Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

ziglang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 299 posts

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#281

Post by dragonwriter »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #275
dragonwriter wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that the license may not require you to retain the notices It explicitly does.

Just read the MIT license. Doesn't say anything about file headers.

It doesn't need to say anything about file headers. A source file is a copyrightable work. The copyright notice and license file in that source file provide the copyright notice for that work and it's licensing terms. The MIT license, under which the work is licensed, requires the copyright notice of the work to be preserved. By removing and replacing the notice on the work, and distributing it without preserving the original notice as required by the license on the work, the license is violated.

The fact that the work is also included in a compilation, which is a separate copyright protected work, and that work has its own copyright notice and is offered under the same license, does not somehow alter the license requirements on the component work within the compilation, so that of the compilation’s copyright is preserved as required by the license of the compilation, there is no obligation to preserve the copyright notice of the component work as required by the license on the component.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#282

Post by dragonwriter »

nanny wrote: post #270
dragonwriter wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

> I don't agree that each file on its own is a separate work subject to copyright.

Each is an individual work of authorship meeting the requirements for protection under copyright law and as such is automatically protected on creation as an individual work. Each is distributed with an individual copyright notice and individual statement of the license terms, so the recipient also has notice that the protection which is automatic under copyright law is claimed by the author, and the licensing terms applicable to the work. Redistribution without preservation of the copyright notice that appears in the work as required by the license is a clear, willful violation of the license.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#283

Post by dragonwriter »

shawnz wrote: post #268
dragonwriter wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

One way you could check is if each of the files has their own copyright and license notice, and the license notice includes, directly or by reference, terms which require preservation of the accompanying copyright notice.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#284

Post by fomine3 »

johnnycerberus wrote: post #32

All this drama reminds me of the business culture of Japan, building walls around their gardens, growing stuff with seeds from public parks while having unethical work policies for gardeners. The entire problem of Japan is that they specialized in perfecting what others invent, which can only take you so far. If companies want to fork Zig and distribute it commercially in such an early stage, then Zig is doing someth…

Please don't think this is standard on Japanese OSS scene. Zen's origin and owning company was not well known until now. Now it is thought as BS also on Japanese community.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#285

Post by dralley »

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.

I don't know why MPLv2 doesn't get much love. It's the right blend of both hard and soft copyleft IMO.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#286

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

colinmhayes wrote: post #246
cxr wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say you reject it, but you're not entitled to your own set of facts.

Ok well here are the facts. Open means freely and widely available. Source means source code. Open source means the programs code is freely and widely available. If you want to add other stuff onto that you need to find a new phrase.

The source code for NT has been widely leaked over the years. Is it Open Source?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#287

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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.

> 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.

I'm genuinely sympathetic, in that it rubs me a little bit the wrong way to say that one organization can define "open source". In practice, however, the only people I've ever seen actually arguing this are people trying to pretend that their license is open source when it really isn't.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#288

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #169
CyberRabbi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that developers work on zen would be available to the zig foundation if it were licensed GPL. If it were licensed GPL and they were violating that license they could sue in the legal system instead of writing a blog post with dubious effect.

Has anyone ever perused legal action based on a GPL violation? Last I checked, even the biggest piece of GPL software in existence, the Linux kernel, gets its violated without legal repercussions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#289

Post by shawnz »

dragonwriter wrote: post #283
shawnz wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So how do you tell the difference between the files having been licensed individually or only the whole compilation having been licensed? One way you could check is if each of the files has their own copyright and license notice, and the license notice includes, directly or by reference, terms which require preservation of the accompanying copyright notice.

How can you be sure the license notice wasn't meant to apply to the project as a whole, as I imagine is overwhelmingly the more common intention? That is the obvious question here.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#290

Post by nromiun »

tandr wrote: post #256
nromiun wrote: post #235

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.

Because as @rainfall pointed out [1], the company has tried to trademark Zig, in essence putting a hand over the whole project? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24483162

Sorry. I was posting after just reading the blog. It didn't say anything about trademarks.
Post reply on HN