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Pushing Back Against Licensing and the Permission Culture
kthreadd writes "Luis Villa has an interesting discussion on the topic of not licensing at all, what he calls POSS or Post Open Source Software. With a flood of new hackers flocking to places like GitHub which doesn't impose any particular requirements for hosted projects, the future of Open Source may very well be diminishing. Skip licensing, just commit to GitHub. What legal ramifications will this have on the free and open source community going forward?"
From the article: "If some 'no license' sharing is a quiet rejection of the permission culture, the lawyer’s solution (make everyone use a license, for their own good!) starts to look bad. This is because once an author has used a standard license, their immediate interests are protected – but the political content of not choosing a license is lost. Or to put it another way: if license authors get their wish, and everyone uses a license for all content, then, to the casual observer, it looks like everyone accepts the permission culture. This could make it harder to change that culture — to change the defaults — in the long run. So how might we preserve the content of the political speech against the permission culture, while also allowing for use in that same, actually-existing permission culture?"
younger devs today are about POSS – Post open source software. fuck the license and governance, just commit to github. - James Governor (@monkchips) September 17, 2012
Ah, yes, eloquently stated. And, you know, it's totally okay to do that but let's assume that you've "fucked" the license and governance and your code is great and popular. Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys? What forces them to give back their changes that might make that code better? What did you and the community gain by contributing to that company's revenue? What if I just took your code and put it on a CD and started selling it with no credit to you and no link or reference to the source code? Wouldn't that rub you the wrong way? Just a little? Well, what if that company then claimed that your code was an unlicensed version of their code and moved to have it remove?
And that's why we have open source licenses. So those are out there and if you're lazy or whatever you can just download this file (or the corresponding OSS license you like) and put it in the root directory of your source tree. Are you really too lazy to include a simple txt file in your source tree? At the possible expense of your $MOST_HATED_COMPANY turning the screws on you?
This article seems to focus on just the "hey browski, I heard you liked code, here's my code" hippy hacker mentality and grievously ignores the "did Facebook just use an altered version of my library to track its mobile users?" possibilities.
To follow the analogy started by the twitter post: OSS licenses are like a condoms. Stop being lazy and just use one.
My work here is dung.
From TFA:
the open license ecosystem assumes that sharing can’t (or even shouldn’t) happen without explicit permission in the form of licenses.
This is because our legal system makes this assumption. Wishful thinking does not make laws go away. If you release software with no license, then it is legally presumed to have full copyright protection. You need to explicitly give up your rights.
The point of F/OSS licensing is to use copyright and license terms against the commercial software makers who presently hold a very tight and expensive control over business, government and individuals.
It doesn't make anyone "look bad" and even enables them to take from the unlicensed software pool and take it private.
In a world without copyright laws that would be feasible. But we don't, and it isn't. Commit code with no license and legally nobody is allowed to distribute your software. No company will ever willingly use your code, even if it does something unique and useful.
Grow up you hippie and accept that you have to learn something about laws before you interact with society.
By default all code that does not have a license is "all rights reserved" http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/github-needs-take-open-source-seriously-208046
There's a specific (patent) example I recall from the history of Sweet'N'Low. Ben Eisenstadt, the developer of S'nL had originally developed a method for packing sugar in sugar packets, which he tried to sell to Domino Sugar. He didn't have the patent, so the Domino people said something to the effect of "we'll talk to you in a few weeks", at which point they replicated the invention and manufactured it without him.
No, if there is no license, nobody is allowed to make use of the software. Look up what the word "license" means. Copyright laws assume that every creative work is fully protected unless explicitly stated otherwise.
if there is no license than someone can take the work, use it for their own product, make money and not give anything back
Nope. If there is no license, then the work is presumed to have full copyright protection. Full copyright is the default , and you need to provide an alternative license if you want people to legally use it in any way.
Perhaps one of our resident "IAAL"s can clarify this, but in the absence of an explicit license, doesn't copyright still apply to a code snippet by default? So rejecting the use of the GPL or other FOSS doesn't mean just any corporate asshat can come along and steal your work - Quite the opposite, it means no one can legally use your code.
Which works out perfectly for the hobbyist coders - including these so-called "POSS" coders - who really don't give a damn about who "owns" a given code snippet. As the only real down side, such an approach makes it impossible for a company like RedHat to contribute to the community by improving that code, because without some sort of explicit license, no sane company will touch it ("Yeah, that Windows 9 thing you guys wrote? It counts as a derivative work of MyFirstPokerApp, thanks for giving me that private Caribbean island I always wanted, Redmond!"). But the original author still very much enjoys the protection of copyright-by-default, at least in the US.
