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GPL, and probably other licenses, were constructed to work with copyright law. Such cavalier dismissal (by rxrz) is disrespecting those who created the licenses

GPL, and probably other licenses, were constructed to work with copyright law. Such cavalier dismissal (by rxrz) is disrespecting those who created the licenses, the legal system, and the open source community, at large. We live in the real world, not "The Matrix".

yareally 13y ago
Sadly, this is a typical thing that goes on in the Android User development community. Lots of casual attitudes by hobbyists that modify the Linux Kernel and rattle off some sort of excuse for not posting their sources while distributing binary copies. Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, thinking that because they changed a few lines of code, they can claim to own the license to the software now. I'd say that is probably much more prevalent since there's a general assumption by many that the license most Android based software uses, Apache 2.0 means "do whatever you want". Even worse is the fact that many users in the community are also quick to defend them blindly because they know little of development and why following licenses matter (even after all the facts are laid out and explained).
- Svip 13y ago
  > Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, [...] Hmmm... https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-21393678 https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-2... : > And I don't need any permissions from anybody, I'm a big girl. Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.
  - vog 13y ago
    Among all aspects of that discussion, the author's gender is about the most uninteresting detail. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position."
    - yareally 13y ago
      Agreed. I didn't even take the time to find out what their gender was since it's not any related issue. "Guy" was just used in a generic sense[1]. [1] http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-singular-pronouns?page=all http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-s...
      - Svip 13y ago
        I apologise, I am not familiar enough with the usage of 'guy' to know it is generic in singular (I know it is in plural).
        yareally 13y ago
        No worries :). I just think of it as another way of saying "dude".
        ars 13y ago
        Bad example because officially dude is also male. The female is dudine, dudette, or dudess. But like like guy, dude because gender neutral in common speech.
        king_jester 13y ago
        Just to nitpick, guy and dude are not gender neutral, they just happened to be heavily used by the community in general, mostly because people assume users are men by default.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
        Speak for yourself. A lot of people use it as a real gender neutral.
        brewski 13y ago
  - skore 13y ago
    > Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff. Nah, pretty sure the "I'm a big girl" is just fratboy posturing. Otherwise I agree with the commenter next to me: Breathtaking inanity is the interesting aspect here, not gender.
  - dbaupp 13y ago
    > I'm a big girl I believe the key part of this is the "I'm a big X" pattern (i.e. "I'm an adult"), not that the person is female.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  The last point you raise is one of the reasons that I think the drive to bring as many "proverbial grandmothers" to Linux presents a very serious concern. Imagine if Linux distros started getting treated like Android does? Android got those legions of "regular" users and participants that everybody seems to want and it is not a pretty scene because of it.
  - yareally 13y ago
    Great point. I've had more than one conversation with friends in the Android community where we try to understand exactly why the Android development community is as toxic as it is at times. Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos. It ends with users totally disrespecting real developers--stirring up unnecessary drama and fanboyism. Then there's users that compiled Android (or worse, added a few apps into a ROM by opening it in 7zip) and are suddenly an Android development expert (and users that believe it by defending them and donating money). I'm just glad that most other development communities on the web are much more civil (though I'm sure there's outliers). Even with Ubuntu's rise in popularity, it comes nowhere close to matching the appalling behavior I've witnessed with Android. I've seen people belittled by users for simply trying to post an honest bug report to a developer in their forum thread. Though with the way users spam up those threads with offtopic discussion, one is just as likely to have their bug report missed/ignored.
    - pnathan 13y ago
      > Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos. I don't understand what you mean. Shouldn't a close relationship between developers and users be a key goal in development?
      - jevinskie 13y ago
        I think the point is that the relationship isn't getting useful work done. In a ROM thread on XDA developers there are no good bug reports with reproductions, expected results, etc. It is a bunch of people saying "this doesn't work" and "no of course it should work for you because it works on my phone" and especially off-the-cuff performance evaluations ("much smoother, no stuttering or lag"). It is difficult to figure out who knows their shit and who is just bullshitting.
bxc89 13y ago
There are those of us who completely disagree with copyright law. How many years have been wasted on projects like Samba because of draconian copyright? Much simpler and cleaner to acquire the source.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  Wasting man-years on reimplementing software is not a large enough problem to decide that authors no longer have any rights with their product.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Agreed, there are much better reasons for doing so.
  - ouaibe 13y ago
    Contrary to popular belief, copyright law doesn't exist to ascertain dominion from an author onto it's creation. It exists to regulate exchanges and distribution of such creation, giving a controlled and finite monopoly to the original author with a guarantee that said creation ends up in the public domain. GPL exists to bypass such monopoly and implement a form of public domain (copyleft) that is compatible with copyright law.
  - serf 13y ago
    but it is a large enough problem. Wasting man years is precisely the problem. Our collective knowledge is boundless, but time is finite. See the problem here? Why would we want to waste the effort of future generations with the problems of yesterday? So that an individual can live more comfortably with exclusive privileges to something that benefits all of mankind? We shouldn't be working towards selfishness and arbitrary contractual law.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - 13y ago
toble 13y ago
It's only natural to act defensively when someone abruptly turns up and accuses you of removing some comments from code. If you talk to people who aren't licensing and legal enthusiasts, most don't have an interest in those topics.
scotty79 13y ago
What's wrong with disrespecting those who created the licenses, and the legal system? Maybe if we were disrespecting them sufficiently early on we wouldn't be in a mess we are currently in and the open source community wouldn't need to have a special name because it would be just called developer community? > We live in the real world, not "The Matrix". So why does it feel like it's the other way around? Why does it feel like we are living in a world pull over by our eyes by lawers that restricts sharing our creativity?
- read_again 13y ago
  Property is an inherent human thing. Likewise, people want to be remunerated for their work. Hence copyright. If scarcity was non existent, then we wouldn't have that problem... Actually, it would still be here: Van Gogh artwork is unique, and this can be expanded virtually to anything, including the shirt you are wearing, since you're the only one to wear it. You might see where this leads to. Scarcity can always be created artificially. Anyway, you wouldn't want people to take your shirts away from you, and copyright holders may feel the same towards their work. The second issue is fairness: if someone has to pay a certain amount to access copyrighted work, why others would not have to, under the same circumstances? Fairness is the motivating principle supporting the existence of the Law.
  - scotty79 13y ago
    And then there's science. People are paid to work on things or do it because they want to do it. Once they do something valuable they publish it and everyone can build upon their work. Openness gave us modern world. Copyright gave us Hollywood and Sony Music. Property is inherent thing. Not only human. Monkeys also want to own things and they don't like thieves. But extending physical property qualities to creations of human mind is just something some rich people did to get richer.
    - read_again 13y ago
      > some rich people did to get richer As I said, it all comes from scarcity. Things that are abundant are monetary worthless, and if everything is free, then people don't need to make money, ergo no copyright anymore (there's a slight simplification here actually, because copyrights also grant control, which is actively thought). That said, while the system is mostly used by the richest, poor people can profit from it as well, if they manage to produce valuable IP. The problem that we really have here imho is that code is just logic written in an often clever way, like a math theorem. Do we want to have these things protected by copyrights or patents? Does it make sense? That's the real question behind the issue at hand I believe.

