Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor • Hacker News Board

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#61

Post by mentat » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 7:24 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #58

tomp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rewrite Harry Potter in a different script, language, or some plot twists, it's still "derived work".

Say I wrote a story about a young orphan boy who meets a mysterious stranger that reveals to him that he has magical powers and must now go defeat a villain with shocking connections to his parents, what would you say? And if I called that story Star Wars?

Which in turn is derived (on purpose) from the various sources as composed together by Joseph Campbell in "Hero with a Thousand Faces". Narrative is even more absurd to call duplicate than a totally new implementation in a different computer language.

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#62

Post by mentat » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 7:25 PM UTC

gamache wrote: post #14

slantedview wrote: post #5

"Inspeqtor which is hosted at GitHub, is far from a “clean-room” implementation. This is basically a rewrite of Monit in Go" I don't understand this. How is a re-write a license violation?

The Monit licence (Affero GPL) requires that the copyright notice be retained in derivative works, so the question is whether a from-scratch implementation of a tool heavily influenced by Monit, is itself a derivative work of Monit.

You can't make that claim without then undermining the licenses of many / most GNU software implementations, even say GCC.

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#63

Post by wtallis » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 7:26 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #45

jacquesm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this is where patents come into play. No, it's a copyright issue. Patents have nothing to do with it.

Unless any method or procedure (parsing of natural language configuration files or something) is patented.

Even if that were the case, it's still beyond the scope of the allegations that can be made in a DMCA takedown notice. If they were asserting any patent rights, that would have to be through a regular cease & desist letter. It is possible though unlikely that patents could come into play here, but they clearly haven't yet.

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#64

Post by mentat » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 7:27 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #19

slantedview wrote: post #5

"Inspeqtor which is hosted at GitHub, is far from a “clean-room” implementation. This is basically a rewrite of Monit in Go" I don't understand this. How is a re-write a license violation?

It's a copyright violation if it isn't cleanroom, that means you don't get to re-license it under different terms. It will count as a derivative work under copyright law.

I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense. If you merely read the code for another open source implementation before implemented something totally different that shares a separate publicly documented configuration language it's derivative. I'd be appalled at a judgment that upheld that view.

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#65

Post by teleclimber » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 7:39 PM UTC

anonanon101 wrote: post #46

There are too many similarities between the code that suggest the source for Monit was indeed looked at, contrary to what Mike has stated on Twitter. For instance some of the file names are the same, ie, Inspector's events.go and Monit's Event.c Further, the code is very similar in places. Mind you it's not a direct copy, but this can't be coincidence. Monit: https://bitbucket.org/tildeslash/monit/src/1686ffd4baa16b1…

These examples look nothing alike. At least not in the sense that one is copied from the other. Any program that has to check on the existence of processes might potentially have code that looks similar to that.

> For instance some of the file names are the same, ie, Inspector's events.go and Monit's Event.c

You can't be serious. "Events", as a filename is an indication of plagiarism? An "event" is a basic concept of programming! That's like if a teacher accused students of copying because they both handed in a file called "homework.doc".

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#66

Post by realusername » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 7:57 PM UTC

anonanon101 wrote: post #46

There are too many similarities between the code that suggest the source for Monit was indeed looked at, contrary to what Mike has stated on Twitter. For instance some of the file names are the same, ie, Inspector's events.go and Monit's Event.c Further, the code is very similar in places. Mind you it's not a direct copy, but this can't be coincidence. Monit: https://bitbucket.org/tildeslash/monit/src/1686ffd4baa16b1…

I see absolutely nothing interesting here, it's just an error management with an error list. I'm pretty sure that I have similar handlers in my own code too.

You can even find this pattern in strerror.c which is handeling errno.h [1]. this is a really old concept.

[1] http://opensource.apple.com/source/gcc/gcc-926/libiberty/str...

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#67

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 8:10 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #55

[deleted] wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> " Licences do not apply to copyright, " I'm going to stop you there and suggest that you go do some reading. Your understanding of the legal terminology is too woefully wrong for you to participate in a productive discussion of the issue. You are making sensationalist statements ("sued for simply looking at open source code") that are either extremely misguided or disingenuous. If you want to participate sincerely,…

[deleted]

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#68

Post by jxf » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 8:12 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #44

jxf wrote: post #36

The timing of this seems odd to me. Why now, of all times? Is Inspeqtor getting too big or stealing too many Monit customers? It's also a little strange that the tweet Monit references as being demonstrative of intent happened six months ago [0]. If that was really the issue, shouldn't they have issued the DMCA takedown then, instead of waiting so long? I think we have about 24 hours before the DMCA's version of the…

They saw it on HackerNews about a week ago, and it took this long for their lawyers to research, make a case, and do the paperwork. Even if you become aware of something today, you can always use historical tweets as evidence.

Ah, I didn't realize it'd recently surfaced on HN. That makes sense, then.

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#69

Post by regularfry » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 8:19 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #43

zellyn wrote: post #42

At first glance, the tweet [0] was sent a while ago, expressing desire for a port, with the idea of $$$$ as an incentive/joke. It appears that the author later decided to implement it themself. I hardly think that makes his intent to commercialize it clear. [0] https://twitter.com/mperham/status/452160352940064768

He was already trying to sell it, starting at $25/mo. http://contribsys.com/inspeqtor/

Didn't the tweet predate the selling by a good few months?

Re: Monit's DMCA takedown notice for Inspeqtor

#70

Post by Rizz » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 9:40 PM UTC

olefoo wrote: post #53

pdq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their claim is only that Inspeqtor needs to keep the previous license. We will withdraw this takedown notice if and only if [private] and Inspeqtor adhere to the GNU Affero General Public License which Monit is licensed under. This means; Our copyright notice is retained in the derivate work, and ALL the derivate work is licensed and provided to users as “open source” under the AGPL. This include the so called pro fe…

"Translating" a program from one language to another is not a straightforward mechanical process. In US copyright law and most of the countries that adhere to the Berne Convention there is a concept of a derived work. What the legal standard is varies, usually a translation of a work of literature would qualify, but whether a "translation" of a work of software would be considered a derived work is an open question t…

A derived work is still protected by the original copyright. Because there is a substantial creative contribution the derived work is also copyrighted in its own right, but that doesn't diminish the original copyright.

Translating a book into a foreign language is also a creative process, but the author of the original still has the right to say whether such a translation can be distributed and would expect a royalty.