Because then you have a better piece of software. How are you worse off then if someone doesn't take it or use it in their own product?
One very good reason to use a license is its liability disclaimer. If you release your software without one, there is always the danger that some idiot will find a way to use it in such a way as to remove all his files, consequently suing you for damages. With the astronomical costs of litigation in the US, a lawsuit, whether you win it or not, is a financial death sentence. It is worthwhile to take every measure you can to defend yourself from this.
Legally this is problematic, as without a license, nobody has any permission to distribute the software. Github can, certainly, as the author gave permission explicitly, but copyright is "default-deny" - there's no distribution permitted without explicit permission.
So, an eeebil corporation (or anyone else) can't take your work at all. They'd be in the wrong if they did. Similarly, if you took the work, changed it, and redistributed it, you'd also be in the wrong. Plain copyright applies unless overridden.
Use a license that pokes fun at the concept of licensing: the WTFPL (the DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE).
Seriously though, to change this "permission culture" thing, you need to get ahead of the intellectual property movement by starting a "right to think" movement. It won't be long (historically speaking) before computers and networks access is weaved into every tool we use--if not the human brain itself.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
If you think your personal making-a-statement against "permission culture" is more important than the practical ability of others (including distributors) to use the code you produce without exposing themselves to legal risk, then you're part of the "permission culture" - you feel entitled to deny others permission to use your work.
If you want to make a responsible statement against "permission culture", release your work into the public domain, and include a one-clause BSD license for use in jurisdictions that don't recognize public domain.
There's an interesting hack you can do against unlicensed / unattributed code. Slap your name on it, now tell github to stop violating your copyright and remove "your" code from their server that someone else stole and uploaded. After all, the original author didn't care enough about his work to put a license on it, so you have a minor moral and ethical permission to take it as yours, after all, its abandonware, and if you no longer want your code distributed on github, well...
I imagine the trial would be hilarious.
"He stole my code and deleted it from my github account"
"its not the plaintiffs code, the only known licensed version of it in the whole world is from the defendant. The plaintiff himself repeatedly stated the code he was publishing was not licensed, our position is the plaintiff stole the defendant's code, deleted the copyright and license from the headers, and uploaded it to his pirating account, which we shut down"
"..."
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Licensing is all about protecting the creator of the work. It can lay down explicit allowances for the consumer, but make no bones about it, they are not there for you the user. Regardless of how software is licensed there needs to be some protections for the consumer. Things have gotten absolutely ridiculous. How about regulation that enshrines: 1) Separation of hardware and software in all devices. Both from the "bundling" standpoint as well as the right to move software without permission or notification to the author 2) Rights to privacy of the consumer (i.e. once money has changed hands, I have the right to refuse your software from sending/receiving ANYTHING from/to the internet and still have my software function properly) 3) Similar to 2 but deserves distinction... the right to use software anonymously i.e. compulsory registration and named user licensing are gone. 4) Enshrine 1 license 1 (unnamed) user as the defacto law of licensing. In other words, no limiting HOW I use your software and as long as it is only a single use at time, legalities should be met. I may think of a use that no one ever imagined before.
I understand developers want to protect their work. But their right to protection ends at using their software as a reporting tool to my network or computers inner workings.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys?
Their legal department. Without a more permissive license, they're stuck with default copyright terms (no copying except for narrow "fair use" exceptions) so they can't distribute it. Ethical companies wont touch it, unethical ones would have no qualms about pirating BSD/MIT/GPL/whatever licensed code anyway, and the hackers and hippies don't care about licenses will use it and carry on not caring about licenses.
Sorry I should have been more clear. What you're talking about is the permission culture (you need permission to use our code). I was making the argument under the assumption that by committing unlicensed code not everyone needs permission to use it. From the article:
In other words, those people choose not to use a license because, on some level, they reject the permission culture and want to go back to the pre-1976 defaults. In this case, publishing without a license is in some way a political statement – “not every use should need permission”.
Therefore my discussion was formed using the pre-1976 defaults. Which the article also covered:
In the US, prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, you had to take affirmative steps to get a protectable copyright. In other words, you could publish something and expect others to be able to legally reuse it, without slapping a license on it first.
So yeah you're right the current premise is post 1976 Copyright Act but I was talking about what it would be like without using an OSS license and pre-1976 like the article presupposes.
