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Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

ziglang.org

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Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#261

Post by dragonwriter »

nanny wrote: post #240
acqq wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

If there is individual notice on the file because the file is a work individually licensed under MIT, removing it from the file is removing it from an MIT protected work in violation of the license.

That the individually-protected work is also included in an compilation which is itself licensed under MIT does not remove or loosen any licensing requirements on the smaller work.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#262

Post by dragonwriter »

nanny wrote: post #252
acqq wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think that: "in all copies or substantial portions" also means that every source file of the standard library or the header must keep the original copyright.

Why do you think that? They are distributing a modified copy of the software and including the original copyright and permission notice. Therefore, they are in compliance. It's as simple as that. If they were distributing the individual files (or "substantial portions" of them) without a copy of the original copyright and permission notice, then you'd be correct. But that's not the case here.

> Why do you think that?

Because each source file on its own is a work subject to copyright, with a copyright notice and particular license attached, and the license attached requires retaining the notice.

The fact that they are also included in a compilation which, as a compilation, is separately subject to copyright and has it's own copyright notice and license attached, which happens to be the same license, doesn't change that one bit.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#263

Post by mStreamTeam »

darthrupert wrote: post #192
falcolas wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my point of view - why does Zig even care what Zen is doing? Zen's shortcomings don't impact the userbase or development of Zig in any real fashion. The fact that the Zig foundation wrote this letter condemning the actions of Zen's founder/employees - especially when they closed the letter with a call to action to return to Zig - shows that Zen's fork actually matters to them, that they don't believe it should…

I suppose they're doing this as a public service, so that fewer people will fall for this total scam.

Ironically, its just giving a lot of free advertisement to Zen.

Before this post I never knew Zen existed. Now I know it exists and am emotionally invested in it. And there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#264

Post by AndyKelley »

kstenerud wrote: post #73
kristopher wrote: post #43

Hello HN and sorry for this bizarre drama! Although we have a page documenting some outlandish comments that the founder of Zig has made about Zen[0], we find it well inside of our rights to fork the MIT Licensed Zig and make a better product with commercial support. We had initial plans to support Zig in Japan, but efforts to localize Zig were not accepted and we could not take the risk of not having some sort of fo…

On whose authority was https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/2701 made, and what are the implications for the Zig project now that the referenced commit ( https://github.com/ziglang/zig/commit/aa60d2a688c965dcccf8e2... ) is part of the codebase?

It is not part of the codebase. I immediately reverted the commit in question[1] and then I fixed the bug independently[2].

[1]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/commit/8ed88280a62f2a400d00b5... [2]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/commit/9050a07540b7387dade818...

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#265

Post by dragonwriter »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #175
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…

IANAL, but to your point about the copyright notices: I suspect that the license may not require you to retain the notices, but that doesn't mean that you can "take" the copyright. Copyright is associated with authorship and can't be taken by mere declaration. I could publish a copy of Shakespeare's works on my website, and I could put "(c) My Name 2020" at the top, but that would not confer actual copyright ownershi…

> I suspect that the license may not require you to retain the notices

It explicitly does.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#266

Post by bumblebritches5 »

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.

Unless you live in Japan where evidently copyright infringement is A ok, you're fine.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#267

Post by bumblebritches5 »

falcolas wrote: post #81
drcode wrote: post #10

As 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.

That's one of the costs of using the MIT and BSD licenses: anybody can take it and go private/for-profit with it (without giving back even a "thanks"), and all the author can do is issue a strongly worded statement about it. Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product.

More copyleft FUD

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#268

Post by shawnz »

dragonwriter wrote: post #261
nanny wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

If there is individual notice on the file because the file is a work individually licensed under MIT, removing it from the file is removing it from an MIT protected work in violation of the license. That the individually-protected work is also included in an compilation which is itself licensed under MIT does not remove or loosen any licensing requirements on the smaller work.

So how do you tell the difference between the files having been licensed individually or only the whole compilation having been licensed?

Here is some of the license text:

> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software") [...]

That seems to me to indicate that it applies to the whole software package and not any single file (unless you could call that single file a "software" in its own right, maybe?)

Meanwhile, the text in each individual file only says this:

> Copyright (c) 2015 Andrew Kelley

> This file is part of zig, which is MIT licensed. See http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#269

Post by eternalban »

shawnz wrote: post #260
eternalban wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's say the MIT license demanded that you retain the copyright notice in all source files in addition to just the license file. What benefits would that give you over the current situation? Anyone who makes a copy already has to include the license text, why does it matter where they include it as long as it's in a conspicuous place? The real decision point here should be: Do you want people to be able to use your…

You're entirely correct.

Just now I remembered that back in my squandered youth I used to consider code to be a form of creative expression. Code is not my only creative outlet, but it remains an important one. I should not be using OSS at all. I don't even code for the user if I am ever honest about it: I code for the thing itself. Somehow, it seems, I got caught in a dominant paradigm and lost a sense of my own self and values regarding my creative work.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#270

Post by nanny »

dragonwriter wrote: post #262
nanny wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that? They are distributing a modified copy of the software and including the original copyright and permission notice. Therefore, they are in compliance. It's as simple as that. If they were distributing the individual files (or "substantial portions" of them) without a copy of the original copyright and permission notice, then you'd be correct. But that's not the case here.

> Why do you think that? Because each source file on its own is a work subject to copyright, with a copyright notice and particular license attached, and the license attached requires retaining the notice. The fact that they are also included in a compilation which, as a compilation, is separately subject to copyright and has it's own copyright notice and license attached, which happens to be the same license, doesn'…

I don't agree that each file on its own is a separate work subject to copyright. Even the original Zig headers say that each file "is part of zig" (emphasis mine). The "work" in this case is the software project as a whole. That's what's being distributed.

In addition, the Zen headers say "This project may be licensed under the terms of the ConnectFree Reference Source License" and "See the LICENSE file at the root of this project for complete information". This statement is enough to imply that the project as a whole is covered by the specified LICENSE file.

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