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Saying Goodbye to GitHub

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Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#201

Post by noirscape »

uuuguaii wrote: post #107
bruce511 wrote: post #11

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

> I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. In essence, copyleft licenses are exactly that. They oblige the author of a derived work to publish the changes to all users under the same terms. The original authors tend to be users. So, a license which would grant this directly to the original authors woul…

You'd think so, but there's also a good chunk of copyleft code that's just "here's our source code, go figure out how to deploy lol".

You can try to fork it into something workable, but that can sometimes literally mean trying to figure out what the actual deployment process is and what weird tweaks were done to the deploying device beforehand. In addition, forking those projects is also unworkable if the original has pretty much enterprise-speed development. At best you get a fork that's years out of date where the maintainer is nitpicking every PR and is burnt out enough to not make it worthwhile to merge upstream patches. At worst, you get something like Iceweasel[0] where someone just releases patches rather than a full fork (and having done that a few times, it's a pain in the neck to maintain those patches).

FOSS isn't at all inherently community-minded; it can be and can facilitate it, but it can also be used as a way to get cheap cred from the people who are naïeve enough to believe the former is the only place it applies.

[0]: "Fork" of Firefox LTS by the GNU Foundation to strip out trademarked names and logo's. It's probably one of their silliest projects in term of relevancy.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#202

Post by robertlagrant »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #114
rdiddly wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah on the one hand, isn't opening your source all about not really minding what happens to it after that? It's intended to be copied and used. On the other hand something about the term "laundering" kind of resonated for me. It's kind of like automated plagiarism where you spread your copying out over millions of people. But plagiarism only has meaning as an offense when the thing being copied isn't intended to be…

If we go by how many people explain open source, you would be right, but if we go by how people who actually know what their licenses are supposed to do explain open source, then no. You give a license for a specific reason. One might be to allow others to copy, but there is usually a condition, and that is to leave the license information intact. If we go further towards free/libre software licenses like GPL or AGPL…

That's why OSS is not about the contents of more restrictive licences (as you say, copyleft is a good example), but about the broadest definition that applies to all of them. More specialised sub-types can have more conditions, but then we should speak about those sub-types directly.

I make this point because it causes confusion. Saying "my OSS project is being run by others for money and I get none of it" is confusing, as it uses the supertype. Using the subtype is clearer, and even self-explanatory: "my project I licenced so others can make money from it while giving me none is being run by others to make money from it and I get none".

That may be a bad situation, but at least the reasons are now clear.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#204

Post by tm-guimaraes »

colonwqbang wrote: post #162
bruce511 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree with this as a general point of view. Speaking generally, I'm not sure that one can claim >> The original authors tend to be the users There are endless forks of say emacs,and I expect RMS is not s user of any of them. Of course RMS is free to inspect the code for all of them, separate out bug fixes from features, and retro apply it to his build. But I'm not seeing anything in any license that re…

Most people don't actually want to maintain a fork. They would prefer that their patches are mainlined. Consider Linux. It's huge and most vendors really don't want to maintain a fully independent fork. One reason they might do it anyway, is if they could keep their patches private. But the GPL means they can't, so most just choose to upstream patches.

> Most people don't actually want to maintain a fork. They would prefer that their patches are mainlined.

But that's a downstream decision regarding efficiency in their developing process. That's not what free software is about, there is nothing about that in its principles nor licences.

That's just Development Process and maintenance decision, offloading patch integration to upstream, which they might or not accept depending on your changes. None of that is about Free Software. You can see similar decisions/trade-offs taking place in any org with multiple software dev teams with ownership over libs etc, regardless if it is free software or not.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#205

Post by madeofpalk »

> I feel like GitHub has lost that magic.

I'm willing to bet that GitHub itself hasnt lost "that magic". What's happened is:

- internet and development communities have matured. The types of 'fun' that's happening is different, but it's no less magic

- author got older

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#206

Post by the_gipsy »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #166
the_gipsy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but I guess it won't happen until someone complains. Similar to other content, e.g. YouTube, but in reality nobody requests takedowns of forks/copies.

Alright, now suppose someone does. Doesn't that mean Microsoft has to rework all work they made with these codebases using this legal argument and not a fair use one? Doesn't even doing this set them up for a potentially very expensive compliance action?

I think what you say is true: either they train on any open sourced code with fair use, no matter if it was published on github or anywhere, and ignoring the license, OR they trained on data that is potentially not complying with their ToS (e.g. uploaded by someone that is not the author, regardless of license, they couldn't legally agree to a ToS that gives away additional rights of the work).

However, the reality is that this is all extremely muddy, far from proving that software A has copied some code from software B where you can just compare the source code. There are too many muddy steps, and you can bet that Microsoft will just get away with it.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#207

Post by bakugo »

ianbutler wrote: post #7

I tend to disregard articles that default to the "Stochastic Parrot" argument. These tools are useful now, I don't personally care about achieving actual intelligence. I want additional utility for myself and other humans, which these provide now, at scale. By a lot of measures many humans perform at just about the same level, including confidently making up bullshit. This post reads like one of the "Goodbye X online…

> These tools are useful now

Guns are also useful tools because you can take them into a store and get things for free as a result. But that doesn't make okay to do.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#208

Post by Eisenstein »

robertlagrant wrote: post #179
bruce511 wrote: post #11

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

> I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. You're right. It's a politeness law some people have invented. It's also a value people have, but that's for themselves. I like contributing to OSS projects. But, as soon as it's imposed on others, and there are punishments for disobeying, it's a politeness law.

Politeness keeps society civil and sane.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#209

Post by bombolo »

bruce511 wrote: post #11

I'm gonna get hated on for this, but I don't think "give back" is an open source concept. I'm not aware of any Open Source license,or Free license for that matter,that has a give-back clause. Source code is available to -users- ,not prior-authors. Some Open Source licenses can be used in proprietary code, (MIT, BSD etc) with little more than simple attribution. Those developers chose that license for a reason, and I'…

> If the AI is regurgitating GPL code as-is, then that's a problem- not dissimilar to a student or employee regurgitating the same code.

Not "if". We know it does.

And since it doesn't show citations, it might be the case that you use and mistakenly end up making your entire software GPL, because of including copy pasted GPL software.

Re: Saying Goodbye to GitHub

#210

Post by Eisenstein »

bakugo wrote: post #207
ianbutler wrote: post #7

I tend to disregard articles that default to the "Stochastic Parrot" argument. These tools are useful now, I don't personally care about achieving actual intelligence. I want additional utility for myself and other humans, which these provide now, at scale. By a lot of measures many humans perform at just about the same level, including confidently making up bullshit. This post reads like one of the "Goodbye X online…

> These tools are useful now Guns are also useful tools because you can take them into a store and get things for free as a result. But that doesn't make okay to do.

Robbing people does not benefit anyone but yourself. This is a terrible analogy.
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