291–300 of 543 posts
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".
So I get it that all the npm developers don't really consider that some licenses might be restrictive.
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I'm out of my depth here, but what makes you say they can't swap out the OBS part for something else? Do you mean they can't swap it without modifying the rest of the code, or can't swap it at all?
If they swap it out, they have to build code which does exactly the same/ has the same interface. It can still be considered a "derived" work. I'm not a lawyer but that was what op meant.
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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.
You are not required to do the exam, provided there is no civil liability or signing projects as the legally responsible Software/Informatics Engineering.
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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…
Even the cook at the bistro on the corner is liable if the food, cleaning or refrigeration isn't as it is supposed to be
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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.
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ByteDance is partially controlled by the government so I don't think your Google analogy is a good one. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/beijing-t... https://qz.com/1788836/targeting-tiktoks-privacy-alone-misse...
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Sorta side question: is it legal/ethical to say, “open source unless you’re a company of more than X people then it’s X * $Y to license”
Sorta side question: is it legal/ethical to say, “open source unless you’re a company of more than X people then it’s X * $Y to license”
Are they technically obligated to provide the source code online, or could they just say: "Well it's available on request, and no one has done so"? The just mail out a USB stick or DVD to anyone who asks? I believe that's with in the limits of the GPLv2.
Sure but then couldn't whoever receives the USB or DVD post the source code someplace more convenient? I'm not sure what that "workaround" would accomplish.
In the CD era, it might have made sense to go with written offer if the source is far larger than the binary you ship (e.g you ship a 500MB game on CD, but the source would be 1400MB so that's like 3 CDs, ugh) and you're happy to periodically pay the office intern to burn some source CDs and post them off for the inquisitive customer who asked for them.
In the Internet era it definitely doesn't make sense. Just pop a link to the source next to the binaries and don't sweat it.
Unless, of course, you have no intention of complying anyway.
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I think you are right and it's too bad. There are some fields that should have it. For example, the software for self-driving cars should be signed off by a licensed engineer before it is allowed to go live. Many mechanical and electrical parts of the car have been designed by licensed professionals, why not the software?
One can verify and sign off on computations that approximate the physics or chemistry that will occur in a structure or machine, as a well established chain of procedures exist to go from crude formulaic approximations to micro or, if necessary, nano-scale simulations of electrical, mechanical, and chemical processes, and we know what to look for. I don't think the same is true for software "engineering," as it seems…
The _physics_ of a buckling structure may be always the same. But already the modelling techniques are far from obvious consensus: Do you do it analytically? Do you use FEM? BEM? Then there are a bunch of simulation techniques, i.e. for numerical integration, which you could use, much like you could use functional or imperative programming or OOP or whatever else.
So if we were to behave more like the _software_ branch of the engineering discipline in general, then we'd have a _much_ tighter space of languages that would be at all acceptable for any work deemed critical, like medical, administrative or aeronautical software.