Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 162 posts

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

#81

Post by gowld »

moeffju wrote: post #46
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully I'm not violating copyright by taking this small chunk of their LICENSE.txt, but this appears to be the language that some want clarified: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE... ---- You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE - See MIT-COMPILED-LICENSE.md included in compiled versions for details You may be…

"Subject to the exceptions" conflicts with the "no exceptions" wording in the GPL licenses, so I don't even see how any of this constitutes a valid license

AGPL does not say "no exceptions". AGPL explicity allows exceptions:

https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE...

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

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

#82

Post by whstl »

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.

That's because the US was not part of the Berne Convention until 1989, so before that U.S. works often had protection only if certain formalities were met (like registration or notice).

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

#83

Post by ggm »

awesome_dude wrote: post #8
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?

It's good English, it has actual meaning (your thinking of "at this time" is only one interpretation, it more likely means "We're not entertaining changes of that kind/nature" )

Ah, so any changes they did entertain, would be changes, but they disclaim making changes such as these for this purpose?

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

#84

Post by arjie »

jeltz wrote: post #68
arjie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Larry Philpot actually did win a case in court. His case was first dismissed but then on appeal the Fourth Circuit granted him the win: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca4/21...

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

#85

Post by tazjin »

pixelpoet wrote: post #54
giancarlostoro wrote: post #6

I'm already shutting down my private instance of Mattermost, no thank you. I'm thinking of Zulip, at least they aren't pulling this shenanigans.

I run a Zulip server and it's pretty good. The way they organise channels is extremely convoluted unfortunately (I wish they would just use absolutely standard channels layout like every other chat, and have everyone able to see them on join!) but well, beggars can't be choosers.

People go through all this trouble to host convoluted chat systems, and all this time IRC is right there. There's modern servers like Ergo and modern clients like Halloy (or for the JavaScript addicts: Convos, The Lounge, Kiwi, ...) providing all the multi-device history sharing and emoji reactions you could need. All on top of a super simple, extremely battle tested protocol.

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

#87

Post by gpm »

moeffju wrote: post #46
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully I'm not violating copyright by taking this small chunk of their LICENSE.txt, but this appears to be the language that some want clarified: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/LICENSE... ---- You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE - See MIT-COMPILED-LICENSE.md included in compiled versions for details You may be…

"Subject to the exceptions" conflicts with the "no exceptions" wording in the GPL licenses, so I don't even see how any of this constitutes a valid license

I read the exceptions as a grant of additional rights to mattermost's copyright (but not to third parties), I don't think that conflicts.

I'm not sure that they actually granted a GPL license at all though. I could see this document being read as an advertisement that one might be for sale instead of a grant...

(Not a lawyer)

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

#88

Post by conception »

nix0n wrote: post #23

If you are looking for another self-hostable alternative to Slack, Rocket chat[0] is also worth looking at. I wasn't involved in any of the Dev Ops aspect when my former employer used them, but the search function actually worked which is better than I can say for Slack. [0] https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/blob/develop/LICEN...

Curious if anyone has worked on just expanding IRC into an internal product? That’s more or less how slack started.

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

#89

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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…

> But in general, open source is also strongly associated with "free"

In the anglophone world, yes. In many other parts of the world, the gratis/libre distinction is clear in the language used.

Post reply on HN