yareally 13y ago

Sadly, this is a typical thing that goes on in the Android User development community. Lots of casual attitudes by hobbyists that modify the Linux Kernel and rattle off some sort of excuse for not posting their sources while distributing binary copies. Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, thinking that because they changed a few lines of code, they can claim to own the license to the software now. I'd say that is probably much more prevalent since there's a general assumption by many that the license most Android based software uses, Apache 2.0 means "do whatever you want". Even worse is the fact that many users in the community are also quick to defend them blindly because they know little of development and why following licenses matter (even after all the facts are laid out and explained).

Svip 13y ago
> Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, [...] Hmmm... https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-21393678 https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-2... : > And I don't need any permissions from anybody, I'm a big girl. Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.
- vog 13y ago
  Among all aspects of that discussion, the author's gender is about the most uninteresting detail. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position."
  - yareally 13y ago
    Agreed. I didn't even take the time to find out what their gender was since it's not any related issue. "Guy" was just used in a generic sense[1]. [1] http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-singular-pronouns?page=all http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-s...
    - Svip 13y ago
      I apologise, I am not familiar enough with the usage of 'guy' to know it is generic in singular (I know it is in plural).
      - yareally 13y ago
        No worries :). I just think of it as another way of saying "dude".
        ars 13y ago
        Bad example because officially dude is also male. The female is dudine, dudette, or dudess. But like like guy, dude because gender neutral in common speech.
        king_jester 13y ago
        Just to nitpick, guy and dude are not gender neutral, they just happened to be heavily used by the community in general, mostly because people assume users are men by default.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
        Speak for yourself. A lot of people use it as a real gender neutral.
        brewski 13y ago
- skore 13y ago
  > Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff. Nah, pretty sure the "I'm a big girl" is just fratboy posturing. Otherwise I agree with the commenter next to me: Breathtaking inanity is the interesting aspect here, not gender.
- dbaupp 13y ago
  > I'm a big girl I believe the key part of this is the "I'm a big X" pattern (i.e. "I'm an adult"), not that the person is female.
jlgreco 13y ago
The last point you raise is one of the reasons that I think the drive to bring as many "proverbial grandmothers" to Linux presents a very serious concern. Imagine if Linux distros started getting treated like Android does? Android got those legions of "regular" users and participants that everybody seems to want and it is not a pretty scene because of it.
- yareally 13y ago
  Great point. I've had more than one conversation with friends in the Android community where we try to understand exactly why the Android development community is as toxic as it is at times. Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos. It ends with users totally disrespecting real developers--stirring up unnecessary drama and fanboyism. Then there's users that compiled Android (or worse, added a few apps into a ROM by opening it in 7zip) and are suddenly an Android development expert (and users that believe it by defending them and donating money). I'm just glad that most other development communities on the web are much more civil (though I'm sure there's outliers). Even with Ubuntu's rise in popularity, it comes nowhere close to matching the appalling behavior I've witnessed with Android. I've seen people belittled by users for simply trying to post an honest bug report to a developer in their forum thread. Though with the way users spam up those threads with offtopic discussion, one is just as likely to have their bug report missed/ignored.
  - pnathan 13y ago
    > Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos. I don't understand what you mean. Shouldn't a close relationship between developers and users be a key goal in development?
    - jevinskie 13y ago
      I think the point is that the relationship isn't getting useful work done. In a ROM thread on XDA developers there are no good bug reports with reproductions, expected results, etc. It is a bunch of people saying "this doesn't work" and "no of course it should work for you because it works on my phone" and especially off-the-cuff performance evaluations ("much smoother, no stuttering or lag"). It is difficult to figure out who knows their shit and who is just bullshitting.

