6 ms·

From the lawyers I've spoken to about this, Linus's view on the GPL and the chosen enforcement strategy has long been known to be nonsense. But nothing will cha

From the lawyers I've spoken to about this, Linus's view on the GPL and the chosen enforcement strategy has long been known to be nonsense. But nothing will change as long as the kernel developers are intentionally burying their head in the sand and acting like they know better than the legal system.

mistrial9 4y ago
> has long been known to be nonsense could any statement be less substantiated than pure FUD like that?
onphonenow 4y ago
I'm just curious here. If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". Especially if my approach has single handedly created the largest body of copyleft / collaborative / open source software out there with massive amounts of actual collaboration. The irony is so strong here. Basically jerks, who can't get along with others (including each other, witness the battles between SFC and SFLC etc etc) with little value creation themselves want to force their view on others, even though folks have already voted with their feet. By all means create the Affero GPLv3. Try to get folks to write software for it. That's fine. But don't pretend to be on some moral high ground speaking for developers / creators who wrote the code. Let them speak for themselves. And don't go back and having lost the effort to get Affero GPLv3 or whatever adopted close the various SAAS and Tivo loopholes, go back and say some old license has these terms.
- throwaway82652 4y ago
  >If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". Are you willing to represent yourself in court? If the answer is no, then that's an admission you are stupider than a lawyer when it comes to legal matters. Nothing wrong with it, I have no problem admitting it myself. Let the programmers handle the programming and let the lawyers handle the law.
  - onphonenow 4y ago
    I'd skip the name calling. You fail to understand how copyright works. If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it. And yes, I'd be happy to represent myself if SFC came along and told me I could or couldn't do something with the code I wrote because that makes no sense. I can choose a license, I can dual license, I can re-license future releases and I can stop providing updates under any of those licenses. So sure, if you and the SFC want to go after me for my code, go for it. There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      > If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it. Not necessarily. For example, work for hire, or copyright being assigned to the employer. Or maybe the work itself isn't copyrightable in the first place. There's even a fun provision where US government work doesn't have any copyright in the first place! You might also have transferred the copyright of your work after you created it in a way which doesn't give you any retained rights.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      in the USA there is strong copyright for the author of the work in question. Work-for-hire is well understood in Chapter 1 of any book on that topic. Secondly, a court appearance is not required to be an author and therefore copyright holder. Suggestions that "if you are not able to make a court appearance then XYZ and etc" .. is fallacious to start with, condescending and sounds a lot like an attorney arrogance. NOLO Press, read my lips
    - throwaway82652 4y ago
      There's no name calling, "stupid" is the exact word you used. I'm stupider than a lawyer when it comes to all the details of contract law, because I didn't study it as much as they do. If you aren't a lawyer, then you probably are too. Again, nothing wrong with admitting it. You and I can't know everything. It's actually arrogant and insulting to claim that you know more than a skilled lawyer or attorney just because you wrote some code, I would suggest not doing that. >There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False. I'm sorry but this makes no sense, it's weird how often I see this sentiment in open source. If you hired a lawyer to represent you and give you legal advice and defend you and court (which is multiple full time jobs) then you're paying them to do a job for you. You're not giving any of your rights away. You don't have to choose to hire SF Conservancy, you can hire another firm.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". The first part of the statement--if you want to license your code a certain way--your lawyer should be to work with you to find a way to legally do that. Unless you want something patently absurd like "I want a way to let me murder any idiots who use my code without any consequences whatsoever." It's the parenthetical that's problematic: you can't control how the law will be interpreted, and if you've got an incorrect interpretation of the law, you'll be laughed out of the courtroom. See, for example, any sovereign citizen case.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    absolutely disagree with this paternalistic interpretation.. coders are typically literate. Your example claims some exaggerated illiterate premise and then uses that to say "talk to a lawyer instead" .. no comment beyond that since we obviously have different concepts of what rights of an author are...
