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GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

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Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#361

Post by acomjean »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #354
thealchemistdev wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this a few months ago. local> ssh user@example.com user@example> git init --bare $DIR user@example> exit local> git clone user@example.com:$DIR I've seen VPS services for as low as $4 a month. I'm with you in camp baffled.

What about backups? Managing access to the repository? Making the repository easy to discover? Can you browse the code in a browser, or read the README without cloning? Of course you could do all of these things with enough work. But why would the average developer want to? Do you really think most developers care so much about Microsoft owning GitHub?

Our nonprofit host provider has a git repo option on their control panel.

They use this for access:

https://gitlist.org/

(somewhat ironicaly code hosted on github. Not sure its still being updated..)

we currently don't use it, just because its on the same network as our site.. though because its git and it replicates the repo everywhere its less of an issue.

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#362

Post by spandrew »

jrm4 wrote: post #186

I'm still baffled as to why people treat Github like a public library despite being owned by what was at one time the greatest enemy of free and open source software in existence. Not saying they haven't changed their tune somewhat, but a library owned by Barnes and Noble is going to have very different incentives than an actual library. Made all the more silly by the fact that it's Git. You could just host it yourse…

I'd like to know more about how MSFT qualifies for the moniker "they're the greatest enemy of free and open source software". From my understanding they've invested in many open web resources previously (like jQuery).

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#363

Post by rglover »

This may be of interest to others here. After reviewing the existing OSS licenses, I decided to write my own (SAUCR: Source Available Under Commercial Restriction—pronounced "saucer"). I'm still working on formalizing the details of it so others can use it, but if you're curious there's an example here [1].

tl;dr it gives specific permissions as to what derivative works are and are not permitted while making the source available for others. The key being: you can be as permissive or as limited as you want in how your code is used.

[1] https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick/blob/development/LICEN...

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#364

Post by mpoteat »

layer8 wrote: post #239
mpoteat wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this lawsuit succeeds, I have a startup idea that I think would be effective. Create a for-profit copyright registry for code snippets that are long enough to qualify for copyright protection. You can be the canonical owner of the copyright for a given piece of code! For a premium fee, we can generate and submit a patent on your behalf as well. Once I have a large corpus (perhaps millions of entries of code, most…

Do note that there’s the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality , which may be substantial for mere code snippets. This may be one of the reasons why the lawsuit isn’t based on copyright.

This is the code of the future to ensure your code remains original: https://twitter.com/TylerGlaiel/status/1611115741809627139

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#365

Post by ralph84 »

Beltalowda wrote: post #170
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range of possible outcomes is enormous, I'll just wait by the sidelines but cherish the thought that moving out of GitHub when Microsoft bought it was the right decision. They can't be trusted, this has been proven over and over again and yet people keep falling for it. It's the fox guarding the chickens. I wrote about my misgivings at the time: https://jacquesmattheij.com/what-is-wrong-with-microsoft-buy...

> The range of possible outcomes is enormous The most likely of which – if this lawsuit ends up winning – is that corporations will have new ways to sue everyone and that the world will be a worse place. Copyright expansion has never benefited the "little guy" such as Open Source authors, only large entities with deep pockets who can litigate to no end.

Agreed. It's quite bemusing how so many people are now copyright maximalists because they somehow think Microsoft will be hurt in such a world.

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#366

Post by eternalban »

Beltalowda wrote: post #170
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range of possible outcomes is enormous, I'll just wait by the sidelines but cherish the thought that moving out of GitHub when Microsoft bought it was the right decision. They can't be trusted, this has been proven over and over again and yet people keep falling for it. It's the fox guarding the chickens. I wrote about my misgivings at the time: https://jacquesmattheij.com/what-is-wrong-with-microsoft-buy...

> The range of possible outcomes is enormous The most likely of which – if this lawsuit ends up winning – is that corporations will have new ways to sue everyone and that the world will be a worse place. Copyright expansion has never benefited the "little guy" such as Open Source authors, only large entities with deep pockets who can litigate to no end.

One way to address this is to somehow turn "little guy" into a "giant". For labor, this was accomplished via unions.

A union of creative minds seems long overdue. It can provide a copyright trust, addressing your concerns, as well as removing the excuse of inability to get permission from n thousand creators used. It can also address matter beyond OSS, such as overreaching employment agreement clauses that assert ownership of everything in your head.

