Woah, I have been watching all of this guy's videos recently, I love how deep he dives into niche topics. His video on segmented displays got me very interested in the clever designs that came out of technical constraints, and challenged me to get back to design a little bit. It's nice to see him linked here
Unfortunately it seems like nowadays with open source being very widespread that many companies or people simply ignore/forget that these libraries that they include in their software aren't just "public domain" because the code is public, but they have a license that should be respected and actually has legal value, so what often ends up happening is that they take advantage of open source software or libraries in their proprietary software without even giving a crap about their authors and their community
But the first error is one that you seem to have made also: that there are different types of open source licenses. GPL or other copyleft licenses generally require you to disclose the code (or make a licensing deal in some cases). Things like the MIT license are much less restrictive.
Actually, it isn't. It's the same underlying principle.
All software must be paid for, with the exception of countries which have an actual public domain. Some software is paid for with money, some with acknowledgments, and some with source code sharing. Sometimes the developer demands postcards, and sometimes they demand that you not use it for evil purposes. All of these are forms of payment.
If you don't pay for it, you don't have certain rights to it.
That's a very liberal use of the verb "pay". Payment is not the same thing as compensation, payment implies money changing hands.
"Licensing" does not have to involve any sort of payment (or even compensation). There are free software licenses with no compensation requirements at all, yet they are not covering public domain software.
Critical distinction to whom? The users? The developers? The judge and jury?
If you get pulled over for speeding, you can't argue away the ticket by saying "yes officer, but speeding is easy to fix relative to hitting someone". If you continue to violate the law despite being notified of your exact violation, then you're probably due in for some punishment. I don't see how that's so hard to understand.
On the contrary, it’s actually quite easy. They can simply upload the repository on github’s or simply tar snapshots of the source for their releases and host it themselves.
No, the issue is not that it’s hard. It’s that they don’t want to comply with copyright law. That’s an issue of criminality, not difficulty.
It's not harder to 'give away' the source code. It's part of the license(s) of the code you are linking to create your binary. It's not hard at all, actually. On the contrary, it's very easy.
Somewhere where the user can find it. That may require UI work.
> much harder to give away the source code
tar cf gpl-mandated-source.tar.gz ~/Projects/voice.ai; drag file into dropbox and email link.
That's the nice thing about this particular violation, you don't need to go over the source code at all! You just need to send over the source files that you shipped!
> the first error is one that you seem to have made also
They don't seem to have made such an error though. Their comment was very general, and permissive licenses still have conditions like giving attribution.
Only if you distribute the code. You can go take some copyleft code, modify to you liking but only run on you backend servers and that is perfectly fine. Copyright license only triggers on distribution.
This is not correct. The AGPL which is also a copyleft license "triggers" without distribution. This is possible because you as the copyright holder can decide the terms of the license you offer, and these terms do not need to be related to your exclusive rights as a copyright holder.
How does that work? How does a copyright license apply if there is no distribution? What legal mechanism allows that? You can include a TOS in the code, but that isn’t enforceable because there is no agreement forcing function like “click to agree” nor am i required to even read it. And TOS doesn’t have any laws protecting it like copyright.
Edit: Instead of voting me down point out the relevant US law that allows copyright law that applies after the distribution like a TOS to person who didn’t distribute the code.
You can't use copyrighted material without explicit permission from its authors / right holders, fair use aside. Programs are copyrighted material (since 1974 in the US IIRC). The AGPL license is what will give you the permission to use AGPL'd software, but under conditions you need to respect, to the extent permitted by law (in both ways: some uses are illegal, and some restrictions imposed by the licenses could be unenforceable).
> Suppose you develop and release a free program under the ordinary GNU GPL. If developer D modifies the program and releases it, the GPL requires him to distribute his version under the GPL too. Thus, if you get a copy of his version, you are free to incorporate some or all of his changes into your own version.
> But suppose the program is mainly useful on servers. When D modifies the program, he might very likely run it on his own server and never release copies. Then you would never get a copy of the source code of his version, so you would never have the chance to include his changes in your version. You may not like that outcome.
> Using the GNU Affero GPL avoids that outcome. If D runs his version on a server that everyone can use, you too can use it. Assuming he has followed the license requirement to let the server's users download the source code of his version, you can do so, and then you can incorporate his changes into your version. (If he hasn't followed it, you have your lawyer complain to him.)
Copyright law only covers distributed software. It is not a terms of service and cover usage. GNU site has a bunch of articles on what it covers and what it doesn't.
AGPL doesn't cover internal software if you don't expose it outside of the company.
> AGPL doesn't cover internal software if you don't expose it outside of the company.
What about "internal" users of the company modified AGPL software (eg. employees)? I would be surprised if they are not entitled to having access to the source code under the very same AGPL terms (which gives them the right to distribute the software as well).
GPL and related licenses do allow personal use of modified software without publishing or distributing it, but company internal is not "personal" use: you are exposing some users to modified AGPL software.
I haven't read AGPL in detail so I could very well be wrong: can you point to the exact clauses which allow this exception? (Or rather, exact language that does not forbid it)
Note that users (in case of AGPL) or recipients (in case of GPL) of the software might decide not to exercise their rights, which could be pretty common for employees.
> 13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
I don't see how this "protects" company from offering the software to all the "internal" users under AGPLv3, allowing them to distribute it along freely under the same license.
> AGPL doesn't cover internal software if you don't expose it outside of the company.
Yes indeed, you can use AGPL software internally without redistributing the source code, as you can with GPL software by the way (since AGPL is GPL + restrictions). The FSF actually considers a license that doesn't allow private use without distribution non-free, like the Watcom 1.0 license [1,2] (while the OSI does consider this license open source [3]).
Now, I think this is a property of the license, not the copyright laws which do allow authors to place such restrictions. That's why you can't freely use Windows or Photoshop privately.
Making the user click a "I agree" checkbox is one way of letting them know the terms and conditions, but not the only one.
Originally you said "Only if you distribute the code."
If you run software on your server, and someone outside accesses the software via a web page, even if the software is still only running on your server and hasn't been distributed outside the company, if it's under the AGPL, the company must make available the source code.
If i run a AGPl database like mongo(before they switched to their own license) and had a web app that used it to persist and read data. I would not be required any modifications to mongodb because i didn't trigger copyright. Now if I let people connect to mongodb through some managed service that i was selling, i would trigger copyright because mongo protocol is proprietary and covered by copyright law. This is a textbook example how it works.
If you used a brand new implementation of whatever protocol Mongo uses that's under a less restrictive license than AGPL, you would not trigger any obligation to share the source code.
"Proprietary" in "Proprietary protocol" pretty much means "specific" / "non-standard". And you can't legally prevent someone to reimplement your proprietary protocol. I don't even think you can copyright the protocol itself. You can copyright the documentation / specification document at best, and actual implementations of it.
In "proprietary software", though, "proprietary" means "non-tree", that is, not open-source as defined by the OSD / not free software as defined by the FSF / the GNU project. The meaning of this word is very different in those two separate concepts.
The AGPL network clauses only trigger on modification, so if you deploy mongo without modification and don't distribute any code, thats fine, even if you expose mongo on the public internet.
Read the AGPL again. It has specific clauses that say that integration, not modification, of AGPL’d software applies it. Just using the AGPL’d software is the trigger.
I don't see anything about integration in the license, there is no trigger about use AFAICT.
However, in item 13, it specifically says "if you modify the Program":
13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
See also, paragraph (b):
b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to "keep intact all notices".
> AGPL doesn't cover internal software if you don't expose it outside of the company.
Yes it does. AGPL is set up in a very strange way. The source code offering is a condition of modification. It has to be kept up to date at all times, even on software that can only be accessed internally.
Copyright grants the following fives rights: 1) reproduction, 2) adaptation, 3) publication, 4) performance, and 5) display. Distribution falls under 3 while creating a derived work falls under 2.
It's a very good point. The GPL is a license you can choose if you wish to do something that would otherwise breach copyright law. The loading and execution of copyrighted code wouldn't normally require a copyright license, so you can choose to disregard the GPL or any other license that will grant you extra powers.
For example both AGPL and GPL3 say
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
GPL2 has a similar clause
To me, I get the feeling the drafters of the license believe that modifiying code, even privately, and not distributing it any further than your own laptop, requires acceptance of the license, thus modifying AGPL code would require acceptance of that license.
