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An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

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Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#11

Post by Alupis »

lloeki wrote: post #8
Alupis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

FAQ #7: >> Can’t you change the wording? It’s inappropriate / childish / not corporate-compliant. > > The WTFPL lets you relicense the work under any other license. Also, see FAQ #6 and #8. [0]: http://www.wtfpl.net/faq/

What stops me from re-licencing under my company's proprietary license, then suing the original author for copyright? (It appears this "license" allows implicit re-assignment of copyright).

Not to mention, this "license" was not written by a lawyer, but rather a software developer. I'm no lawyer, and I'm confident any license I can make up would be shredded by real lawyers.

Furthermore -- the codebase in question above, does not include the optional "No Warranty" clause, which means his software implicitly must be fit for use... and if it breaks something, he can be held liable.

While I agree with the spirit and intent of this license, it really isn't a real license and is easily mis-used by even those who do wish to treat it as real.

So, this license appears to be really a joke-license... not a serious one... and I still maintain the codebase's author should pick a real license if the intentions are to allow universal use.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#12

Post by vhost- »

daveloyall wrote: post #6

Question. Does this run in Linux on arm? Or does it run on the CPU (be it hardware or emulated)? Bonus question: How can I answer that question for myself in the future when looking at similar source? Said differently: What am I looking at here? :)

Oh my god, it would be so cool if you could boot to this. Raspberry Pi irc bot. Literally.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#13

Post by sophacles »

Alupis wrote: post #7
L8D wrote: post #4

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

I'll go ahead and feed the troll: please back up your statement that the license won't hold up in court. The site you link to has an entry for the "do what the fuck you want license v2" and there is literally no warning, and the only restriction mentioned is that a change to the license text requires a change to the license name.

So again: exactly what is the problem (beyond hand-wavy unevidenced claims about judges)?

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#14

Post by Alupis »

sophacles wrote: post #13
Alupis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

I'll go ahead and feed the troll: please back up your statement that the license won't hold up in court. The site you link to has an entry for the "do what the fuck you want license v2" and there is literally no warning, and the only restriction mentioned is that a change to the license text requires a change to the license name. So again: exactly what is the problem (beyond hand-wavy unevidenced claims about judges)…

There are several. And no, just because a license appears on the site I linked to does not make it "solid".

* The codebase in question neglected to include the "No Warranty" clause, which implicitly means his code is fit for use. So, if I run it on my machine and my machine crashes, he is liable.

* Just because a license has yet to be challenged, does not make it solid. That would be rather dangerous in a corporate environment.

* This license does not forbid me from re-assigning copyright to myself, then pursuing the original author.

As I said before, licensing is serious business. There is a reason most licenses are pretty long, even the "do what you want" licensing like MIT or BSD.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#15

Post by billiob »

Alupis wrote: post #7
L8D wrote: post #4

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

I am the author of bfb. It started as a joke with coworkers. I still consider it a joke but I'm proud of it! I like to use the wtfpl for simple code I wrote (like ptyproxy, a code I wrote on a sunday afternoon that I use to debug Terminology (under 2-clause BSD)). I don't expect much contributions on these projects anyway. If you're really concerned about the license and want to use my code in one of your projects, just send me an email and we'll talk about it. Since I'm the sole author of most of that code, I am still able to put it under a 2-clause BSD license.

I do hope you're not restraining yourself from contributing to bfb because of the software license ☺

Could you please point me which licenses were made up or adapted on my repositories?

The only repository I could change is photoalbum because it might useful to someone else.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#16

Post by Alupis »

billiob wrote: post #15
Alupis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

I am the author of bfb. It started as a joke with coworkers. I still consider it a joke but I'm proud of it! I like to use the wtfpl for simple code I wrote (like ptyproxy, a code I wrote on a sunday afternoon that I use to debug Terminology (under 2-clause BSD)). I don't expect much contributions on these projects anyway. If you're really concerned about the license and want to use my code in one of your projects, j…

Glad to have you part of the discussion.

