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I've Just Liberated My Modules

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Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#431

Post by mdpopescu »

indiv0 wrote: post #397
patio11 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So what you're saying is, your computers cannot possibly not continue damaging the plaintiff's interests." "That's correct." "You're being honest with me." "Yes, your Honor." "Will the computers continue harming the plaintiff's interests if shut off?" "... That would be dreadfully inconvenient, your Honor." "Do you have a more convenient solution?" "No, your Honor." "You are hereby ordered to turn off your computers…

How about a blockchain-based NPM? Can't take all the computers down. Legal, shmegal.

Or something like http://ipfs.io/

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#432

Post by cyphar »

wolfgke wrote: post #236
steveklabnik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is mostly that often, when it comes to law, lay-people talk about what they _wish_ the law was, rather than what the law actually is. And yeah, lawyers can be wrong too. But sometimes, things that seem common-sense aren't actually legally correct, and this is one of those cases. It does feel silly that a messaging company can threaten to sue over an unrelated software package, but that's just part of how int…

> My point is mostly that often, when it comes to law, lay-people talk about what they _wish_ the law was, rather than what the law actually is. That is why the law should be formalized such that correctness proofs for argumentations can be given and in doubt even be checked independently by a computer. Exactly because of the possibility of different opinions and wishes, coming up with such a high standard should be…

There are a near-infinite set of complexities in legal cases. Trying to create a formalism for such laws would require solving the entire field of ethics to decide at which point something might be considered "reasonable doubt".

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#433

Post by marshray »

slgeorge wrote: post #390
gpm wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not necessarily true if Kik were planning to open up some kind of API. Surely opening up a new API doesn't give them retroactive rights to the name in that space.

It doesn't have anything to do with the API. Kik (the company) registered the name and have rights to the name. Technically, Kik (the company) registered their trademark in the class "Computer Software" [0]. That means that no-one else can use the word Kik (and the logo) for this class of activity. The key issue is when the registration happened. Since they've been going since 2009, and Kik (the software project) onl…

> Everyone knows the example of Spam.

Please show an example of someone other than Hormel Foods Corporation marketing a meat product using any derivative of the name 'Spam' and getting away with it.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#434

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Allan_Smithee wrote: post #429
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty interesting. I wonder if it's within npm's legal right to distribute someone else's IP in such a way that they do not desire. Granted the license is WTFPL but does that include taking over the IP itself?

Uh... which part of "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO" is actually unclear here? Is there a word or phrase that you're not grasping? "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO" clearly includes not only taking over the IP but also RE-LICENSING IT under whatever terms you like. That's kind of what "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO". Do. What ever the fuck. You want to. How is this unclear? I'm kind of baffled.

Licensing doesn't really have anything to do with copyright / trademark / IP in general. It just grants you the ability to use something in the way specified.

I'm not aware of case law where a license has been able to move the original IP from one party to another; I've only heard of that happening through standard legal documents.

But I also pointed out that I wasn't sure how it would shake out anyway and was seeking feedback.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#435

Post by cyphar »

jwiley wrote: post #123

I think that unfortunately this was a foregone conclusion. Copyright law, like most other laws in our society, favor corporate interests. I support his stand on principal, however. Azer is a talented developer and has an impressive life story, and has certainly contributed more to society than a social network well know for invading children's privacy. https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-owe-my-career-to-an-iraqi-imm... h…

Copyright law is not at all related to this. It was a trademark dispute. You might've fallen into the trap of grouping several unrelated laws into "Intellectual Property", a misnomer which confuses confusion when discussing such laws.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#436

Post by cyphar »

overgard wrote: post #240
wyuenho wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one wholeheartedly support him. The more collateral damage he causes, the more people are awareness he raises. While the solution to his problem is unclear at this point, it'll at least get us talking, and find out what all of the stakeholders can do better next time, and we as a community to prevent this from ever happening again. I entirely supports his actions.

"awareness". Awareness of what? His trademark infringement? Imagine this from the perspective of a hypothetical user. He's cranky and on a tight deadline, and suddenly his project is broken because some dumb dependency three layers away that he's never even heard of broke because some guy decided to throw a tantrum, and now his software is broken and he has to emergency rewrite part of it. All because this guy didn't…

> "awareness". Awareness of what? His trademark infringement?

Alleged trademark infringement. Since his project was unrelated to Kik's business, it is questionable whether it was actually trademark infringement or over-zealous lawyers.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#437

Post by domoritz »

spinlock wrote: post #290
callmevlad wrote: post #43

The fact that this is possible with NPM seems really dangerous. The author unpublished (erm, "liberated") over 250 NPM modules, making those global names (e.g. "map", "alert", "iframe", "subscription", etc) available for anyone to register and replace with any code they wish. Since these libs are now baked into various package.json configuration files (some with 10s of thousands of installs per month, "left-pad" with…

You can use github and get namespacing under the author. IMO, this could end npmjs of they don't fix the issue.

And always use head? I think we still need versioning (potentially fuzzy). Also, isn't that what bower does/did?

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#438

Post by blackskad »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #420
callmevlad wrote: post #43

The fact that this is possible with NPM seems really dangerous. The author unpublished (erm, "liberated") over 250 NPM modules, making those global names (e.g. "map", "alert", "iframe", "subscription", etc) available for anyone to register and replace with any code they wish. Since these libs are now baked into various package.json configuration files (some with 10s of thousands of installs per month, "left-pad" with…

I'm left thinking of how Go does it, whereby repositories are downloaded via git or whatever version control software's URL. Making it impossible for the admins of "NPM" to take down a package. Add in IPFS and you've got one heck of a "package manager" I guess Go's approach is not really a "package manager" but nobody can truly stop you from downloading from a git repository, and if they do, you can go to the forks e…

The vendor experiment provides a nice solution to that problem. Check in the vendor directory into your own repository and you always have the required source code available, even after the original author removes his repository on github.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#439

Post by esailija »

karmelapple wrote: post #406
sorenjan wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used npm, but doesn't it take at least as long to find, evaluate, and install a package like left-pad as it would to just write the function yourself when you find you need it?

Personally, no, but even if it did, what if a bug is found in the future? The community fixes the bug, not necessarily you!

The possibility of having bugs in code you don't control (that usually has a clause for no warranties) is an argument for implementing it yourself, not against it. Don't forget how hard it is to get a maintainer even agree on whether something is 1. a bug 2. that needs to be fixed.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#440

Post by jhall1468 »

overgard wrote: post #408
nordsieck wrote: post #157

One interesting thing to me, is that it is pretty clear that the kik lawyers pretty dramatically over enforced their trademark. For those who don't know, the purpose of trademarks is to prevent customer confusion; essentially we don't want people to be able to sell cheap knock-offs of someone else's thing without the general public being able to easily distinguish between them. In practical terms, trademarks are "sco…

The Apple thing doesn't work though, for a specific reason: it's a very common word/name. Smith is a very common surname. If one person starts the Smith Automobile Company and another person starts the Smith Farm, obviously there's no issue there. That's because none of us invented "Smith", it's understood to be a common name, etc. On the other hand, if I start "The Google Paper Company", I'm pretty damn sure I would…

That is not how trademarks work. Feel free to start the Google Paper Co. Uniqueness is not a merit for trademark infringement. To infringe you have to be a competitor.
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