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      If you want some examples of legal consequences you might not otherwise anticipate: * Estoppel. Not going after someone when you are made aware of their violations may preclude you from ever being able to go after them. * Severability. If one clause of your contract is unenforceable, the entire contract may become unenforceable unless you have a clause saying otherwise. (And even then, sometimes that won't apply!). Taking the audience of HN as a reasonable sample of competent coders, I have seen more than a few commenters give very confident and very incorrect interpretations of the law. I am not so presumptuous to think that I am not in that class, although I do hope to do so more rarely than the average commenter. And for what it's worth, I don't believe that the exaggerated premise I used was one that requires a lawyer to understand; it was merely an example that was so outrageous it would not be unreasonable for a lawyer to tell you that it was impossible for you to do what you want to do. An example that is not so outrageous is if you want to release something into the public domain--for there are jurisdictions where giving up all of your rights as an author is impossible.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". The exact same authority developers have when they tell their clients that they cannot run a 1,000,000 person site off the phone they forget to charge sometimes. Or even a designer telling a client their color scheme is poor (it clashes, isn't color-blind friendly, and renders poorly on anything smaller than a tablet)! It's a technical matter and they are paid SMEs. They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense. Because he's not a lawyer.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense. So if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals? Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals, but I doubt this is what Linus really wants.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals? No. But if they went around sending demand letters that were complied with (because they came from a reputable law firm) by getting the code open sourced it would. I'm not saying these lawyers should be listened to. I'm saying some lawyers should. And excluding all lawyers is as dumb as trying to get funded for your FaceBook clone saying you only need the money to "hire a programmer" would be. > Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals This is nonsense. I might be wrong but I can certainly speak to his goals. We can even discuss what we think they are.
- seoaeu 4y ago
  > If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". This is like saying “If I want to write my code a certain way, what right do compiler authors and language designers have to tell me code contains ‘syntax errors’ and ‘obvious bugs’”. On some level you can write whatever code you want. But if you want it to work the way you intend, there’s some rules that have to be followed
  - Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
    > If I want to write my code a certain way, what right do compiler authors and language designers have to tell me code contains ‘syntax errors’ and ‘obvious bugs’ That's not a reasonable comparison. 1. Licenses are fundamentally open to interpretation, programming languages have specifications. Yes, the specifications and compiler aren't perfect, however, code is designed to be specific. Legal agreements on the other hands are very intentionally the opposite. Legal agreements consciously avoid being overly specific in order to be broad and all encompassing. Legal agreements fundamentally have access to (and are evaluated with respect to) the concepts of "fair" and "reasonable"; which very intentionally have no strict definition. You need to argue your case. 2. More importantly, licenses are contracts. They're a civil matter (not criminal). Meaning the copyright holder can chose whether or not they want to enforce their license. That's a fundamental right of being a copyright holder. If you consciously don't enforce, you may lose the right to enforce (at least fully), but that is the license holder's call.
    - seoaeu 4y ago
      There's lots of ways that licenses can be objectively wrong. They can contain content that renders them invalid, or wording that legally means something different from what the author intended. A lawyer has the "right" to point out such flaws, and refusing to consult a lawyer won't make those flaws go away. You are of course right about copyright holders being able to chose whether to enforce their license (at least if they were smart enough to use a license that will actually stand up in court!)
  - onphonenow 4y ago

