Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#61

Post by thekyle » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #43

bregma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe he's referring to the fact that many if not most projects hosted on github have no license conditions at all. No license means no one except the original author can use the software, and anyone who even looks at the code runs the risk of being sued for copyright infringement. RMS is not saying "make everything GPL" (or at least, not in this context). He's just saying if you're going to publish source code,…

I would say github shouldn't even allow publicly visible code without a license.

Technically, all GitHub repos have at least one license. That is the GitHub license:

> If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).

> You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies as necessary to render the Website and provide the Service.

https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-terms-of-service

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#62

Post by tannhaeuser » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #42

craigsmansion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to what you seem imply, this is not some sort of vindication for Microsoft. Anyone can invite rms to speak, and given some minor conditions, he will come. He will come and talk because he believes that everyone deserves Free Software. This is not monumental in any sort of "MS and the FSF coming closer together" sense. It was very nice of Microsoft to invite him though, but not more impressive than, say, a Un…

> Anyone can invite rms to speak, and given some minor conditions, he will come. He will come and talk because he believes that everyone deserves Free Software. Oh? Here [1] he wrote this: > I am selective about the events I participate in. If you are inviting me to speak at a larger event, please inform me now of the overall nature of the event, so I can make an informed decision about whether to participate. Mr Sta…

RMS used to publish academically when he was at MIT. I remember reading a paper about Prolog backjumping written by him which had nothing to do with software licensing.

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#63

Post by Beltiras » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

Beltiras wrote: post #38

mikekchar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure exactly what he meant by software license hygiene, but if it's what I imagine, it's a significant problem. Often people don't quite understand the licenses they choose and they get into trouble as a result. For example, there is a free software game that I follow which is licensed under the GPL. The author made a passing statement that the game is under the GPL, but none of text of the game is (it's an R…

Story sounds like data to me. Data should not be in the repo, just the means to fetch it.

What the hell are the downvotes for? Seriously?

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#64

Post by saalweachter » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

jasongill wrote: post #37

moonbug wrote: post #26

I hope they've complied with all the requirements of his rider https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/m/#!msg/myso...

His rider isn't really that bad, it's common sense stuff for someone who travels and does a lot of speaking engagements. All he really asks for at the event is some supplies to make tea and possibly 2 Pepsi's, which isn't exactly over-the-top

I don't know, man, the supplies needed to make 2 Pepsi's seem pretty intense.

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#65

Post by Beltiras » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

lkschubert8 wrote: post #44

Beltiras wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story sounds like data to me. Data should not be in the repo, just the means to fetch it.

Isn't there value in having the story version controlled as well? Separating them just sounds like needless complexity.

If you need it version controlled there are two options. Use somthing that does versioning in the database (like django-reversion f.ex.) or separate the story into it's own repo and use it as a sub-module. There are other ways, these are just the two that jump immediately to mind.

Hardcoding any strings is an antipattern.

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#66

Post by bubble_talk » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

If Microsoft hadn't embraced open source around the time Satya Nadella took over, by now they would have probably imploded and become irrelevant (I mean in the sense of how Bing is more or less irrelevant to most website owners even though it apparently makes a lot of money).

Its not as if they decided to open source Windows XP.

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#67

Post by thekyle » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #58

fetbaffe wrote: post #9

"Stallman asked that there is no video taken using JavaScript" lol now I like Stallman.

He has a point. Why would he want his "performance" to be featured on proprietary video formats or platforms? Even ignoring the proprietary part, he'd basically provide exclusive content to yt without compensation. Speaking of which, maybe he could address Github blocking indie search crawlers.

> Why would he want his "performance" to be featured on proprietary video formats or platforms?

Maybe so that he could reach a larger audience.

