4 ms·

My understanding is that they used c2rust, and then told the LLM/Agents to make the code more idiomatic rust, while also using the PG test suite as a feedback m

by nz 1mo ago

My understanding is that they used c2rust, and then told the LLM/Agents to make the code more idiomatic rust, while also using the PG test suite as a feedback mechanism. This is almost certainly a derived work (and thus a fork, and should thus have the original license and copyright preserved). For example, if I compiled PG into x86-64 assembly, and then decompiled it into C (via, say, IDA), and then polished that decompiled C code into very readable C code, it is still a derived work. For some reason, people think that if you include an LLM or Agent, copyright can be ignored, and plagiarism is now no longer possible. It is similar to the crypto-folks thinking that if you use crypto, you no longer have to pay taxes, because the internet/computers make all inconvenient realities go away. Honestly, such flagrant and arrogant copyright violations make it hard for me to take the project seriously, because it seems like a desperate stunt for attention (which itself may be a solid business move, but that is besides the point). Put differently, if one were to fork pgrust, strip away the new license and copyright, and restore the original PG license and copyright (while also adding malisper+team to that copyright), they would face no legal consequences at all. In fact, they would probably be a less legal risk than the pgrust team.

malisper 1mo ago
> My understanding is that they used c2rust, and then told the LLM/Agents to make the code more idiomatic rust, while also using the PG test suite as a feedback mechanism. This is correct > and thus a fork, and should thus have the original license and copyright preserved) This is not correct. The Postgres license is permissive. We need to include a copy of the license (which we do in the NOTICE file[0]) but we CAN relicense the Postgres code however we want as long as we meet the requirements of the license. pgrust is a derived work of Postgres, but Postgres allows derived works to be under a different license. [0] https://github.com/malisper/pgrust/blob/main/NOTICE https://github.com/malisper/pgrust/blob/main/NOTICE
- nz 1mo ago
  This feels very much like a distinction between letter of the law and spirit of the law. I knew a guy who once forked a very popular browser extension (you've definitely heard of it), that was copyleft-licensed. When I asked him where the repo is, he said it was not publicly available, but that the lawyers have assured him that he is not breaking any laws because the source code is available, via the inspect-extension feature of the browser. This answer has always felt problematic, to me. In part, I feel like these legally-correct strategies and tactics tend be corrosive. In fact, this is exactly the kind of thing that drives projects like Sentry and Mongo to dump open source, and use EULAs instead. Not only is pgrust a license-based fork (which always runs the risk of splitting the community) it is also a language-based fork (which also runs the risk of splitting the community). In fact, the only silver lining here, is that you went straight for the AGPL, instead of MIT (thus preventing a _second_ license based fork).

by nz 1mo ago

malisper 1mo ago

> My understanding is that they used c2rust, and then told the LLM/Agents to make the code more idiomatic rust, while also using the PG test suite as a feedback mechanism. This is correct > and thus a fork, and should thus have the original license and copyright preserved) This is not correct. The Postgres license is permissive. We need to include a copy of the license (which we do in the NOTICE file[0]) but we CAN relicense the Postgres code however we want as long as we meet the requirements of the license. pgrust is a derived work of Postgres, but Postgres allows derived works to be under a different license. [0] https://github.com/malisper/pgrust/blob/main/NOTICE https://github.com/malisper/pgrust/blob/main/NOTICE

nz 1mo ago
This feels very much like a distinction between letter of the law and spirit of the law. I knew a guy who once forked a very popular browser extension (you've definitely heard of it), that was copyleft-licensed. When I asked him where the repo is, he said it was not publicly available, but that the lawyers have assured him that he is not breaking any laws because the source code is available, via the inspect-extension feature of the browser. This answer has always felt problematic, to me. In part, I feel like these legally-correct strategies and tactics tend be corrosive. In fact, this is exactly the kind of thing that drives projects like Sentry and Mongo to dump open source, and use EULAs instead. Not only is pgrust a license-based fork (which always runs the risk of splitting the community) it is also a language-based fork (which also runs the risk of splitting the community). In fact, the only silver lining here, is that you went straight for the AGPL, instead of MIT (thus preventing a _second_ license based fork).