgotten memories.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did StreamLabs violate the GPL?
The OBS project has accused StreamLabs of copying their name and stealing their trademark (By naming their software StreamLabs OBS). I'm not sure about any source code thievery.
SL rebranded SL OBS to SL Desktop. They seem like another corporate FOSS mooch IYAM.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#268Earlier 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…
Gatekeeping in the software industry is a surefire way to slow down innovation. Software would stop eating the world, or only take a bite every couple of decades.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully this is high profile enough to incur some consequences. GPL is ironclad on paper, but the sad reality is unscrupulous/international companies can and do just copy code directly off github into their products with no repercussions
And now they can also claim it was just autocompleted by Copilot.
Using a tool to violate copyright isn't a valid legal defense.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#270They could simply make a library with the OBS code, open source that and dynamically link it into their app.
Forcing copy-left doesnt really benefit the open source community, those who already want to contribute will do so without contract obligations.