mistrial9 4y ago

> has long been known to be nonsense could any statement be less substantiated than pure FUD like that?

onphonenow 4y ago

I'm just curious here. If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". Especially if my approach has single handedly created the largest body of copyleft / collaborative / open source software out there with massive amounts of actual collaboration. The irony is so strong here. Basically jerks, who can't get along with others (including each other, witness the battles between SFC and SFLC etc etc) with little value creation themselves want to force their view on others, even though folks have already voted with their feet. By all means create the Affero GPLv3. Try to get folks to write software for it. That's fine. But don't pretend to be on some moral high ground speaking for developers / creators who wrote the code. Let them speak for themselves. And don't go back and having lost the effort to get Affero GPLv3 or whatever adopted close the various SAAS and Tivo loopholes, go back and say some old license has these terms.

throwaway82652 4y ago
>If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". Are you willing to represent yourself in court? If the answer is no, then that's an admission you are stupider than a lawyer when it comes to legal matters. Nothing wrong with it, I have no problem admitting it myself. Let the programmers handle the programming and let the lawyers handle the law.
- onphonenow 4y ago
  I'd skip the name calling. You fail to understand how copyright works. If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it. And yes, I'd be happy to represent myself if SFC came along and told me I could or couldn't do something with the code I wrote because that makes no sense. I can choose a license, I can dual license, I can re-license future releases and I can stop providing updates under any of those licenses. So sure, if you and the SFC want to go after me for my code, go for it. There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    > If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it. Not necessarily. For example, work for hire, or copyright being assigned to the employer. Or maybe the work itself isn't copyrightable in the first place. There's even a fun provision where US government work doesn't have any copyright in the first place! You might also have transferred the copyright of your work after you created it in a way which doesn't give you any retained rights.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    in the USA there is strong copyright for the author of the work in question. Work-for-hire is well understood in Chapter 1 of any book on that topic. Secondly, a court appearance is not required to be an author and therefore copyright holder. Suggestions that "if you are not able to make a court appearance then XYZ and etc" .. is fallacious to start with, condescending and sounds a lot like an attorney arrogance. NOLO Press, read my lips
  - throwaway82652 4y ago
    There's no name calling, "stupid" is the exact word you used. I'm stupider than a lawyer when it comes to all the details of contract law, because I didn't study it as much as they do. If you aren't a lawyer, then you probably are too. Again, nothing wrong with admitting it. You and I can't know everything. It's actually arrogant and insulting to claim that you know more than a skilled lawyer or attorney just because you wrote some code, I would suggest not doing that. >There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False. I'm sorry but this makes no sense, it's weird how often I see this sentiment in open source. If you hired a lawyer to represent you and give you legal advice and defend you and court (which is multiple full time jobs) then you're paying them to do a job for you. You're not giving any of your rights away. You don't have to choose to hire SF Conservancy, you can hire another firm.
jcranmer 4y ago
> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". The first part of the statement--if you want to license your code a certain way--your lawyer should be to work with you to find a way to legally do that. Unless you want something patently absurd like "I want a way to let me murder any idiots who use my code without any consequences whatsoever." It's the parenthetical that's problematic: you can't control how the law will be interpreted, and if you've got an incorrect interpretation of the law, you'll be laughed out of the courtroom. See, for example, any sovereign citizen case.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  absolutely disagree with this paternalistic interpretation.. coders are typically literate. Your example claims some exaggerated illiterate premise and then uses that to say "talk to a lawyer instead" .. no comment beyond that since we obviously have different concepts of what rights of an author are...
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    If you want some examples of legal consequences you might not otherwise anticipate: * Estoppel. Not going after someone when you are made aware of their violations may preclude you from ever being able to go after them. * Severability. If one clause of your contract is unenforceable, the entire contract may become unenforceable unless you have a clause saying otherwise. (And even then, sometimes that won't apply!). Taking the audience of HN as a reasonable sample of competent coders, I have seen more than a few commenters give very confident and very incorrect interpretations of the law. I am not so presumptuous to think that I am not in that class, although I do hope to do so more rarely than the average commenter. And for what it's worth, I don't believe that the exaggerated premise I used was one that requires a lawyer to understand; it was merely an example that was so outrageous it would not be unreasonable for a lawyer to tell you that it was impossible for you to do what you want to do. An example that is not so outrageous is if you want to release something into the public domain--for there are jurisdictions where giving up all of your rights as an author is impossible.
HWR_14 4y ago
> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". The exact same authority developers have when they tell their clients that they cannot run a 1,000,000 person site off the phone they forget to charge sometimes. Or even a designer telling a client their color scheme is poor (it clashes, isn't color-blind friendly, and renders poorly on anything smaller than a tablet)! It's a technical matter and they are paid SMEs. They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense. Because he's not a lawyer.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense. So if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals? Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals, but I doubt this is what Linus really wants.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    > if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals? No. But if they went around sending demand letters that were complied with (because they came from a reputable law firm) by getting the code open sourced it would. I'm not saying these lawyers should be listened to. I'm saying some lawyers should. And excluding all lawyers is as dumb as trying to get funded for your FaceBook clone saying you only need the money to "hire a programmer" would be. > Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals This is nonsense. I might be wrong but I can certainly speak to his goals. We can even discuss what we think they are.
seoaeu 4y ago
> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". This is like saying “If I want to write my code a certain way, what right do compiler authors and language designers have to tell me code contains ‘syntax errors’ and ‘obvious bugs’”. On some level you can write whatever code you want. But if you want it to work the way you intend, there’s some rules that have to be followed
- Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
  > If I want to write my code a certain way, what right do compiler authors and language designers have to tell me code contains ‘syntax errors’ and ‘obvious bugs’ That's not a reasonable comparison. 1. Licenses are fundamentally open to interpretation, programming languages have specifications. Yes, the specifications and compiler aren't perfect, however, code is designed to be specific. Legal agreements on the other hands are very intentionally the opposite. Legal agreements consciously avoid being overly specific in order to be broad and all encompassing. Legal agreements fundamentally have access to (and are evaluated with respect to) the concepts of "fair" and "reasonable"; which very intentionally have no strict definition. You need to argue your case. 2. More importantly, licenses are contracts. They're a civil matter (not criminal). Meaning the copyright holder can chose whether or not they want to enforce their license. That's a fundamental right of being a copyright holder. If you consciously don't enforce, you may lose the right to enforce (at least fully), but that is the license holder's call.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    There's lots of ways that licenses can be objectively wrong. They can contain content that renders them invalid, or wording that legally means something different from what the author intended. A lawyer has the "right" to point out such flaws, and refusing to consult a lawyer won't make those flaws go away. You are of course right about copyright holders being able to chose whether to enforce their license (at least if they were smart enough to use a license that will actually stand up in court!)
- onphonenow 4y ago