Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

So, just to be clear, you are perfectly fine with someone taking something someone else created and violating the terms upon which they were given that thing?

e.g. If I took code you wrote and lets say released under an MIT license and claimed I wrote it and didn't give you any credit, and in fact released it under another license entirely, you'd be fine with that?

View on HN

It's perfectly valid to criticize the original license choice.

GPLv3 is a very restrictive license, especially for what is essentially a micro blog (though I dislike the license for most open source software anyway).

Add on the original author going after a bit of CSS, not even the main effort of the project in question, and you've got my "petty" comment.

There is an artist who takes images from magazines, repurposes them for his own art, and sells them for hundreds of thousands of dollars, then gets sued by the magazines & photographers & artists, and guess what, HE WINS AGAINST THOSE LAWSUITS. Copyright is BS, especially concerning HTML & CSS code. What a joke.

You didn't answer my question. That pretty much says all that needs to be said.

My answer is less useful to the discussion. But here you go:

1. I wouldn't use GPLv3

2. I wouldn't care if people stole my code that I open sourced or if they tried to license it a different way.

3. I personally follow the license of others when using their code. I wouldn't steal GPLv3 code without proper attribution etc. That's their right.

All that doesn't go against my initial opinion: GPLv3 for a small micro blog templating system is lame. Enforcing it for a bit of CSS is petty.

> All that doesn't go against my initial opinion: GPLv3 for a small micro blog templating system is lame. Enforcing it for a bit of CSS is petty.

It is a matter of principle, probably?

Not the parent but your question and the implicit accusation is way too overblown. The design here is so generic that it can easily be used by tons of site out there. It's just a few lines of CSS here and there and if I have a design like that and come across something similar I would just chalk it up to someone with similar taste. Going out of your way to demand attribution for it is the very definition of petty.

> e.g. If I took code you wrote and lets say released under an MIT license and claimed I wrote it and didn't give you any credit, and in fact released it under another license entirely, you'd be fine with that?

If I released it on Github, under any license whatever? I’d more or less be expecting that.

If it was about the 4hr of work that went into my blog theme, I wouldn’t be bothered at all.

But then, I wouldn’t release anything like that under the GPL.

So, you are okay with people violating other peoples licenses and ignoring copyright. Gotcha.

I just think it’s naive to assume they won’t.

It’s a bit like putting a solid gold bar on your lawn and putting a sign next to it saying ‘please don’t take, this is mine’.

You can simultaneously follow other people's licenses to the letter while also not caring if other people don't follow your's.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com