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LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

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Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#61

Post by jrmg »

It seems obvious that this ‘may’ is the ‘may’ used in the sense of granting permission: “you may go to the restroom”, “you may begin eating”, “you may ask questions now”, “you may kiss the bride” etc.

All these are clear. The wedding officiant isn’t saying “You might have permission to kiss the bride! Just try it and we’ll find out! Ha ha!”

To interpret this as saying that you might be licensed is just as nonsensical as that in this context. It’s in a file named “LICENSE.txt” explicitly meant to describe the license terms.

Would ‘are’ be better? I’d say yes, but it’s silly to argue that this isn’t proper English for granting permission.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#62

Post by albedoa »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #56
paxys wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the license has been unclear for 8 years and the company hasn't bothered to get a lawyer to fix it then the "I'm just an engineer and don't know about this stuff" excuse doesn't apply. It's obvious that they are deliberately keeping the license vague and confusing to scare users into paying for a commercial edition while also calling their product "open source" for marketing purposes.

As I said, nobody should touch unclear license. Just forget the company and software, there is no reason to bitch about it. 7 years is too long to fix.

[flagged]

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#63

Post by compass_copium »

fhdkweig wrote: post #51
throwaway150 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you didn't mention the license, it was in public domain. I don't think this has ever been the case. If a license is not mentioned, it is always "All rights reserved" by the authors of the project, by the Berne convention (1886).

While I don't know if license and copyright are the same thing, the film Night of the Living Dead was famously accidentally added to the public domain due to a forgotten copyright notice.

I believe that was a forgotten renewal of copyright status.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#64

Post by codeflo »

paxys wrote: post #29

I dug around for ~10 minutes and it's probably not an exaggeration to say that Mattermost might have the most confusing licensing of any software product in existence. From the license page on their repo ( https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE... ): > 1. You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE So just the compiled ve…

"We promise that we will not enforce" is perhaps a funny way not to grant a license, but making it sound like they do. This seems almost purposefully designed to look open-source to laypeople, while being carefully written in a way that ensures it will be vetoed by any corporate lawyer vetting the license.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#65

Post by whatshisface »

gowld wrote: post #57
ggm wrote: post #2

> at this time we are not entertaining any changes as such. Always wonder what leads people to write like this. What does "as such" add to the sentence? At least "at this time" is temporally conditional to the future, it has purpose. Entertaining is posh "thinking about" or "interested in" so had the merit of being one word in place of two but so is "considering" Are we not entertained?

Are you asking why the person who published code with an ambiguous license also answers questions ambiguously?

Are you asking why the person who indirectly implied a question about the meaning of an ambiguous statement would leave it to the subtext to suggest they suspected that the unclear motive of the author of an ambiguous license was to leave some room for interpretation?

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#67

Post by LamaOfRuin »

thisislife2 wrote: post #18

Is the bad publicity worth it with this kind of rug pull to "we are opensource, but not really" ? I get that an open source product can get you some free (word of mouth) and good publicity. But in general, open source is also strongly associated with "free" (as in you don't have to pay money for it). So if you do want to make money from a software product, weigh the pros and cons carefully - commercial open source pr…

I believe they generally refer to themselves as open-core.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#68

Post by jeltz »

arjie wrote: post #47
lefstathiou wrote: post #28

Someone tried to shake our company down once. They posted all this stock imagery on the web, waited for someone to use it with an ambiguously worded attribution policy, then have a third party chase you down and demand $100k but will settle for $5k. It turns out we did attribute the right way (in our terms of use) and could prove it with logs of when we added the language and when it was removed after we removed the…

Oh that's a classic trick. It's been going on for decades. One example I am particularly familiar with is that of Larry Philpot / User:Nightshooter on Wikimedia Commons. He would upload his photos there with an addendum on how he should be attributed. Any slight impression in the attribution would be followed by legal action. It was obviously a copyright troll mechanism and now all of his photos on Wikimedia Commons…

Could he ever win a case in court? At least the Swedish legal system is based a lot around common sense and good faith and such a trap would likely end up with the one who sued having to pay the legal costs for both parties.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#69

Post by eikenberry »

almosthere wrote: post #52

if there is no license, then it is public domain if they put code on a website

This is not true in the US where everything is automatically copyrighted and protected, so nothing goes directly into the public domain (even if the author wants it). Thus no license means that you have no license to use the code legally.

Re: LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant

#70

Post by Ekaros »

ilaksh wrote: post #45

This looks like either they are deliberately trying to trick people into thinking it's the MIT license, or have accidentally made the most confusing and nonsensical license ever. MIT licensed binary in a source code repo does not make any sense. This is a huge red flag.

Sounds like potentially expensive legal case if they try to enforce it. Opens it up to many arguments in many jurisdictions.
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