Well not illegal. It looks like they need to acknowledge and include the OBS license.
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TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
331–340 of 543 posts
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
In all the enterprise companies I worked for we are drilled with required learning and assessments which often include training on software licenses. The aim of these training is devs to keep an eye for license and defer to someone higher up if in doubt. These processes are manual and catch only so much. In companies with mature software processes there is always tooling that will block a release if it finds unaccept…
Enterprises of even modest size take it very seriously. They’ll be juicy targets to go after. It’s everything between startups to midsize companies where this is not clearly defined. Just ask the VCs who do due diligence. Almost everyone of them will audit your licenses before they invest. One of the things they ask for is the list of libraries you use and their licenses.
As a open-source-license expert dev, in the past I've been able to offer a lot of value to my employer by assembling that list in such a way that the buyer could have high confidence in our audit of dependencies.
This doesn't protect anybody against illegal copy-pasta by ignorant/irresponsible devs, though.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be moving the goalposts. We're concerned whether companies are de facto influenced by governments, not whether those companies produce PR material about said influences.
"You are moving goalposts" proceeds to move goalposts ByteDance doesn't issue such reports because everyone knows they cannot refuse a request by their government. Any report that says otherwise would be, as you say, "PR material".
Same way US-based companies can’t refuse gag orders and other kangaroo “secret courts”.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#334China stealing intellectual property? If only we could have seen this coming!
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Why are people downvoting you? You are 100% correct about NSLs and gag orders. This is one of the biggest issues the EFF focuses on: https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters/faq
They are not correct about NSLs - the level of control exercised by those is not even remotely comparable to the level of power that the CCP holds (and exercises) over Chinese companies. Nobody thinks that NSLs don't exist, it's just that they're not comparable to the issue at hand.
And, in particular, the US government does not either possess or exercise the power over US companies to coerce them to steal IP from other countries - which is the issue under discussion.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> If we banned people who wrote buggy code
That's not the standard for any kind of engineering. Professional Engineers make errors all the time. But they also design systems with fail safes, redundancies, safety factors, etc... You design systems with the expectation that failures will happen. Users will do stupid things. Highly improbably sequences will probably happen.
Not all code needs to be designed so carefully. Nobody cares if Hacker News is offline for a few hours. But the software systems in self driving cars or running an MRI machine probably should be designed by licensed professionals who can stand up to their bosses and say "this can't ship until these improvements are made" because if it does ship, they can be personally sued for malpractice and lose their license.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#337It'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’m unclear on this if, and I don’t know if this is true, TikTok just creates a UI that “execs” commands to an unmodified OBS executable cli - What is their actual responsibility here?
They are distributing the OBS executable, therefore they have an obligation to also distribute the source to those same people on request, and to let them know about their rights to receive the source under the GPL.
If OBS really is running standalone, then that is the extent of their responsibilities. If on the other-hand, OBS is being combined with other software to create a derivative work, then they must distribute the full source of that derivative work as well. What constitutes a derivative work is more complicated. It is ultimately a decision for courts, though many folks (including FSF) have opinions on what should and shouldn't be considered a derivative work.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moving goal posts would be more like claiming that, because we have evidence Google cooperates with the US Government for some investigations, the US Government has similar influence and control over Google as China does over ByteDance, without any scrutiny or review of the severity of China's influence on ByteDance. Also, to the very point you bring up... recipients of an NSL can file a legal challenge to an NSL whi…
Bottom line: virtually all large (tech) companies are influenced by governments. They will surveil you on behalf of your government. Period. Any attempts to muddy the waters for ideological point-scoring are beside the point. If you want to dig deeper, please bring evidence instead of speculation.
One of the parent comments in the chain that you wrote said "Do you honestly think Washington doesn't exercise similar influence over Google?"
Note the "similar".
You then amended your point to "virtually all large (tech) companies are influenced by governments", which is completely different than similar levels of influence.
Nobody cares that governments have some level of influence over companies - that's a feature, in fact, because some regulation is necessary for markets to work - the issue under hand is exclusively whether the level of control is excessive. (and, in this specific thread, whether "A Chinese company stealing IP" is comparable to "China stealing IP")
That's moving the goalposts.
(the answer to that last question is "yes" - the Chinese government does, in fact, use Chinese companies to steal IP from other countries (including, but not limited to, the US, Japan, and parts of the EU), while the US does not)
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Quoted post unavailable.
The US government does not either possess or exercise the power over US companies to coerce them to steal IP from other countries (or companies thereof), which is the issue under discussion (despite attempts to redirect it). Neither NSLs nor Jigsaw give them that power. These are facts.
Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that the entire project is a whole cloth copy of OBS. That is a straw man argument. It doesn't matter what percent of the infringing product uses GPL-licensed code.
What if it’s one character?
I believe the parent poster implicitly meant "as long as it's copyrightable" as a caveat