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#68

Post by amenod » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

ChrisSD wrote: post #40

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #33

Without sounding too sacrilegious, Dr. Stallman is the Free Software Jesus--he preaches the gospel of Free Software to the whole world and associates with "sinners" calling them to repentance. If he can bring "the truth" of Free Software to Microsoft employees and help them "see the light", why wouldn't he? He certainly looks the part of Free Software prophet when dressed as Saint Ignuicius: https://stallman.org/sain…

The thing that surprises people is not that Stallman went to Microsoft but that Microsoft invited him to talk. Back in the day Bill Gates would make signs to ward against evil if Richard "communist cancer" Stallman was anywhere near Redmond. How times have changed.

I am bit more cynical about this. Google and others have simply shown Microsoft how to make loads of money by opensourcing the project, while still keeping the upper hand on it. How to "opensource-but-not-quite-opensource" (Chrome/Chromium, Android/AOSP,...) the projects. Even Amazon didn't succeed in prying away Android from Google (Fire). So in my mind it's actually surprising that it took them so long to join the party. After all, what do they care if Linux is running as part of Windows, as long as they can sell the Windows licenses? It's not like "the year of Linux desktop" is coming anytime soon... :)

I think the real danger to these companies are less-than-free licenses (think Commons Clause) which give most of the freedoms to the user, but still allow the original creators to retain some of the rights, making it possible for them to have a business model behind it (such business model that AWS^Wbigtech can't take away so easily). And in this case RMS is doing more harm than good by preaching about "pure freedom". Of course Microsoft is on the same side as he is. "Write the code, but give it away". What's not to like?

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#69

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #28

ChrisSD wrote: post #7

An English language article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/free-software-advocate-richard... Also Pedro Paulo explained what the content of the talk was: > Mostly standard talk. Importance of free software, GPL v3, GNU vs Linux. However, he had a list of "small requests": make Github push users to better software license hygiene, make hardware manufacturers to publish their hardware specs, make it easier to workaroun…

dang / sctb could you please change the link to the English one? Thanks.

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week

#70

Post by belorn » Fri, Sep 06, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

ChrisSD wrote: post #52

phkahler wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you statically like that MIT licensed code to GPL licensed code, you have a GPL licences executable. If the source is provided, I think you're in compliance with the GPL. IANAL and that is a very interesting situation. That type of thing is why I think people need to choose one of: GPL, LGPL, MIT, BSD (isn't that essentially MIT?). I dont see the point in other "open source" licenses, they primarily create compa…

According to Stallman, MIT is compatible with GPL but the reverse isn't true. You can freely use MIT code (including linking) in a GPL project so long as the source is available. In Rust most code is dual licensed as MIT or Apache 2. You can pick which one to use although IIRC Apache 2 is considered the "primary license" because it provides protections from patent trolls and an explicit contribution licensing clause.…

> According to Stallman, MIT is compatible with GPL but the reverse isn't true

What are you talking about? Let say we have code A licensed as MIT and code B licensed GPL.

You can combine A with B and distribute it. You can combine B with A and distribute it. AB or BA is both a legal combination that a distributor can do. In both cases the distributor need to follow the condition of both MIT and GPL. You can not distribute AB and only follow GPL, or combine BA and only follow MIT.

There is two ways to look at copyright licenses. The slightly incorrect but slightly easier way is to see them as a contract. In order to distribute you need to follow the conditions. If you have two contracts then you have two sets of conditions. Three contracts and three sets of conditions.

The second way, which lawyers prefer as the more "true" perspective, is to see a copyright license as a list of permissions. Copyright law dictate that as a distributor you have no rights, so the license is the specific conditions in order to gain permission. It is like a airplane ticket where in order to travel you got to follow the rules and conditions or the airline. Countries can also have conditions and rules like visas, passports and enter/exiting laws. Thus in order to have permission to travel between countries you need to follow both sets of rules and conditions.

Incompatibility occur when the rules and conditions of two or more licenses demand something impossible, like the case where one condition require an action and the other forbid said action. Both conditions can not be met at the same time and thus the licenses are incompatible.