I'm not convinced that's correct, but maybe courts see it that way. After all I suspect if I modify a copy of close source software (to say bypass some security lock) that I obtain in accordance with copyright law, not making any copies (for the purpose of copyright law) of it, I would be in breach of copyright.
If that's the case, then if you don't modify an AGPL software and just run it, you don't need to agree to the license, but if you do modify it you are in breach of copyright law unless you agree to the license.
If you are running a server connected to the internet, and it exposes an open source function, it is essentially distributing the functions with every request.
Live application runtime bytes streamed vs bytes written to a disk is not a meaningful distinction.
So yes, it "triggers" (even) without distribution: the network service being directly accessible is a sufficient condition and the distribution not a necessary one (it is also a sufficient condition though).
Distribution is network protocol which they claim copyright over. It only covers outside distribution and can't cover standardized protocols and formats because they don't own the copyright on those. If postgres was AGPL, they can't claim that ANSI SQL triggers copyright because ANSI SQL is owned by INCITS.
I have hard time understanding your comment, and even your point actually.
Distribution is distribution: sharing the binary / source code of the thing.
Network protocols are not involved at all. Network connections between the software and the end-user are.
If a particular implementation of ANSI SQL was AGPL, and you modified and used this particular implementation and exposed it to the world, you would need to redistribute the code of this particular implementation.
But that does not change anything about ANSI SQL or about any other implementation of ANSI SQL.
I think the gnome project deserves a mention here, their docs program is really complete, and covers many high level aspects of how to use the software. Most gnome apps also use it
This article is so wrong on so many levels. First off, Amazon is definitely not selling "suicide kits", let alone advertising them. What they really meant here is the automated "people usually buy this with" section that suggests other items that are commonly bought along with the viewed item, meaning that the viewer had to be at least aware of what they were searching for (they were probably looking for some chemical).
Second of all and most important... WHY the hell were these CHILDREN buying stuff off of Amazon, somehow WITHOUT THEIR PARENT'S KNOWLEDGE? Did they just pay with their own cc, have it delivered to the house all while their parents/guardians DIDN'T notice?
If their parents are so uncaring for their children, then I'm not even surprised they wanted to commit suicide.
It has been pointed out to Amazon that these items shouldn't be recommended together and their legal response was that they weren't going to change anything. Never seen an Amazon Defense Force post before.
This was annoying for me too. I went to Amazon to search for suicide kit and found nothing. I searched for whatever that chemical was and tried to see related items that were concerning and still saw nothing.
As documented in the article, Ebay and Etsy stopped selling Sodium Nitrate in lab grade purities because of this, Amazon has not. It's not at all weird for parents to let their children buy things on Amazon especially with their own money. If you're having trouble thinking of ways this could happen, you could read the article which talks about a few examples.
Visa and Mastercard both have gift cards available at gas stations, grocery stores and corner stores everywhere you go. There is no age restriction with those. You just need enough cash to buy one.
Likewise, a lot of banks have changed their debit cards to VISA debit cards so they can be used like credit cards, again regardless of age.
I used to be on twitter (wonderful thing, I know) for about a year during 2020-2021. I never really any social media accounts aside from that, but anyways, during that time on the site I felt so stressed, anxious, and manipulated that it actually kind of hurt me for a while. I was led into agreeing with things that I simply did not believe in, and that influenced a lot of bad decisions in my life.
I think it has changed me for the worst. I used to be a much kinder and more open person, and now I constantly feel inadequate or toxic. 2021 was also a pretty bad year for me. And plus around that time, the twitter communities I engaged with were absolutely ruthless with pushing political, SJW agendas, participating in movements they poorly understood, and enforcing their views on everyone. If you've been there you'll know what I mean
Seeing hundreds, hell even thousands of 14,15 year olds being "indoctrinated" by other, equally treated 14,15 year olds is so depressing and almost caught me. I deleted my account earlier this year and will never regret it. Sure, I had some popular tweets, but I don't care about that small hits of fame anymore.
If you engage in communities, or even small groups of friends, which you feel are uncomfortable or unhealthy, then all power's to you to leave, and I highly encourage you to do that if you want to.