bxc89 13y ago

There are those of us who completely disagree with copyright law. How many years have been wasted on projects like Samba because of draconian copyright? Much simpler and cleaner to acquire the source.

reginaldjcooper 13y ago
Wasting man-years on reimplementing software is not a large enough problem to decide that authors no longer have any rights with their product.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Agreed, there are much better reasons for doing so.
- ouaibe 13y ago
  Contrary to popular belief, copyright law doesn't exist to ascertain dominion from an author onto it's creation. It exists to regulate exchanges and distribution of such creation, giving a controlled and finite monopoly to the original author with a guarantee that said creation ends up in the public domain. GPL exists to bypass such monopoly and implement a form of public domain (copyleft) that is compatible with copyright law.
- serf 13y ago
  but it is a large enough problem. Wasting man years is precisely the problem. Our collective knowledge is boundless, but time is finite. See the problem here? Why would we want to waste the effort of future generations with the problems of yesterday? So that an individual can live more comfortably with exclusive privileges to something that benefits all of mankind? We shouldn't be working towards selfishness and arbitrary contractual law.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - 13y ago

toble 13y ago

It's only natural to act defensively when someone abruptly turns up and accuses you of removing some comments from code. If you talk to people who aren't licensing and legal enthusiasts, most don't have an interest in those topics.

scotty79 13y ago

What's wrong with disrespecting those who created the licenses, and the legal system? Maybe if we were disrespecting them sufficiently early on we wouldn't be in a mess we are currently in and the open source community wouldn't need to have a special name because it would be just called developer community? > We live in the real world, not "The Matrix". So why does it feel like it's the other way around? Why does it feel like we are living in a world pull over by our eyes by lawers that restricts sharing our creativity?

read_again 13y ago
Property is an inherent human thing. Likewise, people want to be remunerated for their work. Hence copyright. If scarcity was non existent, then we wouldn't have that problem... Actually, it would still be here: Van Gogh artwork is unique, and this can be expanded virtually to anything, including the shirt you are wearing, since you're the only one to wear it. You might see where this leads to. Scarcity can always be created artificially. Anyway, you wouldn't want people to take your shirts away from you, and copyright holders may feel the same towards their work. The second issue is fairness: if someone has to pay a certain amount to access copyrighted work, why others would not have to, under the same circumstances? Fairness is the motivating principle supporting the existence of the Law.
- scotty79 13y ago
  And then there's science. People are paid to work on things or do it because they want to do it. Once they do something valuable they publish it and everyone can build upon their work. Openness gave us modern world. Copyright gave us Hollywood and Sony Music. Property is inherent thing. Not only human. Monkeys also want to own things and they don't like thieves. But extending physical property qualities to creations of human mind is just something some rich people did to get richer.
  - read_again 13y ago
    > some rich people did to get richer As I said, it all comes from scarcity. Things that are abundant are monetary worthless, and if everything is free, then people don't need to make money, ergo no copyright anymore (there's a slight simplification here actually, because copyrights also grant control, which is actively thought). That said, while the system is mostly used by the richest, poor people can profit from it as well, if they manage to produce valuable IP. The problem that we really have here imho is that code is just logic written in an often clever way, like a math theorem. Do we want to have these things protected by copyrights or patents? Does it make sense? That's the real question behind the issue at hand I believe.