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“Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

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Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#351

Post by npteljes »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #307
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

Some people release something as FOSS but don't understand what that means. We had a developer we worked with at PortableApps.com release his software under a FOSS license. He requested we package it portably in our format and release it. His users and ours were happy. Fast forward 3 years and a bug impacted a user's data in the portable package. The developer became increasingly irate even after it was fixed and dem…

Fascinating story. I think it's hard to anticipate consequences of actions, for some harder than others.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#352

Post by zenethian »

mirthflat83 wrote: post #85
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

Just because you are legally allowed to do so doesn’t mean that you should. Hopefully you have a similar stance towards Amazon’s behavior in the OSS community.

It's not an issue of legally allowed. It's the very spirit of the community that allows for this. The FOSS community has worked very hard to create a system where permission isn't needed because it's already there, baked into the system. So while yes, some large corporations abuse this, I also don't consider Amazon to be part of the FOSS community, and I definitely consider NixOS to be a part of the FOSS community. To declare that you will go so far as changing the license to prohibit certain persons or projects from using your software is an affront to the FOSS community itself. If the whole FOSS community degraded into "It's free for everyone except you and you and you because I don't like you or maybe you're gonna make my life difficult" then we would have no FOSS at all.

I can understand the author's concern, and NixOS offered to maintain it's own fork to mitigate it, and the author rejected the idea. That tells me that it was more of a temper-tantrum stemming from some other deeper issue than just a concern about support.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#353

Post by zenethian »

Spivak wrote: post #203
mpfundstein wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they have good reason to not not include it.

In totally agree but in the case where the Nix maintainers don’t think the author’s reasons are good enough (which happened) that’s where we’re left with “because I said so and I control the license.”

I would agree that the author's reasons aren't good enough, because when they proposed a solution that would mitigate the reason, he rejected it. That implies that there's far more to it than the reason given.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#354

Post by zenethian »

mam3 wrote: post #340
ww520 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He understands it perfectly. That's why he asked nicely at first. Nixos just "request denied" him after rounds of requests and discussion. With that he's roiled up to change the license to exclude Nixos. He just doesn't want the extra work to support another distro which would include an outdated version of his package.

It's not because he asks nicely that people have to agree or accept. This is literally the nice guy meme. If you make a license FOSS then people are free to do what they want. Just don't make it FOSS if you don't want.

If you look at his bio on github, it's the epitome of the nice-guy meme.

"Slightly assholic at first sight Actually a nice guy that just likes to get stuff done."

If you have to warn people that you're an asshole and then try to convince people that you're actually a nice guy, then you're probably not a nice guy.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#355

Post by reinaldons »

mirthflat83 wrote: post #85
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

Just because you are legally allowed to do so doesn’t mean that you should. Hopefully you have a similar stance towards Amazon’s behavior in the OSS community.

Except the part you are including a company to "prove" your point when NixOS is a FOSS project and they give their part back to the community.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#356

Post by reinaldons »

Spivak wrote: post #179
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

I think there’s some emotional nuance here. After a certain point he basically said all of his technical justification and the request does boil down to “because I said so and I’m the author.” The Nix maintainers explicitly do not want to respect the author’s wishes (which is fine) but that makes the whole thing turn adversarial because “okay we won’t include it” wasn’t even something the maintainers considered for e…

The only solution Franck gave is to not re-package for any emotional reason he had. The Nix developers gave their reasons why they need to re-package. Franck just ignored everything and gave no reasons to justify his request.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#357

Post by pas »

Arnavion wrote: post #323
xyzzyz wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should always do a simple diff at minimum to see what changed. That's just part of being a responsible open source user. Nobody does this, as this is completely unreasonable thing to expect.

The open source user they're referring to is the package creator, not the package installer. The package creator takes responsibility for the software they package. I sure hope they check the diff. I certainly do for the packages I maintain.

But is that an audit? How much does that worth against a determined and skilled adversary? I mean if they quickly do a lot of big changes they can easily drown packagers/reviewers, and then slipping something through becomes a waiting game.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#358

Post by nextlevelwizard »

domenkozar wrote: post #162

It's interesting since from https://github.com/sponsors/frenck#sponsors he pitches: > Are you enjoying my work? And want to support me in my effort helping the world to become a better place by dedicating my time & knowledge to create & innovate open source software solutions. Allowing everybody on this earth the privilege to enjoy those things for free?

Yeah the fact that the repo's readme starts with links to money begging links just makes this weirder.

Really looks to me that Mr. Nijhof doesnt quiet get what open source is about.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#359

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tzs wrote: post #132
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license can only be revoked ex nunc presumably? Do you have a reference or, more preferably, casserole to share on this point?

> Do you have a reference or, more preferably, casserole to share on this point? Are you by any chance a Firefox user and you have auto-correct enabled? I'm guessing that because of "casserole", which is what Firefox corrects to if you accidentally double the 's' in 'caselaw'. Chrome goes for "casual", and Safari goes for "caselaw".

Lol, s/casserole/caselaw was the correction I needed! Thanks.

It's a swype keyboard, I'm not always awake enough to catch the errors. Casserole is good too though! ;o)

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#360

Post by user5994461 »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #76
pfraze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shouldn’t have used the term “contract” there because I was thinking more about interpersonal obligation than legal obligation.

There is no obligation: legal, interpersonal, or otherwise. Only the license terms that the software is released under matter. Most FOSS licenses include disclaimers like: "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HO…

FYI that clause is void in civil law (most of Europe), you cannot waive away responsibility.

Additionally, the license is a contract (license don't exist as a separate category like in the US), the "[...] WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT" is particularly misplaced.

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