Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
181–190 of 229 posts
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#182In theory you can change the licence and hope that those that use the software respect the licence terms, but that depends on trusting others. I think of the case of the Russian programmer who was arrested and jailed for stealing proprietary code from Goldman Sachs. During the trial it was revealed that Goldman Sachs would use open source software and replace the software licence with their own: "Open source was an i…
This is appalling. Maybe all open-source code could be published as part of a not-for-profit cooperative that defends the programmers that enter into it.
I think that's sort of what the FSF does for *GPL licenses.
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#183Options:
1) make useless software
2) go closed source
3) ?
Also, why does nobody say “oh wow, if other people hadn’t generously given time like this i would have to pay so much more for everything because everything companies do would cost more?”
This lens of viewing corporate give back to projects in direct $ or donated developer time is mildly useful for understanding the ecosystem as a whole, but grab hold of it more than lightly and it becomes a blindfold.
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#184Unfortunately, for most evil and/or small corporations, licenses are weak requests and not binding contracts. They will strip the code from the license and integrate it into their software.
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#185"Bad guys can't use it" is per definition incompatible with free software. For this author's definition of "bad guys" (megacorps), AGPL is probably the easiest poison pill. As with all poison pills, this will also make many (most?) "good" users unable to use it. This project is no curl or database engine, it seems to be a slightly easier way to set HTTP response headers. I bet most of the uses are transitive (someone…
Since the author mentioned trying to find a general solution, not one just for his project - here's one that could work: Make a new standard license similar to the GPL, but one that includes machine-readable payment requirements, each consisting of: - a UUID - a minimum profit threshold - a license fee, either a fixed amount or some well-defined formula (you'd probably want an inflation adjustment system) - a recipie…
I read that Star Wars still hasn’t turned a profit. This is only slightly in jest.
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if you ignore the fact there would be no LLM's without wholesale scraping of the corpus of all software ever written . LLM's are the least ethically sourced pieces of technology I've ever seen. That they have businesses built that haven't been sued out of existence for not asking for permission to train first is positively mind boggling.
> all software ever written LLMs aren't usually trained on large proprietary codebases like the ones from Google, Microsoft or Apple?
You think there wasn't a reason Microsoft bought GitHub, whose ToS allowed them to expand their training corpus vastly beyond their own internal systems? Why Amazon does the same thing with CodeCommit? If your stuff is hosted somewhere with a ToS, you can bet that repo is getting into the training corpus. Having you flavor of LLM in today's is too valuable for any corp to pass up the opportunity.
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#187Two thoughts. Ben Thompson and James Allworth discussed an idea on an episode of The Exponent ( https://exponent.fm/ ) the idea of a "principle stack", and at which "layer" of the stack it's appropriate to address different societal issues. I wish I could find the episode again, it was quite a few years ago. The upshot being... maybe software licensing isn't the right place to address e.g. income inequality? On the o…
It is impossible to write a real "use for good, not evil" [1] license, because there's no formal, universally accepted notions of good and evil. While there are things that are universally considered good, or considered evil, the areas around them are large, nebulous, and are anything but clearly outlined. Hence legally avoiding the "anti-evil" license terms will always be a relatively easy option for a willing party…
> "the Software shall
be used for Good, not Evil."
For JSLint, Crockford gave an exemption though: "I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38...
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#188Two thoughts. Ben Thompson and James Allworth discussed an idea on an episode of The Exponent ( https://exponent.fm/ ) the idea of a "principle stack", and at which "layer" of the stack it's appropriate to address different societal issues. I wish I could find the episode again, it was quite a few years ago. The upshot being... maybe software licensing isn't the right place to address e.g. income inequality? On the o…
From the perspective of decreasing income inequality on a global scale, when multinationals fire workers in developed countries and replace them with lower-paid workers in developing countries, that is a very good thing, since people in developing countries need the jobs more. I would be skeptical of any license which privileges co-ops over multinationals for that reason. Co-ops are likely to reinforce existing globa…
I think there's a kernel of truth in what you said, but you're also talking about avoiding accidental "income inequality" in this comment, and "economic stagnation" in the other.
It seems like you might've moved the goalpost a bit...
At the end of the day: any entity that works for the public good (be it a co-op, a non-profit or a state owned enterprise[1]) would be a better recipient of the free labour provided by f/oss hobbyists, than a for-profit multinational... And often economic performance is equivocated with financial performance. At the end of the day, if everyone can put food on the table[2] (here and in the developing world), I couldn't care less if some GDP metric might imply that "there's stagnation actually"
[1] My point being, that a SOE will have more bargainining power than a small co-op, and thus be able to fight unequal exchange and compensate for income inequality
[2] "food on the table" is a proxy for: food itself, shelter, healthcare, affordable heating (or cooling) and consumer goods and services (tech gadgets to learn and keep in touch with family, long distance transport to visit relatives, etc.)
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#189"Bad guys can't use it" is per definition incompatible with free software. For this author's definition of "bad guys" (megacorps), AGPL is probably the easiest poison pill. As with all poison pills, this will also make many (most?) "good" users unable to use it. This project is no curl or database engine, it seems to be a slightly easier way to set HTTP response headers. I bet most of the uses are transitive (someone…
> "Bad guys can't use it" is per definition incompatible with free software It's incompatible with 1 definition of free software. More and more developers are unhappy with this definition.
No, the devs aren't unhappy with this definition.
The ceos that want to market their software as open source are ಥ ‿ ಥ
Re: Stopping bad guys from using my open source project (feedback wanted)
#190"Bad guys can't use it" is per definition incompatible with free software. For this author's definition of "bad guys" (megacorps), AGPL is probably the easiest poison pill. As with all poison pills, this will also make many (most?) "good" users unable to use it. This project is no curl or database engine, it seems to be a slightly easier way to set HTTP response headers. I bet most of the uses are transitive (someone…
I don’t believe AGPL can be applied retroactively. What’s there today with MIT license stays and there can be a new version with the AGPL. Unless the author is planning major upgrades, the previous work is open to be forked and used with MIT.
Open source is like free speech. We are never going to control what people can say (as in who uses the sodtware and for what purpose). But we are happy that it exists.