81–90 of 128 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why he is regretting the use of the MIT license. He wonders, now, if having chosen a less permissive license would have given him grounds to shut them down, because they would be in violation.
Hang on - permissive licenses still require attribution. If they're not doing that, then he can absolutely DCMA them. (I think; IANAL)
The author is sharing second thoughts about using the MIT license and yes, bad actors are going to break bad, but the point of licensing is to control re-use within the (enforceable) legal framework of copyright. Reciprocal licenses (thanks Lawrence Rosen[1] for that term less charged than copyleft or viral) cede less control, and provide more footholds for enforcement. Remember that GPL has (sometimes) worked as int…
To be honest I prefer copyleft or viral over reciprocal. Reciprocal licensing is traditionally an arrangement where a given license is interchangeable with another license. For example, drivers licenses are often reciprocal between states. I've worked for firms which has reciprocal licensing agreements with some of their manufacturers. Copyleft is neither.
With smaller companies we see a lot of *GPL with additional commercial licensing options ... which (assuming the main product is not a library with a non-LGPL license) often is actually still easy to comply with (especially if you only use somebody's prebuilt binaries) if you actually bother, no matter how much the hate train complains.
For individuals it varies a lot by ideology rather than deep thought, but permissive-license-regret is common.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not illegal, but it is abuse
If you consider this an abuse, you're not in favor of the spirit of open source to avoid discrimination. You think uses should be discriminated between acceptable and abusive. It's OK to think that way, but it's not an open source way of thinking.
The people taking someone else's tool and rehosting it with better SEO and more ads steals revenue from the original author and makes them less likely to make more open source stuff. It's greedy and hurts the community. I get why people would want non-OSI licences that allow everything but that.
As for whether its Abuse, idk, I don't want to lay out a precise definition and have a semantics argument. But its definitely not a cool thing to do
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I hate that people think they can control the definitions of "free" and "open" . I don't care about these biased propaganda definitions. If you want to promote your definition use a branded trademarkable name, don't try to steal our shared use of common words.
“Free” means something. If you want to stop people distributing your software through a site that has ads, then it’s not “free.” “Open source” means something too. The control people have is in using shared definitions. Language is malleable, so if enough people use a word incorrectly it changes the definition. But those people get to be called wrong for years until enough people misuse it to make it right.
IMO, MIT & BSD give downstream developers more rights and are indifferent to end-users. GPL gives users more rights, and indifferent to downstream developers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not illegal, but it is abuse
If you consider this an abuse, you're not in favor of the spirit of open source to avoid discrimination. You think uses should be discriminated between acceptable and abusive. It's OK to think that way, but it's not an open source way of thinking.
That and the search engine mayhem are abusive behaviour, even if not abuse of the license.
It's being a dick, deliberately.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate that people think they can control the definitions of "free" and "open" . I don't care about these biased propaganda definitions. If you want to promote your definition use a branded trademarkable name, don't try to steal our shared use of common words.
“Free” means something. If you want to stop people distributing your software through a site that has ads, then it’s not “free.” “Open source” means something too. The control people have is in using shared definitions. Language is malleable, so if enough people use a word incorrectly it changes the definition. But those people get to be called wrong for years until enough people misuse it to make it right.
Is MIT not free because it requires attribution? Is no code free because it cannot be used in ways that break the law?
Just because there are some restrictions does not make it completely unfree, and its fair for people to want to use what is the most natural word to refer to thing that are free enough for them. "OSI-approved" works if you want to be precise but one org does not have the right to dictate the use of a word as common as "open".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My instant emotional reaction was to feel vaguely cheated, or that the guy I sold it to was a sleaze. Were you cheated? Probably not. But the guy was definitely on a sleaziness spectrum.
I mean, I wouldn't do it, just because I don't want to deal with everything. But everyone got exactly what they wanted. I see no sleaze.
"why don't you post it on craigslist?"
"don't want to deal with the scum there."
"mind if i buy it off you and then post it?"
"go ahead, and good luck."
Not sure they can change the license at all? The author doesn’t own copyright for the code changes they accepted over the years. But kudos to the author for acknowledging they picked up a dumb license. Sad not to see the GPL or AGPL considered though.
> In some cases, they are even beating me in search results for my own tools. Correct me if im wrong but the license does not give them the right to name. Author should still be able to request them to change the name?
It's interesting: generally speaking OSS licenses concern copyright for the code, but not trademarks for the name of the project. Licensing Project Foobar under an OSS license should not really be seen as granting permission to use the name "Project Foobar". But I just realized that the MIT license is worded in such a way that one could draw that inference, and it might stand up in court. Permission is hereby granted…
The license also requires you to include attribution and to declare the copyright of the licensor. So, while you have access to the software, ownership has clearly not transferred. You have a copyright license ( that has to be declared ). Nothing more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting: generally speaking OSS licenses concern copyright for the code, but not trademarks for the name of the project. Licensing Project Foobar under an OSS license should not really be seen as granting permission to use the name "Project Foobar". But I just realized that the MIT license is worded in such a way that one could draw that inference, and it might stand up in court. Permission is hereby granted…
I do not think so. First of all, the license is clear that it is a “copyright license”. In my view, that calls out the distinction from trademark by exclusion. It would not be a reasonable interpretation to assume a trademark license unless trademark is explicitly mentioned and even less so when the license is explicitly described as a “copyright” license. The license defines “The Software” and, again, I see no reaso…
No it doesn't. That's why you can use an MIT-licensed codebase that doesn't have an explicit patent grant and not worry about patent enforcement—it doesn't narrowly constrain itself to copyright.