[Possibly 'trust' is more suitable than 'union'. Something like Creative Commons Trust.]

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#367

Post by naasking »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #353
naasking wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot also isn't retaining the actual content of the source code repositories and then deriving works from that. If I wrote a giant table of token frequencies and associative keywords by analyzing a bunch of source, and sold that to people as a "github code analysis" book, I'm pretty sure that's perfectly fine because it's not a derivative work. I'm not sure that the fact that a program can then take that associati…

> If I wrote a giant table of token frequencies and associative keywords by analyzing a bunch of source, and sold that to people as a "github code analysis" book, I'm pretty sure that's perfectly fine because it's not a derivative work. That sounds to me somewhat close to "if I take an FFT of each of those copyrighted images, glue them together, and sell this as a picture, is that a derivative work?" - I'd say yes, o…

Sure, ROT13 encoding is a derivative work because the entire original work is still there, encoded. Ditto for FFT. Large language models are not that.

Sometimes parts of the original works are still encoded, which we've seen when some code is reproduced verbatim, and I'm sure that happens to people as well, ie. they see some algorithm and down the road have to write something similar and end up reproducing the exact same thing.

Once they iron out those wrinkles, it's not clear to me that a large language model is a directly reversible function of the original works. At least, not any more than a human learning from reading a bunch of code and then going on to have a career selling his skills at writing code.

Edit: by which I mean, LLMs are lossy encodings, not lossless encodings.

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#368

Post by 8note »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #47
samwillis wrote: post #18

I think one of the interesting things that will be covered in this lawsuit is whether the licence under which the code is released applies at all in the case of screen scraping. The current understanding of screen scraping is that it is allowed, despite what is in the websites terms. Effectively if a human can access the content freely without having to actively agree to a license or terms you can scrape the content.…

> When it comes to open source code I suspect it will be found to be similar, if the code is freely visible on the web by a human without an active agreement to view it, then it will be possible to "scrape" it. I don't think the license the code is under will apply if that is the case. I don't see the scraping case applying here -- the idea that all human-readable code accessible on the public internet can be ingeste…

I'm not clear how it's particularly different from ingesting it into a browser, and then rendering it as part of the html into pixels

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#369

Post by toyg »

icambron wrote: post #230
toyg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this fundamentally saying, "The cost of not infringing copyright is massive, so we will glibly infringe!" Copyright is not a natural human right; it's a construct invented and conferred by governments in order to achieve certain objectives. (It's more like a state license than a right, to be honest; using "right" was a historical masterstroke from the original inventors). As such, if those objectives can be p…

This seems like a good argument for adjusting copyright law, but seems unhelpful in interpreting it. "This law isn't a good way to achieve the government's objectives" is not the same as "this law wasn't broken". Judges do have some discretionary power in interpretation and that can take into account congress's intent, but here that would be a massive stretch. A judge would simply say it's congress's job to fix copyr…

As I said, exceptionally hard in practical terms - just not as baffling as the parent poster painted it. With the right judge anything is possible, and US history is full of controversial "overreaching" judgements.

(and with the deep pockets GH/MS have, it doesn't really matter if the case eventually loses on a big principle - it's just a case of dragging it long enough that, some time through the whole process of appeals, the plaintiff will get broke enough to give up or accept a deal. This line is likely just one of many that defendants will employ.)

Re: GitHub is sued, and we may learn something about Creative Commons licensing

#370

Post by Aerroon »

eternalban wrote: post #366
Beltalowda wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The range of possible outcomes is enormous The most likely of which – if this lawsuit ends up winning – is that corporations will have new ways to sue everyone and that the world will be a worse place. Copyright expansion has never benefited the "little guy" such as Open Source authors, only large entities with deep pockets who can litigate to no end.

One way to address this is to somehow turn "little guy" into a "giant". For labor, this was accomplished via unions. A union of creative minds seems long overdue. It can provide a copyright trust, addressing your concerns, as well as removing the excuse of inability to get permission from n thousand creators used. It can also address matter beyond OSS, such as overreaching employment agreement clauses that assert own…

Then you consider that there are many countries in the world and the whole system breaks down. Sorry, we don't allow this copyrighted code to your country!
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