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TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

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Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#241

Post by jermaustin1 »

vkat wrote: post #228
jermaustin1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a senior dev at a past job who did this constantly. And when it was found out how much he actually stole, our entire team was laid off and replaced by the company that did the audit. He just refused to believe that software licenses were real. That and I dont think he could actually code anything from scratch without stealing large swaths of code from open source repositories.

Copy/paste without attribution to license or permission is more blatant.

Organizationally he was given free reign to do whatever he wanted, and that lead to the entire teams downfall. He canceled code reviews... for himself. Well, he actually stated, all code reviews go through him, thus he "code reviewed" his own code. I remember he was once a few weeks late on delivering a basic landing page, and when it finally got to QA at 9pm on a Friday, our entire team was forced to work the weekend and QA gave me a TFS export of more than 200 defects I had to fix because he was unreachable. Needless to say, our entire team was upset we all got laid off, but also relieved because we all ended up in better jobs. At least everyone I've talked to, which is everyone but him, as he has never responded to a single text message or email since he quit after the layoff (he refused severance, and just walked out), all his socials went off line, and any record of his name has disappeared from the internet. I'm fairly certain he was a conman, but I have no way of finding out.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#242

Post by jermaustin1 »

trulyme wrote: post #240
jermaustin1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a senior dev at a past job who did this constantly. And when it was found out how much he actually stole, our entire team was laid off and replaced by the company that did the audit. He just refused to believe that software licenses were real. That and I dont think he could actually code anything from scratch without stealing large swaths of code from open source repositories.

> I had a "senior" dev... Ftfy.

His resumé seemed to back up his claim. Not sure if it was real, though. HR called every one of my past employers and my references, so I figured they would have followed up on his, too.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#243

Post by winphone1974 »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #144
anthk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe being an engineer has civil accountability on issues. You can be fined really high if you hire a self-called engineer without a proper degree. Or at least decades of alleged experience in the field.

Well, yes, this applies to engineering. But not to software engineering. Personally, I like „software engineering“ as it is — being a free profession where talent counts more than a degree.

The degree is part of the training of an engineer, not the professional designation itself. The challenge with our current understanding of the title software engineer is that practitioners are not held to the same standards and responsibilities as other engineering fields. It doesn't have anything to do with talent.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#244

Post by 8ytecoder »

vkat wrote: post #227
delusional wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think companies end up violating GPL. Maybe sometimes it's a heartless executive, but a lot of enterprise software devs are completely unconcerned with licenses. If they can get their hands on it, the license doesn't matter.

In all the enterprise companies I worked for we are drilled with required learning and assessments which often include training on software licenses. The aim of these training is devs to keep an eye for license and defer to someone higher up if in doubt. These processes are manual and catch only so much. In companies with mature software processes there is always tooling that will block a release if it finds unaccept…

Enterprises of even modest size take it very seriously. They’ll be juicy targets to go after. It’s everything between startups to midsize companies where this is not clearly defined. Just ask the VCs who do due diligence. Almost everyone of them will audit your licenses before they invest. One of the things they ask for is the list of libraries you use and their licenses.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#245

Post by nick__m »

Vinnl wrote: post #205

I think it's useful for developers to have a rough mental model of how open source licensing works, as it's not that complicated yet affects what you can legally do, both as a user of open source software as well as as a contributor. Coincidentally I recently did a Twitter thread on it, in case anyone's interested. I know not everyone like the medium, but at least it's also posted on Mastodon, so there's that: https:…

There is less correct but funnier comparison. It's a cartoon comparing the various licences as if they were a dad: http://www.wtfpl.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/wtfpl-strip....

TikTok probably tought that OBS was licensed under the WTFPL ;)

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#246

Post by [deleted] »

addingnumbers wrote: post #78
ghusbands wrote: post #9

People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not problematic. Ben Torrell (an OBS developer) notes later in the thread that there is indeed GPL code compiled into TikTok's executables; since source is not available and they have not got another license, it is unlicensed and hence illegal.

People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not problematic because the tweet in the HN link is idiocy. They show one URL in one installer script with an obsproject.com domain and conclude, from the presence of that URL alone, that the entire project is a whole cloth copy of OBS. That URL is nothing but a 302 redirect to the directx runtime at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Download/confirmation.aspx?i... The…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#247

Post by krylon »

gus_massa wrote: post #194
SavantIdiot wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are subtleties not captured by this quick overview which are not fully understood by (in my experience) the vast majority of programmers: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/ If your project is going to be "real" (e.g., not some personal throwaway), you really need a lawyer if you are including anything other than MIT. Even Apache can be problematic when it comes to patenting.

What about BSD?

I am not a lawyer, but the (2-clause) BSD and MIT licenses look nearly identical to me. The wording is slightly different, but I think they express the same intent.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#248

Post by trulyme »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #242
trulyme wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had a "senior" dev... Ftfy.

His resumé seemed to back up his claim. Not sure if it was real, though. HR called every one of my past employers and my references, so I figured they would have followed up on his, too.

Yes, I know the type - I have met a few of "senior" devs that were anything but. I can imagine their past employer didn't even know their true worth, or lack of. Sorry you had that experience.

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#249

Post by vineyardmike »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #230
nnvvhh wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not complying with an open source license can be enforced as copyright infringement rather than a contractual dispute.

Please cite an example. Most countries' copyright law tips civil license agreement disputes back into the civil courts, not criminal, with relatively few exceptions.

> The court disagreed that Neo4j granted a naked trademark license, pointing out that the open source licenses granted to third-parties on the open source software repository were copyright licenses, not trademark licenses. Users of the open source version of the software did not have any right to use the Neo4j trademark without a separate trademark agreement. Naked licensing does not occur where there is no trademark license.

Neo4j used GPL by the way.

https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/articles/open-source-so...

Re: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS

#250

Post by VRay »

woodruffw wrote: post #158
johnebgd wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a lawyer but seems like source projects would have a hard time showing damages since they don’t charge for the software.

I don't believe you need to demonstrate specific damages for a copyright infringement case in the US. You only need to demonstrate two facts: that you are the legitimate holder of the copyright, and that the other party did in fact infringe.

It's pretty funny that corporations can levy a multi-million dollar judgement against a single mother for pirating a CD, but then when the tables are turned, it's no big deal
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