I'm not discussing your repos, but rather the license choice.

You appear to have forgotten to add the "No Warranty" clause to the repo's you use the WTFPL on. This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability).

I wouldn't need you to re-license under BSD since the WTFPL allows me to do this already... without your knowledge nor permission.

The WTFPL allows me to re-assign copyright to myself, effectively stealing your work. I might even be able to pursue you after claiming the codebase as my own work (and re-licensing it under a proprietary license).

In any event, the WTFPL provides you with almost no protections against much of anything. As a fellow developer, I don't want anyone to get screwed. I agree with the spirit and intent of your license choice (I use Apache 2.0 for my projects specifically to allow others to do whatever they want, except claim copyright or re-license). However, I feel this license is more of a joke and could do more harm than good.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#17

Post by tlrobinson »

Alupis wrote: post #7
L8D wrote: post #4

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

Dude, it's an IRC bot written in Brainfuck.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#18

Post by Alupis »

vhost- wrote: post #12
daveloyall wrote: post #6

Question. Does this run in Linux on arm? Or does it run on the CPU (be it hardware or emulated)? Bonus question: How can I answer that question for myself in the future when looking at similar source? Said differently: What am I looking at here? :)

Oh my god, it would be so cool if you could boot to this. Raspberry Pi irc bot. Literally.

He uses Linux sys calls, which means the kernel needs to be there (and a libc of some sorts)... but that's all that's needed. So, with the RPi, you could essentially "boot" this code with pretty much a bare-metal system otherwise.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#19

Post by 300bps »

Alupis wrote: post #16
billiob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the author of bfb. It started as a joke with coworkers. I still consider it a joke but I'm proud of it! I like to use the wtfpl for simple code I wrote (like ptyproxy, a code I wrote on a sunday afternoon that I use to debug Terminology (under 2-clause BSD)). I don't expect much contributions on these projects anyway. If you're really concerned about the license and want to use my code in one of your projects, j…

Glad to have you part of the discussion. I'm not discussing your repos, but rather the license choice. You appear to have forgotten to add the "No Warranty" clause to the repo's you use the WTFPL on. This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability). I wouldn't need you to re-license under BSD since the WTFPL allows me to do this…

This implicitly means your code is fit for use, and if it crashes my system, you are liable (and, more importantly, you accept liability).

I'm glad you mention this. I work at an investment bank programming high frequency trading algorithms and we've been evaluating BrainFuck Bot as a way of performing tens of thousands of stock transactions per second for a mission critical enterprise application.

Since I now know the author of BrainFuck Bot did not checkmark the "No Warranty" clause thereby assuring me of perfect code and his infinite liability thereof, I feel more confident in betting the future of my bank on this code.

Re: An IRC Bot in Arm Assembler

#20

Post by ChuckMcM »

Alupis wrote: post #7
L8D wrote: post #4

If you think this is cool, go ahead and check out bfb, an IRC bot written in a derivative of Brainfuck. https://github.com/billiob/bfb

The license the author of the BrainFuck example has chosen (or made up) actually is pretty restrictive, if not immature. Software licensing is not a joke. The author's account on Github seems to have many projects were a license has been either made up, or adapted. Perhaps out of lack of understanding current licensing and available licenses. They could check this site out for some help: https://tldrlegal.com/ If the…

I get that you care, but you don't seem to have a dog in this fight, so why care so much? More specifically, its always useful to say

"Hey while that license is really creative, you realize that its also not doing you any favors. Three things that you might want to watch for are warranty issues, the ability to reassign to any license means you can be barred from using your own code, and someone can reassign the copyright to themselves and then take down your site with a DMCA. That is a lot of risk to carry just to be clever with the license."

The author seems to like it the way it is and you've shined your light on the risk, hope it doesn't show up as another HN post on how evil lawyers did evil things.

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