Lerna adds clause to MIT license blocking certain companies from using it | Hacker News Reader

Lerna adds clause to MIT license blocking certain companies from using it

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26 pointsWaltPurvis22 comments

Original discussion was flagged[0]. Anybody happen to know why?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864799

I assume someones clicked the [FLAG] button too many times. There's no requirement or dialog that asks why a flag is placed.

I've seen this type of license abuse before. I think it was some windows joystick remapping software that forbid Israel from using it. But to see "Social Justice Cause of the Week" hosted in a licensing document tells me very strongly that this software is pure amateur hour and to steer anyone around me away.

Stallman puts it best in his essay here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...

" There would be programs banned for use in meat processing, programs banned only for pigs, programs banned only for cows, and programs limited to kosher foods. Someone who hates spinach might write a program allowing use for processing any vegetable except spinach, while a Popeye fan might allow use only for spinach. There would be music programs allowed only for rap music, and others allowed only for classical music. " - RMS

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this make Lerna incompatible with the GPL? Seeing as this adds additional license restrictions that aren't in the GPL, and the GPL is pretty clear about not permitting that.

Yes, but it was MIT licensed.

Sure, but if anyone's built anything GPL-licensed on top of it, they're now unable to update to the current version.

It'd be dangerous to update to the current version.

Well, not anymore.

Worse, it makes it not Open Source. One of the corner stones of both free software and Open Source is non-discrimination against persons, groups or fields of endeavor. Eric Raymond explains: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8106

Kinda falls off that moral high horse when it's stored on the Microsoft-owned GitHub.

Why? It was hosted on GitHub before Microsoft purchased it.

Most social / economic critique is steeped within the system of its focus, which doesn't negate the critique.

I think it negates the critique because one has defined a different level or participation for oneself than what is allowed to those being critiqued. When Microsoft has any hand in the activities of I. C. E., that's bad. But if I add to Microsoft's business either by participating in their other activities (e. g., GitHub) or adding to a network effect, that's okay? Perhaps it's an heavy-handed version of "clean hands", but I see hypocrisy in saying, "these are bad people and we do not want to associate with them...unless we need publicly-accessible source control."

And I'm sure people criticize twitter on twitter all the time (likewise for youtube).

I think the licensing change was foolish, and I wouldn't hold it against MS if they decided to kick the Lerna project off of Github because of this. Hypocrisy (if that is even what this is) is not the worst aspect of this change. What's wrong here is that this kind of licensing (if it became widespread) would result in a legal minefield that would destroy the open source ecosystem.

From a legal perspective the idea of blocking companies from using open source code seems pretty interesting. It says 'subsidiary thereof', but aren't there fancier relationships between related business entities that can be abused? Furthermore, is specifying 'Microsoft Corporation' even valid? MS operates all over the world and is registered all over the place. By specifying 'Microsoft Corporation' alone, what does this designate legally?

The law isn’t some mindless algorithm. Do you understand what these terms are intended to do? Good, so does ever judge.

From a previous comment I've made:

>The MIT license is only applied to code contributions once the code is "at rest" after merge. Permission is then granted for anyone "obtaining a copy" of the software. The repo maintainers claim that they are obtaining a copy of the software, but it looks like this isn't a copy, it's the original. I wonder if the contributors really do have legal recourse.

It is my opinion that even in a branching model, the repo maintainers are not obtaining a copy of the licensed code. A git branch is only a pointer to a git object - it's not a full on copy of the source code. So, claiming that a certain develop branch or tag is the original and master is a copy does not hold water.

The lerna github repo continues to hold the original code, and their users obtain copies.

I strongly believe that the repo maintainers do not hold any rights to sublicense this codebase like they have under the terms of the MIT license, and further, I accuse them of harming copyleft with this sublicense scheme.

How is this not a copyright violation? If I had contributed under the old license, they cannot relicense my contribution under a substantially different license without my consent.

That's specifically not how MIT license works.

They could (even _I_ could) sell it under a commercial licensing without any legal issues...

Only if you retain the MIT license file with your distribution, that is the only condition of it.

You could sell it commercially sure, but you can't remove the MIT license file and replace it with your own EULA, which is what effectively happened here.

I don't think individual contributors have copyright protection on MIT licensed projects? I could be wrong though.

The PR states you can have your contribution removed if you disagree: https://github.com/lerna/lerna/pull/1616#issuecomment-416820... (however that might work)

I'm pretty sure adding a more restrictive license clause is a fork of the code base and any new code commits would use the newer, more restrictive license.

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