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Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

ziglang.org

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Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#231

Post by eternalban »

nanny wrote: post #210
rainfall wrote: post #166

As a Japanese-speaking software engineer, I found that the company, connectFree, did too many suspicious acts as below: - They are attempting to register "ZIG" [1] and "SiFive" [2] as trademarks in Japan. Only this is enough for me to see them as a trademark troll. - Since Zen is a fork, Zen comes with Zig's (or its derived version of) standard library, but when they copied Zig's library source files, they removed th…

>Sure, because it's MIT license, you can relicense, but is replacing the original copyright notice OK? Even if it's OK, why did they do that? The file headers don't matter to the MIT/Expat license, what matters is that the original copy of the license is included in the redistribution, which it is (it's at the bottom of lib/zen/std/LICENSE). Replacing the file headers makes sense in this context because the derivativ…

Note to self: don't ever again use MIT license for my OSS projects. [ascii art fan here..]

Apache says something about "retaining category A header licenses" but not sure what category A means.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#232

Post by YorickPeterse »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #2

This is why you always use GPL

A language licensed as the GPL likely would not see any users, as programs built on it would link to it (or at least parts of it, such as the standard library); thus requiring either an exception clause, or that all software using the language also be licensed as GPL.

IIRC the AGPL is better for this, but most GPL licenses are just blacklisted by companies; reducing the likelihood of the language catching on.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#233

Post by nanny »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #229
nanny wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

In that case, there would be multiple authors of a single copyrighted work. I'm only familiar/knowledgeable with GNU copyright assignment, however, not copyrights in general. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#234

Post by acqq »

nanny wrote: post #214
klyrs wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or portions of the Software. If they aren't complying with that, then they're in violation of the MIT license. Further, by removing Andrew's copyright and claiming his work as their own, that runs afoul of copyright law independent of any software licensing considerations (e.g. the reason we're told to use an actual permissive lic…

They are complying, the original Zig license is at the bottom of the file lib/zen/std/LICENSE (complete with "Copyright (c) 2019 Andrew Kelley"). I just downloaded it from the Zen website, and the tarball is dated 2020-09-04.

> They are complying,

Are they, if they removed the Zig copyright from each file in the standard library?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#235

Post by nromiun »

I don't understand why the Zig developers are getting so stressed over this. So a company forked your open source project. If you are worried about closed source forks use GPL. If you are worried that people will confuse Zig with Zen just post a warning. Honestly, I don't understand why they are comparing source code and dragging three people into it.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#236

Post by nemothekid »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #206
nemothekid wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the blogpost isn't to shutdown Zen, it's to ensure new people who find Zig or Zen aren't confused into thinking there is a relationship between the two.

Why would anyone think there was a relationship between the two? Nothing in Zen’s marketing mentions Zig.

I have more faith in my fellow human beings that when they do due diligence to decide whether they should pay a monthly fee to use a language, that they would do a little due diligence and look into the history and syntax of the language and see that it's a fork of Zig instead of taking marketing at face value.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#237

Post by nanny »

eternalban wrote: post #231
nanny wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, because it's MIT license, you can relicense, but is replacing the original copyright notice OK? Even if it's OK, why did they do that? The file headers don't matter to the MIT/Expat license, what matters is that the original copy of the license is included in the redistribution, which it is (it's at the bottom of lib/zen/std/LICENSE). Replacing the file headers makes sense in this context because the derivativ…

Note to self: don't ever again use MIT license for my OSS projects. [ascii art fan here..] Apache says something about "retaining category A header licenses" but not sure what category A means.

Just know what you're getting into. Choosing the MIT/Expat license for your project is a conscious decision that explicitly allows people to do things like connectFree did with Zen. Whether you consider that a good or bad thing is on you. Although, I do highly recommend GPLv3, AGPL, or LGPL. You can read more about all kinds of software licenses here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html

As for the Apache, I don't know anything about that and I can't find anything about headers in the Apache v2.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#238

Post by igneo676 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #228
igneo676 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's fine if you reject the OSI's definition. We've been having this conversation as a community for decades and "the source code is freely available" is not enough.

For instance, there's Debian's[0] (which was considered authoritative enough that the OSI basically used it as their own) which spells out the freedoms necessary for software to be considered Open Source. This extends beyond the source being available to not discriminating against people groups, allowing for modification, etc.

There's another from the FSF/GNU projects[1] which lay out the Four Essential Freedoms. These extend beyond source availability to the ability to run the program as you wish, to study the program and to redistribute it (among others).

To say source availability == Open Source is to rewrite history. It's about user freedom and always has been.

[0]: https://www.debian.org/social_contract

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#239

Post by gmueckl »

qayxc wrote: post #186
gmueckl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not quite true in the case of Visual Studio. There is a community edition, but it is only free under a very constrained set of circumstances (mostly company revenue < 100.000$/year, IIRC). Most business need to buy Visual Studio Professional to legally use that IDE.

From the horses mouth [1]: > Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps. No revenue cap to be found. Also: > In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community. Again - no revenue cap. And finally: > enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue) Now call be a naive buffoon, but in my…

I got the revenue limit wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that the Community edition isn't free for everybody. It has strings attached. That was my point.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#240

Post by nanny »

acqq wrote: post #234
nanny wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are complying, the original Zig license is at the bottom of the file lib/zen/std/LICENSE (complete with "Copyright (c) 2019 Andrew Kelley"). I just downloaded it from the Zen website, and the tarball is dated 2020-09-04.

> They are complying, Are they, if they removed the Zig copyright from each file in the standard library?

Yes, because, as I explained above, they still retained the original Zig copyright in their LICENSE file. The MIT/Expat license doesn't say anything about the file headers. It only requires that "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
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