for great justice.
take off every zig
Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
221–230 of 299 posts
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stallman himself has said he approves of GPL/Commercial dual licensing. It's a good way to support a project - companies don't like the GPL but they also want to spend money on support.
Can you dual license with both GPL and MIT (or other)? Would that make sense?
Maybe, the idea is that a company who wants to use my work can either comply with the GPL and give back that way or financially support the project (and therefore not need to comply).
You could grant them an MIT license, I guess.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand what this means in practice. In particular I don't get this at all: >In light of the consequences of Mozilla depending so much on corporate sponsorships, it almost seems weird to me that we need to clarify why we'd like to walk a different path. I think Mozilla's funding is very unhealthy for Firefox in particular because it's a web browser and there can be a clea…
Yeah I agree, sorry, I didn't make the point super clearly. For the Zig programming language, it means that the commercial entity that supports the project is the Zig Software Foundation, a non-profit company. Being non-profit means that we don't have shareholders nagging the board of directors for dividends, nor we have a VC company forcing decisions on us to pursue a hockey stick. Right now we depend on donations a…
Okay, that makes sense, thank you for clarifying (and good luck, Zig seems like an interesting language).
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#224I'm sad to hear that the Zig community is burdened by this. I've filed a couple proposals there, and hope to use it post 1.0.
But what a PR opportunity! Here's an outfit selling Zig (because it's good enough already), which won't even hit 1.0 for "two years" \o/
("Two years" is from Andrew on a recent podcast.)
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
And there's nothing to stop the current Zig team from making future releases GPL, is there? Problem solved...?
Sort of but only the new parts would fall under gpl the rest bsd.
If I'm not mistaken, if all code authors agree on the license change, then, the new release can be made fully GPL. While the old copy will be still available as MIT.
A malicious actor can pretend that they merged MIT parts with new GPL parts, but I think, it would not take a lot of time, until such merging would become technically hard, and the code can be effectively converted into GPL.
However, since Zen's guy was a contributor, it's probably not possible to get all authors' permission to change the license for the entire Zig codebase.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Roughly $100K-$200K maximum and it would be a good use of time if it would recover potentially millions for the foundation.
good lord. our budget is public; you can see we have some 30K in the bank, with $3500 income per month. We will not be wasting donors' money on a lawyer.
In this specific case it may not be worth it but if a large corporation were redistributing a hypothetically GPL-licensed version of zig without releasing source, then you would be doing your donors a disservice by not seeking retribution to the foundation.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have it backwards. The MIT/Expat does required you to retain a copyright notice (in the form of a copy of the license, not in the form of file headers), which Zen does. In addition, creating a derivative work does in fact give you copyright on the new work. The Shakespeare comparison does not apply because Shakespeare is not licensed under the MIT/Expat license.
> MIT/Expat does required you to retain a copyright notice (in the form of a copy of the license, not in the form of file headers) OK, but I was talking about the file headers. :) > In addition, creating a derivative work does in fact give you copyright on the new work Sure, but the new work is the portions that you've changed, not the portions that you've copied, right? "The derivative work cannot be an uncreative v…
>OK, but I was talking about the file headers. :)
Gotcha, then you are correct. The MIT/Expat only requires: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software". As long as they are in compliance on that regard then they are in the clear.
>Sure, but the new work is the portions that you've changed, not the portions that you've copied, right?
No, the new work is the piece of software work as a whole, not the individual files. "Work" in this context is a legal term that includes all of the source code and nonliteral elements of the software, aka the Structure, Sequence, and Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure,_sequence_and_organi...
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can get into semantics on what open source means, but I don't think the definition has to include a prohibition on any licenses. Open source just means the source code is freely available.
Except, we do have a rigorous definition on what Open Source really means. The best place to check is the OSI's definition[0] and the licenses they approve[1]. What you're describing is commonly described as Source Available and doesn't readily meet the definition of Open Source. Our terms matter. And considering this conversation is really about what it means to be OSS and what the tradeoffs are, we need to "get int…
I reject the OSI's claim to have authority over what "open source" means. We do not have a rigorous definition of what open source means beyond the source code is freely available.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> MIT/Expat does required you to retain a copyright notice (in the form of a copy of the license, not in the form of file headers) OK, but I was talking about the file headers. :) > In addition, creating a derivative work does in fact give you copyright on the new work Sure, but the new work is the portions that you've changed, not the portions that you've copied, right? "The derivative work cannot be an uncreative v…
>OK, but I was talking about the file headers. :) Gotcha, then you are correct. The MIT/Expat only requires: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software". As long as they are in compliance on that regard then they are in the clear. >Sure, but the new work is the portions that you've changed, not the portions that you've copied, right?…
R.e. your second statement, I can only presume that you're right, but I'm confused about how this works with copyright license agreements, or the cases where projects have had to go and get copyright releases from authors of individual lines of code to make a license change. If the copyright is on the entire work, how can a contributor of just one line of code own the copyright? Anyway. You seem more versed in this than I am, so I bow to your expertise.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#230As somebody that just got into Zig and loves the language, it makes me super sad that the developers on this project have to spend their valuable time stressing about BS like this. Also, the ideas the Zen people list on their website for forking Zig are terrible ideas- They were pushing to turn Zig into a hard-to-reason-about vanilla object-oriented programming language.
Maybe he shouldn’t have used the MIT licence if he didn’t understand what it meant. You can always hire a lawyer to explain it to you. Excuse my cynicism but this story where someone starts a MIT or BSD licenced project so they can attract more contributors and then cry when someone makes money off the project is getting far too old.
The situation is a little more nuanced than that - it's the way they are trying to make money from Zig that people find objectionable. In particular, what they are doing could damage the future of Zig and potentially splits the ecosystem. In addition, they have done some obviously scummy things like try to register a trademark on Zig in Japan.