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Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

arstechnica.com

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Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#361

Post by account42 »

VonGuard wrote: post #25
londons_explore wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the vast majority of graphics libraries from 1992 the IP owner no longer cares about , and the code usually has nearly zero commercial value . I wish more were brave enough to just publish it with an open license, and then if the owner complains you take it down and rewrite. Any damages for distributing 30 year old source code are hopefully in the single-digit-dollars range anyway.

Completely incorrect. This work is being done under a non-profit, and whether or not the original owners care is irrelevant. Doing this would immediately open the non-profit to litigation and endanger the entire project. Just because we don't think anyone cares doesn't mean we won't get sued. This project is preserving the source code around a distributed chat system from the year 2000, the E programming language, an…

> You are literally suggesting that we take proprietary, copyrighted code and release it under an open source license with no standing, rights, or ownership. It's insane to even suggest this. If you put the source code for Windows 95 online, you'd be sued into a pile of ashes by MS within 10 minutes.

What's isane is that you are not legally allowed to release code that hasn't had any commercial value whatsoever for ages or where it takes a full legal team to even find out who might "own" the rights. Copyright is positively bonkers.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#362

Post by account42 »

userbinator wrote: post #250
smitelli wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you put the source code for Windows 95 online, you'd be sued into a pile of ashes by MS within 10 minutes. The Windows NT 4 source code exists in multiple public repos on GitHub, and the one from the first Google result has been there for at least four years.

...and the ones for later versions are easily found on GitHub too --- GitHub, which is now owned by Microsoft. On the one hand, great, but on the other, that's how much (little) they care about Windows as a source of revenue.

Ancient Windows NT code being available hardly threatens Microsoft's revenue from Windows sales.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#363

Post by account42 »

jart wrote: post #340
pxc wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The copyright clause of the US constitution, at least, is explicit that the artifice of temporary monopoly for copyright holders exists for the benefit of society as a whole, not (supposedly) for the rightsholders themselves. The benefit for rightsholders (who are only sometimes the 'makers' anyway) is merely instrumental. It's the notion that IP is about protecting some kind of natural right that is a perversion, bo…

I agree and privilege is one of the ways you solve that. Like the privilege of being less bound to engage in survival and political struggles. Evolution produced a world where if you want something, you have to take it. Makers aren't good at taking things because they're too busy making. The natural order is that makers would be marked for deletion, which is how it was for million of years before economies came into…

Stop doing drugs.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#364

Post by account42 »

Sakos wrote: post #64
colechristensen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense. If it is reasonable that someone needs to preserve something because it has been abandoned, then the thing should automatically be in the public domain. If you are not actively using IP for a reasonable amount of time, any patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc should be permanently expired. This fixes problems with patent trolls too: you effectively w…

> If it is reasonable that someone needs to preserve something because it has been abandoned, then the thing should automatically be in the public domain. Yeah, you go ahead and get that through every Western government. We'll fix the rest.

Civil disobedience is a good start.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#365

Post by account42 »

colechristensen wrote: post #32
sph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense. Because what is the point if something is distributed in a restrictive license, can't be preserved and then gets lost to time? Also, licensing is to avoid distribution, modification or outright copying by competitors; preservation is completely orthogonal to those concerns. It is to avoid losing a piece of craft to the sands of time…

>preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense. If it is reasonable that someone needs to preserve something because it has been abandoned, then the thing should automatically be in the public domain. If you are not actively using IP for a reasonable amount of time, any patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc should be permanently expired. This fixes problems with patent trolls too: you effectively w…

Except "once it has been abandoned" is often too late because the source code/artwork/whatever has been lost by then. We need to make sure that things can be and will be archived before that.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#366

Post by account42 »

VonGuard wrote: post #135
sph wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal code isn't licensed, so there is nothing that stops you from doing that if you get your hands on my hard drive. What has licensing got to do with it? Also, we're not talking about personal code either, but something that is arguably a product humanity, or a part thereof, would want to preserve for posterity. Lastly, no one is telling you to open anything. I am saying that if someone decides something you…

OK, but again, people are telling me to take code I do not own the rights to, and to release it under an open source license. That's 100% illegal. This is the equivalent of me taking a Stephen King novel and pasting it into a webpage and attaching a Creative Commons license. That does NOT make the Stephen King novel open source. It just gets me in trouble and sued. And the license matters. We're talking about somethi…

> Humanity's concerns don't matter in business and legal affairs.

Then it's only fair for humans to not concern themselves with business and legal affairs.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#367

Post by account42 »

knowitnone wrote: post #248
sph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense. Because what is the point if something is distributed in a restrictive license, can't be preserved and then gets lost to time? Also, licensing is to avoid distribution, modification or outright copying by competitors; preservation is completely orthogonal to those concerns. It is to avoid losing a piece of craft to the sands of time…

preservationism allows you to bypass "legal nonsense"? That's some entitlement you have. So basically, laws don't matter to you. People's life work don't matter? It's ok for you to take what somebody created in the name of preservation. I bet you wouldn't be saying this if you created and released something that you rely on as your income.

Entitlement is thinking everyone in the world should have their speech restricted because the business model you want relies on a legal fiction.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#368

Post by account42 »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #124
Calavar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't meet your definition of the word open. That's a disingenuous argument. It doesn't meet the OSI's definition of open. > the community piled on them until they said it was so not worth it that just pulled the whole thing. Yes, but let's be honest: If it wasn't the community, it would have been DMCA takedown requests from the companies whose software was published in the repo. At best, the community hastene…

OK why do I care about how the OSI defines a word which predates the existence of the OSI by over 1000 years?

I care for the same reason I don't like deliberately confusing product packaging.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#369

Post by account42 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #89
datavirtue wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're really not helping the argument here that LLMs aren't just stealing code.

The lack of real consequences for LLMs just shows how absurd today's copyright is. Nintendo can take down emulators while big corps get to slurp up random users' data for free.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#370

Post by account42 »

AlienRobot wrote: post #85
arp242 wrote: post #51

The trolling was ridiculous. I don't blame them. It was pretty clear that with "fork" they meant "don't create a WinAmp-ng fork" and not a "fork" in the "send a patch" GitHub sense. It's fine to point out "hey, I think your custom written license may need a bit of work!", but the amount of vitriol and hate over it (including on HN) was just ridiculous. It was one of those moments I was embarrassed to be posting here.…

I saw a guy on youtube complaining about it. He seemed to talk about FLOSS a lot and focus on the strict definition of "open source." I checked his github profile and he barely published anything. So here we have a company that made all of the code of a complete application source available being dunked by a guy who barely published any source code at all. Really put things in perspective for me.

> I checked his github profile

You do realize that GitHub is not the only place people can share code and that even on github not all contributions will be visible on your profile? Many notable open source developers don't even have a GitHub profile at all or just a dummy one to prevent others from claiming their commits because GitHub allows that without verifying email ownership.

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