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“I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
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Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Someone expressed their concern that fragments of GPL code would end up in projects with non-GPL licenses and called it open source laundering. They were also concerned about the interpretation of derivative work. Could copilot's output be considered a derivative work? https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410037309848752128?lang=en 2. Someone posted how copilot reproduced the famous fast inverse square root function…
> open source laundering Microsoft already launders open source code by just hiring people in China and Romania to rewrite it. Copilot is their engineering culture distilled. However most big companies do this.
Rewriting is totally ok. In every possible context.
Because the opposite (blocking rewriting by some legal mechanism) would mean a past employer could slap a court order stopping a programmer from working ever again in any other company due to IP infringement since he could 'just copy his previous work and hence company ip'.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#63I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
Why does the GPL license make it "useless for any commercial projects whatsoever"? Many commercial projects use GPL software.
The only thing you have to do is provide sources under the same license if you release binaries. If you're not even willing to do that I understand some people rather have you not use their software.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#64I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
Why GPL makes them useless?
In my view, if your business requires leeching on unpaid work without contributing back I am happy about my code being useless for you.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#65I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
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Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The relevant implication in it hypothetically having been BSD is that he would have convinced his partners, not that its usage would have made the project never happen.
i don’t see that. i see carmac reminiscing as, wouldn’t it have been nice if this had happened rather than that, while clearly acknowledging that his business partners would not have gone along with ‘that’. the implication I draw, having no more info than these tweets, is that, after some discussion, JC and Id compromised on using the GPL to license the DOOM source, versus not releasing the DOOM source. The GPL allow…
You're correctly inferring what JC is saying, but missing the point the other poster made; which was to imagine that history had gone differently, BSD was approved as the license, the source code was still publicly available, and how that would have benefited (or been detriment) to the widespread usage of the source code.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Copilot in its current form auto-inject copyright notices for all BSD licensed code from which output is derived? As far as I know, it does not. This means that authors of BSD licensed code have their rights violated to the same degree as those of GPL licensed code.
Yes, technically they do. But if the problem is discovered, it is very easy to comply with the BSD terms by adding proper attribution. With GPLed code it is much more difficult.
> But if the problem is discovered...
The default shouldn't be "you can violate people's licenses until you notice or get caught". Sure, in practice it probably won't cause anyone legal trouble: it would be really hard for, say, the author of some BSD-licensed code to prove that a user of Copilot actually caused them monetary damages by not providing attribution.
But this isn't really a world I want to live in; we shouldn't treat other people's work with such entitlement. Copilot should be able to trace the provenance of a suggestion it makes, and notify the author of their licensing obligations.
If that's not possible, then Copilot should not exist.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#68This part of Carmacks tweets really touches home, > I touched on that recently with the comment about open source culture and game dev; One thing I learned the hard way is how game dev is all about IP, creating business oppportunities, publishing deals, getting the game into the hands of as many kids as possible (while being able to keep paying for the mortgage), whatever APIs get used is a very tiny detail of the wh…
I have made a similar observation in the past. Game development is such a extremely high competitive area that any legal method to save time and use someone else code will be used unless it breaks the core business model. Delaying a release of a game by a few months because developers are re-implementing a xlm parser is not an option. If I remember right, Starcraft 2 by Blizzard uses LGPLv3 code, and the software credit list is very long. I can imagine the cost and delays if they had arbitrary chosen to restrict themselves to specific licenses.
Focus on what is the core part of a company. For most game companies that seems to be about developing multiple games at the same time, finding one that is good enough to develop to a finished product, while surviving on the last released game.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#69I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
The GNU Foundation--and the GPL--put one thing at its most important focus: that "users"--the people who are actually using the software and entrusting it with their data or their lives--have guaranteed freedoms. People--such as myself--who use the GPL believe that these freedoms are extremely important: that "users" should be able to get access to the source code for programs and be able to modify them (...and before anyone whines "but users don't know how to modify programs", users know how to hire people to modify programs... most people also don't know how to do woodworking or autowork and yet people routinely get their cabinets done or their cars tricked out: a healthy aftermarket for software exists, and in fact if you look at stuff like jailbreaks for phones, advertising "we jailbreak your phone here" was a good way for such stores to make money).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw
If you believe that users should have such freedom, then letting someone who isn't a "user"--and I think this is where people get so stuck on forums like this, as most of the people here are developers and they want everything to be maximally biased in their favor--be able to modify your software and then not grant the freedoms we GPL-folk care about to actual "users" is unacceptable: it simply isn't why we are writing open source software, as the open source part is supposed to be able to benefit "users". So it frankly shouldn't be at all confusing why the GPL has the properties it does: if you think my open source code is so beneficial to your project that you want to use it in your project, you are more than welcome to do so!!! Only... you have to be willing to respect the freedom / rights of "users" that is codified in the license.
Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”
#70I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
You will see my opinions are mostly commercial, however it was GPL and its religious movement (against the man, 70's style) that gave us Linux and GCC.
Most likely Windows and UNIX clones would have kept taking their pieces out of BSD, after the 386BSD lawsuit was settled without any other alternatives to reach out for.
You can see this from how much Playstation OS gets upstreamed into FreeBSD.