Removing everything from GitHub | Hacker News Reader

Removing everything from GitHub

joeyh.name

142 points0x018 comments

Software lawyer here.

Is this the offending language?

>If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to access your Content through the GitHub Service, and to use, display and perform your Content, and to reproduce your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality. You may grant further rights if you adopt a license.

Is the theory here that this negates FOSS licenses, over-riding copyleft terms with permissive terms?

Based on my reading, it comes down to whether your read the "use, display and perform" as conjunct or disjoint with "solely on Github." If it is conjunct, it should not be a problem. If it is disjoint... yeah, that may be a problem.

To be explicitly clear, I am a software lawyer and I write a whole hell of a lot of licenses that have to play well with FOSS licenses. I do this for a living.

I am going to have to think this over pretty hard.

Edit: I just tweeted at them: https://twitter.com/LibertyMcateer/status/837048904583626752

I'll post more if I hear anything.

Edit edit: read this response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13766933

I am persuaded. The pertinent language, for "use, display and perform" is pretty limited. Typically, copyleft licenses are hinged on the distribution of code - which is basically the same thing as reproduction in the digital world. A general license to use, display and perform code may play well with copyleft licenses as a result.

Disclaimer: I am not your lawyer. I am not github's lawyer. These statements are my own, not my firm's and I have not performed a full analysis of this language or GitHub's license. If you need a legal opinion, you should retain a lawyer.

My reading was that it was conjunct with the other clauses, it would be very sneaky if it weren't.

Edit: to conform with the above, I'm now of the opinion this is less of a big deal that everyone is making it out to be. I can always be persuaded, however, by strong argumentation.

Disclaimer: I am not your lawyer. I am not github's lawyer. These statements are my own, not my firms and I have not performed a full analysis of this language or GitHub's license. If you need a legal opinion, you should retain a lawyer.

My impression is that the intent is to mitigate the possible legal issues raised by the numerous repositories without license.

It seems a little far fetch, but I imagine that accessing and reading content subject to copyrights can be punished legally in some (many?) countries, even if the content is de facto public.

(A book published by accident on an open http server is not that different).

Also, GitHub having a proeminent "fork" button can be seen as an invitation to violate copyrights, making the service somewhat responsible.

However, I'm certainly not a lawyer and I can't determine accurately the implication of this paragraph (intentional or accidental).

> Also, GitHub having a proeminent "fork" button can be seen as an invitation to violate copyrights, making the service somewhat responsible.

What about simply not having a visible 'fork' button for Repository's without a license? IANAL but a supposed automated license grant to Github doesn't sound like very convincing legal rights for use of software (even if the forking itself is legal)?

>> Is the theory here that this negates FOSS licenses, over-riding copyleft terms with permissive terms?

I was under the impression that Copy-Left licenses weren't "over-ridable" at all. That is the original author of the content could grant Github a parallel license but most e.g. GPLed projects have multiple contributors and any grant to Github in violation of their CLA's wouldn't stand. Could you correct if and where this is incorrect?

I'm confused. I read that TOS and I don't see anything that does anything like this post describes. I think this may be FUD.

Can someone please explain what is going on here?

I have an AGPL project on Github with close to 1,000 stars, multiple contributors, and a CLA.

Is my project affected by this? Does this change somehow endanger the copyleft clause of our AGPL license?

The way I understood it: While you may licence your work to Github according to their terms, you can't licence other people's work to Github under a different licence than how it was licenced to you. The language of copyleft licences is very strict in this regard.

Github certainly didn't mean their terms to be read this way. They included "as required for the service" in all relevant places. What I don't understand is why they want the uploader to grant them a specific licence, instead of a more lenient "the content you upload must be licenced in a way that allows us to ..."

Edit: I think that nobody except possibly Github the company could take advantage of this "additional" licences. The biggest risk I see is that an AGPL contributor sees their licence violated when you upload their contribution to Github. So you're in a legal gray area if you still do it. Not something you want to be in but not going to be a problem in most cases.

It looks like Github tried to protect themselves from some pathologic cases and have created headaches for everybody else. The way I see it they're trying to push some risks on their users.

A severe overreaction is going on.

More discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13766933

Reserving judgement until I see an analysis from someone familiar with the pertinent law, and qualified to comment (i.e. "What does Eben Moglen think?"). The "analysis" linked to is a dead link (maybe it got HNed).

http://web.archive.org/web/20170301173905/https://www.mirbsd...

At least one self-proclaimed lawyer weighed in here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768188

Overreaction. Of course Github doesn't want this sort of thing. Just be patient.

This raises an interesting point. Suppose you really can be 'tainted' by viewing GPL or other copyleft code. Should the search function require you to opt in to showing snippets from copylefted codebases (or codebases without any licenses)? It seems like anything less is asking for trouble.

You can attack open source projects by posting a project with a draconian license, duplicate existing code from an open source project and use git features to backdate the commit, then go after authors who "copied" the features.

And should you lose, face a criminal counter suit. (False testimony and potentially forgery. Depending on the licence, also breach thereof in a civil suit.) Trading a civil suit for criminal one is a Bad Idea.

You generally will have to produce evidence of incremental development at least, if not more.

Not A Lawyer.

If they are indeed overreacting it still gives me comfort how quickly people respond with potential "fixes" to issues even if they are not an issue in the end.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com