My work here is dung.
Read the GitHub EULA. They do not currently claim ownership of uploaded content. However, they claim the right to modify the agreement: " GitHub reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice. ... GitHub shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, price change, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.
A classic example of a formerly open database becoming closed is CDDB, the track list database for audio CDs. Once open source, the current owner, GraceNote, doesn't even allow clients other than their own, and inserts ads. Another example is Google's takeover of the historical netnews database and closing it to full downloads.
To avoid that, it's important that creators limit the rights that some service gets merely by hosting the content. A service like GitHub could claim that as soon as someone else makes a check-in, the aggregated content becomes theirs. The GPL, which covers derived works, prevents that.
And just to add, as a commercial ISV why would I ever in a million years either donate code/work to your code base when I have no reason to believe I'm even allowed to use it or that it will continue to be available to me in the future, or that my competitors won't just skeef that code and use it to beat me in the market. Anyone who thinks "POSS" means jack seems full of it to me. If you can't be bothered to find a license you can live with and expect the rest of us to just hope we won't be screwed or walked all over you are going to be sadly disappointed. FOSS is about everyone giving back, those licenses exist for a reason. You're not doing business with me without I get their protection, and for every project out there there are a lot of alternatives. IMHO the OSS licensed ones will prevail.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I've had enough of the permission culture.
is called "public domain."
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
There's no way to punish Domino for it, because he held no patent on his packaging method. He relied on it being a trade secret... then gave it away.
More fool him. Packaging is big business. If you have a genuine patented innovation in the field and manage it right, you're on the gravy train until someone supercedes it. It might be small potatoes, but it's a LOT of small potatoes.
It's legal either way, whether it's a giant corporate bastard or a small independent bastard.
If there's no license for your software, though, you hold the copyright automatically. There is no legal recourse for any company that rips off your code and sells it, even if you paid for it to be marqueed across a billboard in Time Square.
Do you think media companies would accept the proposition that because they put their content on public broadcast networks, that anyone can copy it from there and sell it on as they desire?
Isn't the basic BSD license essentially the same as completely permissive? Anyone can borrow the code, do whatever they want, and not flow back changes. Yet the code is still licensed.
The author mentions that most people think personal use copying is ok.
I would say the same is true of companies, but only for open source, for some reason.
Companies often download open source, modify the software, copy the modified software among hundreds of people, demonstrate the modified software publicly, then say they will release the software when the product is released.
But, there was no copyright or licence that granted the internal copies of the modified software, as the modifications were not published.
If a company used evaluation copies of Windows, internally, copying to hundreds of developers, then demonstrated something publicly obviously on an evaluation copy of windows, what would happen?
Side rant: Often "viral" is mentioned in FUD concerning Open Source, but one should note that regular copyright is also "viral", in the sense that if you make a derivative copy of commercial software (or writing or music ...), you are still bound my the copyright/license of the original work.
There must be a way to punish Domino Sugar for doing this because it's a large corporation, but it would be okay if it was a small home producer. /s ?
No. If you don't have a patent, then anybody anywhere is free to practice your art if they are able. You don't get a natural monopoly for being the first to think of something.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Why? Because you never know when someone will take your code, use it, copyright it, then sue you for using the code you wrote yourself in the first place.
It has happened before. Just go look up the old AT&T/BSD lawsuits.
I'm not sure how slapping a copyright on it helps you with that, they could still claim to own the original code. having it published on somewhere like github on the other hand might protect you from it(as proof of it being in existence on day x).
of course if you want to put restrictions on it... then you should. but if you're afraid people might use information you give to them for something you don't like, maybe you shouldn't be sharing information in the first place.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
like most of us i've self-published a bunch of crap in the past fifteen years or so,
ranging from music CDs in actual stores to numerous personal software components,
and i've intentionally kept them bare of any licensing information for two reasons:
1. as a small protest against the permission culture.
2. i feel that incorporating the permission culture into the creative work cheapens the work.
when folks have re-purposed my work (that i know of), they've always asked first and have always offered to include attribution.
> Where does this idiocy about 'free software' and 'licenses' come from? Tribal thinking. Pseudo religious philosophies.
No. It comes from copyright law and personal experience.
This stuff doesn't form in a vacuum. The fact that you can't be bothered to read or acknowledge the relevant background material doesn't make you smarter than anyone.
Also, ALL software suffers from the same engineering challenges. It's just more visible when the process is democratic and transparent.
That's more background material that you are too lazy to read, acknowledge, or understand.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There's a specific (patent) example I recall from the history of Sweet'N'Low.
Patents on inventions, and copyrights on creative works, work completely differently. If you have no patent, the presumption is that the invention is in the public domain. If you have no registered copyright, the presumption is that all rights are reserved.
Yes ... reject permissions and promote anarchy! And while you're doing it, do it with a license that restricts people and only grants them permission to use it in specific ways!
GPL is far from free, ESPECIALLY in this context.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Nothing. So what? Seems like it'd be good for the economy.
Nothing. So what? Why do you assume it is appropriate that I force anyone into anything?
If the community did gain something, perhaps a healthier company, better security for its employees, or whatever, good. But there was no intent for that either, so if not, meh. The point is simple: I wrote some stuff, here it is, bye, going to write some more stuff now.
What if you did? I wouldn't get my 15 minutes on "Oprah" or something? I don't need your approval or adulation... how about that? And if you benefit, that's great. I hope you do.
The day it shows up on the net and the day that functionality shows up in their software should trivially prevent that kind of claim, but if they did, then I'd probably pull it just to avoid any contact with lawyers, frankly. it wasn't there to earn money, or fame, and so removing it isn't any kind of a load. I kind of think this is a situation almost no one would ever see. It's too obvious that the company is making a false claim just based on the usual array of "memories" the network has, from wayback machine like entities to caches and logs and etc. Could it happen? Sure. But if you're not looking for fame and fortune, really, so what. Having said that, I've got a lot of code out there with no license. A database, auroral prediction engines, NWS data interpolators, etc.; and I've other code that's straight up trade secret: no license, but no code released. SDR software, etc. It's never happened to me. I don't worry that it will, and I see no particular serious ill effect if it did. I see *far* more damage if I stick some license on there like the GPL and thereby throw a monkey wrench into progress for someone else. Lastly, what's to stop them from doing this even if you had, say, the GPL stuck on your code? If they're going to lie, they're going to lie. At that point, you're back to lawyers and court, and you can go there alone as far as I'm concerned. Every day not spent in a courtroom or a lawyer's office is a better day from my perspective.
Licenses exist because lawyers are like parasitic cockroaches, which have infiltrated every aspect of your life. Between that and the "I wanna be famous" thing, people become natural victims; and in the process, with many of these licenses (GPL, I'm looking at you), they prevent their code from doing the most it can in the most hands it could. If the author is happy with that, fine. But some of us just want to write code sometimes, and public domain or "throw it in the air and see where it comes down" is perfectly fine for those projects.
Me, I'm really tired of both patent and copyright sewers. While I recognize the law and behave from my side of it -- no pirating, no violating licenses -- I"m just tired and I no longer want to engage in ownership tizzies on the creative side. As far as I can tell, it's done us no better in any case than a trade secret would have, and its done us far worse in many cases -- the amount of time and money spent on the copyright and patent system with participants trying to eat each other alive in court is nothing short of a tragedy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, copyright prevents that. Copyright cannot be assigned or transferred implicitly. It requires an explicit signed assignment or work-for-hire status for a party other than the author to claim copyright.
1. Release code with no license (i.e. it is copyrighted by default).
2. Wait for someone to copy it.
3. Hire copyright troll attorney.
4. Profit!!
While GitHub COULD close uploads in the future, all past uploads still remain under copyright, which isn't owned by Github. Git COULD also change the TOS to say "we own everything that is uploaded." And if you agree to it, then everything you upload AFTER the change is owned by git. Everything before is still owned by the people who created it.
How exactly does having a license on your code prevent someone from taking your code, using it, copyrighting it, then suing you? It's not as though not having a license attached precludes you from having copyright over it. Copyright is implicit the moment it's created, at least in the US.
Attaching a license would not alleviate this problem.
if there is no license than someone can take the work, use it for their own product, make money and not give anything back
once this happens, what is the point of making a piece of software better?
No, that's exactly the opposite of the truth.
If there is no license nobody else can legally take the work.
They can look at it, because you published it, but that's it.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Afterall, Github's been proven to be a utopia of wise, well-informed developers who know exactly what best practices are w.r.t. releasing files into the wild
Mods are funny around here. I get modded down for saying the exact same thing as others who are modded up (that copyright law simply doesn't allow for the use of code without a license or an explicit relinquishing of rights). Look if you disagree with me, simply say so. I'm not off-topic, nor troll.