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0 pointstombert8mo ago0 comments

If you can directly prove a violation dead to rights (or have enough cause for a discovery request) and you have money for legal defense, sure.

A lot of open source stuff is libraries and utilities though that is pretty entrenched in the code. It is hard to even find out about a violation, let alone prove anything.

Imagine I came up with a new algorithm to do Fourier Transforms 10% faster than FFTW (or whatever the current market leader is) and make a library and I release it as GPL. A company could fairly easily just import it to whatever project they’re doing, and it would be extremely difficult for me to prove anything, especially if I don’t have any obvious things like strings in there.

That’s not even taking into account that it would be relatively easy for a corporation to just pay a junior engineer to do a direct “port” of the library to another language and pretending it’s their own independent work.

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bruce5118mo ago

All completely true. And something you can clearly take into account when you decide what to do with your code.

You may decide its worth people using it, reading it, learning from it, exploiting it, or you may not. It's your choice.

Of course your work may be used outside of the license terms. That's pretty much impossible to enforce. That's true for most-all software, commercial or open or free. If that's your main objection to writing code then I recommend a different career. All good code is pirated. That's just how it is.

tombertOP8mo ago

Because I think people should be properly compensated for their labor instead of directly donating it to a mega corporation I should choose a “different career”? Do you realize how utterly insane that sounds?

You’re free to do what you want. I just find a lot of the entire FOSS process kind of exploitative and why I have become disillusioned with it.

ETA:

To be clear, I have a fair active GitHub and I still post stuff on there fairly often, and even a few non-trivial things. I just have stopped compulsively putting every line of code I write in public repositories.

bruce5118mo ago

Oh, think people should be properly compensated for their labor. And I'm still programming.

But lots of programmers don't get properly compensated. Some by choice, some by external factors.

I'm saying that's a reality. How you feel about other programmers and the choices they make for themselves is up to you.

Clearly there's no obligation to post anything yo public repositories, send the vast majority of programmers never do.

1 more reply

bawolff8mo ago

> Imagine I came up with a new algorithm to do Fourier Transforms 10% faster than FFTW (or whatever the current market leader is) and make a library and I release it as GPL. A company could fairly easily just import it to whatever project they’re doing, and it would be extremely difficult for me to prove anything, especially if I don’t have any obvious things like strings in there.

If you're doing something algorithmically different and unique, presumably that would show up in the assembly.

> That’s not even taking into account that it would be relatively easy for a corporation to just pay a junior engineer to do a direct “port” of the library to another language and pretending it’s their own independent work.

Important to keep in mind that copyright is not patents. If they are just stealing the "idea" of your algorithmic improvement, that probably isn't even a GPL violation. (This isn't fully right as they would probably have to use a clean-room design to avoid copyright infringement. My point is more that such a situation is pretty muddy and might actually be allowed)

tombertOP8mo ago

> If you're doing something algorithmically different and unique, presumably that would show up in the assembly.

I don’t think it is realistic to expect a developer to load every executable that might use their software into Ghidra or something and try and find a smoking gun about how their code might be used, and then hire an attorney to put together a case on that. In the case of my example, Fourier transforms are used everywhere in a wide variety of applications, and if my implementation is only like 10% faster it wouldn’t be very clear to an outside observer.

> Important to keep in mind that copyright is not patents. If they are just stealing the "idea" of your algorithmic improvement, that probably isn't even a GPL violation.

I am not saying it’s legal or not, I have no idea, just that that is why I have become disillusioned with the idea of open source, and I am not convinced that a well-meaning license like GPL is a realistic safeguard against corporate exploitation.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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bruce5118mo ago

All completely true. And something you can clearly take into account when you decide what to do with your code.

You may decide its worth people using it, reading it, learning from it, exploiting it, or you may not. It's your choice.

tombertOP8mo ago

You’re free to do what you want. I just find a lot of the entire FOSS process kind of exploitative and why I have become disillusioned with it.

ETA:

bruce5118mo ago

Oh, think people should be properly compensated for their labor. And I'm still programming.

But lots of programmers don't get properly compensated. Some by choice, some by external factors.

I'm saying that's a reality. How you feel about other programmers and the choices they make for themselves is up to you.

Clearly there's no obligation to post anything yo public repositories, send the vast majority of programmers never do.

1 more reply

bawolff8mo ago

If you're doing something algorithmically different and unique, presumably that would show up in the assembly.

tombertOP8mo ago

> If you're doing something algorithmically different and unique, presumably that would show up in the assembly.

> Important to keep in mind that copyright is not patents. If they are just stealing the "idea" of your algorithmic improvement, that probably isn't even a GPL violation.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse