Hacker News Reader

Then why not choose an attribution license such as BSD?

I told you why. I'm not comfortable legally enforcing that preference. The only thing that needs to be accepted is that laws and ethics aren't necessarily equivalent. Just because something is legal doesn't make it ethical. If you accept that, then it's easy to see how one might choose a permissive license even if one finds certain actions allowed by that permissive license to be unethical.

If you think laws and ethics are the same or should be, then I suppose that's a deeper disagreement and not one I mean to explore here. :-)

A good choice in your case is to release your software without a license at all. I really like this option: it is elegant (no spurious license files and headers polluting your program), morally irreproachable, and it gets the job done (only people who are ridiculously obsessed with legal papers will not be able to use your software).

The only problem is that if your software becomes somehow well-known, you'll be bugged to no end to release it into any license, and you will need to develop an anti-spam filter to automatically delete these mails.

Yes, well, I have many software projects that are well-known, so I am cursed with a good problem to have. I therefore must balance my ideology with pragmatism.

I was a little coy above. I said that I "release my code into the public domain to the extent possible." In practice, I dual license my code under the UNLICENSE (public domain, effectively) and the MIT. I do this because the UNLICENSE is unsuitable either because people are too risk averse for it or because public domain is for one reason or another not recognized in their jurisdiction.

I didn't elaborate on this in my original comment because it's not really pertinent. I think.

But yes, I can't put code out there without a license because I ultimately want people to use it. And I've made the mistake of using a license that people don't like to use before (the WTFPL). You do indeed get bugged quite a bit.

In the US, releasing code without a license means that the code is automatically subject to standard copyright. By the time that expires, no one will even be able to run the code anymore.

No one who believes in US laws, that is.

Not at all! In 90% of legal systems copyright applies automatically and not having a license makes your software closed source by default.

The concept of copyright existed long before software licenses and long before the (c) symbol.

It often applies automatically if you sing a song in a park, scribble an article on a napkin, paint a giraffe on your car - no matter how "casual" your artwork might seem.

> If you think laws and ethics are the same or should be

Well, there's two ways to do that.

I think we would agree that my ethics shouldn't change to match the law, because the law might be wrong.

But the law should change to match my ethics, if and only if my ethics are right. (Figuring out what ethics are right is left as an exercise)

So if I don't want my project to be used outside the terms of the AGPL, I don't see the problem with releasing it under the AGPL.

If you're against all forms of intellectual property you could just say that and clear things up.

But I'd rather not give up my IP rights before corporations do.

> If you're against all forms of intellectual property you could just say that and clear things up.

Yes, I am. But the validity of intellectual property isn't relevant to my argument in general I think. It just so happens to be true in my case.

I'm not sure laws should change to match our ethics to be honest. But I think that's part of the "deeper disagreement" I alluded to in my parent comment.

> I'm not comfortable legally enforcing that preference.

But licenses are not only for legal purpose, they also serve to communicate the authors preference for the prospective users. Of course you can communicate it otherwise, but using a common license is generally pretty easy way of doing it. But I think it is really important that the preference is communicated in some sufficiently clear and explicit manner.

I don't think I should have to say "don't plagiarize" me every time I publish something.

If I did do that, the funny thing is that it might end up having the exact opposite effect! Human nature and all that.

I think licenses communicate legal things. Some things, like copyleft, use copyright as a hack to inject its ethics into the legal system. But that's one specific and very intentional case, and is definitely not something that is commonplace among software licenses. (Typically, when people try to do it, it has a Not Good outcome.)

> I don't think I should have to say "don't plagiarize" me every time I publish something

No, but placing something to public domain is easily interpreted as explicit "please plagiarize", so it would be good to counter that message with something if that is not the message intended.

> but placing something to public domain is easily interpreted as explicit "please plagiarize"

I've never heard of anyone interpreting public domain as any such thing. Whenever I get an idea from the SQLite source code for example, I have never for even a single moment ever considered plagiarizing it.

If public domain were really treated as you say, then movies and TV shows about Sherlock Holmes wouldn't begin (or end) with "Based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." They'd just say, "Sherlock Holmes was conceived, written and created by Foo Johnson." But of course nobody does that, because plagiarism is unethical.

The majority of [A]GPL users I know are also uncomfortable with the legal system enforcing copyright, patents and trademarks.

And this is the whole point of copyleft: turn copyright around itself to ensure user freedom.

Yes, I know. And I've had that argument many times over the years. But I think that's separate from the topic at hand. The short story is that I don't agree with using the copyright system against itself.

The copyright system is always there and works regardless of your licenses.

You cannot "use" it or "not use it".

If you pick a "public domain" license, or MIT or WTFPL you

The copyright system is always there and works regardless of your licenses.

If you pick a "public domain" license, or MIT or WTFPL you are just building upon the copyright system in a different way than GPL or some other license or closed source.

You cannot "use" it or "not use it".

This has absolutely no relevance to anything I've said. I am pretty obviously not denying the reality facing us (in the US) that our legal framework for intellectual property is impossible to completely opt out of.

Please see my other comments in this thread for more details on my position.

What are your reasons for using public domain when this is apparently at odds with your principles?

It doesn't matter. The point is that it's not common sense to always use the legal system to enforce one's ethics. It's perfectly consistent to hold two mutually exclusive views: 1) I don't want to use the legal system to enforce things like who can use my software and 2) I have ethics that go above and beyond what's legal (I imagine most people do).

Sure, most humans have ethics that go above and beyond what's legal. But for-profit corporations don't, and they're growing more and more powerful. The legal system is one of the few ways of fighting that power.

That's a totally different argument than the one I responded to though. If that were the argument, I wouldn't have said anything.

Is it really plagiarism if you explicitly allow them to use and even sell your code, though? Also, plagiarism implies they don't give you credit and instead put their own name on it.

The definition of plagiarism isn't connected to laws, so yes, it is. Intentionally taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own is bad juju through and through.

And even if I kept my code under copyright with an attribution license, not all forms of plagiarism would necessarily violate the copyright. For example, ideas and facts generally can't be copyrighted, but one could imagine cases where they can be plagiarized.

So even if I did use a license that requires attribution, that only works insomuch as plagiarism is a violation of copyright. And as we all know, there is a ton of grey area there. But regardless of the grey area, the plagiarism itself is still unethical.

Some interesting bits are here: https://www.plagiarism.org/blog/2017/10/27/is-plagiarism-ill...

Are people passing it off as their work?

If I buy a copy of a wp theme and use it am I passing it off as my own work and would it be called plagiarism?

Is it really necessary to dig into a tit-for-tat war on definitions here? I think plagiarism has a plain enough meaning for my argument here. People can argue about special cases or the edges, but disagreement there needn't invalidate my whole argument.

Okay I get what you mean now, I looked at it from a legality POV. I agree with you that plagiarism might not be illegal but still unethical.

Why do you not just pick a license that forbids uses not compatible with your ethical standpoint, and chose to just not enforce the terms should they be violated? This way, companies are likely to respect your intent and preference and you don't have to make use of a legal system you don't support.

Just to pop up a level here, we're moving beyond my initial argument with the top poster here I think. I took issue with saying that it was "common sense" to use a license that prohibited things you didn't like. My argument is that you might actually intentionally not do that because there is nuance here that common sense shouldn't and couldn't paper over.

> Why do you not just pick a license that forbids uses not compatible with your ethical standpoint, and chose to just not enforce the terms should they be violated? This way, companies are likely to respect your intent and preference and you don't have to make use of a legal system you don't support.

I think that leads to a lot of grey area in terms of what people are and aren't allowed to do with my code. It also kind of presumes that I would ever try to enforce anything, which is itself not just an ideological decision but a decision to be made in light of costs and resources and will.

Since we're now getting deeper into what I personally do, I'll note that in practice, I dual license under the UNLICENSE and the MIT. I use the UNLICENSE because it's goal is to explicitly disclaim monopoly copyright interest while attempting to be a public domain dedication. I also add the MIT because some folks stopped using my code when I only used the UNLICENSE because they were too risk averse and wanted a more established license.

> I took issue with saying that it was "common sense" to use a license that prohibited things you didn't like

Not a good characterization of the argument. It's a matter of negative rights vs. positive rights. The original commenter's argument was cogent.

In copyright, the default is that no one has rights to your creations but you. In licensing it as open source, you're broadening what others can do with it. It's an active choice. If granting someone X could result in them doing X where they otherwise wouldn't, and you'd be uncomfortable with that, then don't go out and invite people to do X.

The hackneyed "common sense ain't so common" aphorism is certainly something to avoid though.

I don't see how that's not a good characterization. That's almost literally what was said:

> Yes, folks, if you don't like the idea of a corporation taking your ("software-as-a-service") code and using it to create and sell proprietary products, then maybe don't license your code under the MIT License (or any of the others which explicitly allow exactly that)!

As for:

> In copyright, the default is that no one has rights to your creations but you. In licensing it as open source, you're broadening what others can do with it. It's an active choice. If granting someone X could result in them doing X where they otherwise wouldn't, and you'd be uncomfortable with that, then don't go out and invite people to do X.

Well, I don't think giving people a legal grant to do X is inviting them to do X, especially in the context of permissive licenses or public domain dedications. Otherwise, you could accuse me of inviting people to do X for any value of X, no matter how pernicious.

> I don't see how that's not a good characterization.

For the reason just stated:

"It's a matter of negative rights vs. positive rights."

You're say the license prohibits certain things, which isn't true. It's copyright law that prohibits, by default, almost everything. Choosing a public license to make something FOSS is an active choice that selectively enables more use for people who follow the cultural and legal patterns you do like. That a person while doing so doesn't also enable even the uses one doesn't like is not what you're characterizing it as: an active effort to prohibit those things. Wide open, MIT-like permissive reuse is not the default.

I don't see what the "default" has to do with what I'm saying. That's just an artifact of the US's backwards intellectual property legal system. It has nothing to do with positive vs negative rights.

Bottom line is that laws and ethics aren't the same. A legal grant to do something (even if it isn't the default) doesn't constitute an invitation to do something unethical.

And I stand by my characterization. The parent post was literally talking about prohibiting things one doesn't like.

> I don't see what the "default" has to do with what I'm saying.

Indeed. Based on your other comments in the thread, it looks like you're committed to not understanding.

> The parent post was literally talking about prohibiting things one doesn't like

The parent post was literally talking about not talking extra effort to whitelist things they don't like. There's a real difference between that and what you're saying, and whether you want to acknowledge it or not doesn't change whether that distinction exists.

> it looks like you're committed to not understanding

Ah okay, so you're troll. Please don't bother communicating with me in the future.

> Since we're now getting deeper into what I personally do, I'll note that in practice, I dual license under the UNLICENSE and the MIT. I use the UNLICENSE because it's goal is to explicitly disclaim monopoly copyright interest while attempting to be a public domain dedication. I also add the MIT because some folks stopped using my code when I only used the UNLICENSE because they were too risk averse and wanted a more established license.

As an aside, an alternative to this dual licensing might be the 0BSD license: http://landley.net/toybox/license.html

It's on spdx: https://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html

It's approved by OSI: https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD

Available on choosealicense.com: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/0bsd/

Unlike the unlicense, google allows it: https://opensource.google/docs/patching/

Firstly, I am sooooo over Google's open source policy. I'm thankful that they document it, but it's just plain annoying.

Secondly, I use the UNLICENSE because it is an ideological statement. The 0BSD is not. Dual licensing with the MIT gives me a very small activist voice while also providing a practical option for the risk averse Googles of the world.

Enforcement of public domain is done through the legal system, as is all intellectual property enforcement (or unenforcement).

I'm well aware. That doesn't mean there isn't a difference between what's being enforced when you use public domain vs copyleft. Looking back, I guess you might say my wording may not be precisely correct, but I think its meaning is clear. If you took me literally, then I think the only consistent position at that point would be to never publish anything. Which is a border-line nonsense position I think.

So if you insist, I suppose change my statement from "not use the legal system at all" to "use the legal system to enforce as few things as possible given its current framework."

I think that it is precisely because you don't want to use the law to enforce your preferences that you should use copyleft in general and the AGPL in particular.

The real problem is copyright law. Copyright lasts for an absurdly long time, the DMCA which makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection is a threat to general-purpose computing, damages if you lose a copyright case can be astronomical and bankrupt anyone, copyright trolls sue people using stuff instead of using the copyrighted material to make anything themselves, etc.

Copyleft and the AGPL are a judo move that uses the strength of the copyright system against it. If enough stuff were under a strong copyleft license, maybe corporations wouldn't be so enthusiastic about the copyright system. Maybe they would rediscover the benefits of the public domain, since copyright expiring would also liberate copylefted content + software. Perhaps they wouldn't actually help reduce copyright, but they might not work so hard to stop efforts to do so.

I believe that the path to a stronger public domain leads through copyleft + the AGPL. Put your software in the public domain by reducing the power of copyright law, by shortening copyright term length, by reducing the number of things covered by copyright, by putting everything in the public domain, not just the software you control.

As I've said to others in this comment thread, yes, I'm well aware of this argument. But it's a tangent from what I'm saying I think.

I've had this position for well over 10 years. I know why copyleft exists, its philosophical history and how it's intended to use the copyright system against itself. But I disagree with doing that because I want government out of the business of intellectual property altogether and I don't agree with using the copyright system against itself to do it. Fundamentally, I'm opposed to the ownership of ideas at an ideological level, so I wish to relinquish as much of that ownership as I can in today's system. And that's public domain.

We could have a longer discussion, but like I said, this is totally distinct from the argument I'm making that it's not "common sense" to consider laws and ethics the same.

Apologies for the digression, I agree that law and morality are quite distinct.

I just think refusing to use copyleft is unwise on a strategic level. It smells like unilateral disarmament to me. If a warlord is rampaging through the countryside putting villages to the sword, it's not good enough to say, "Hey, I don't agree with stabbing people to death." It's great if you have a plan to stop the pillaging without stabbing anyone, but if you don't, then you need to consider plans that do involve stabbing, or at the very least fielding some stabbers. There may be times when all courses of action involve moral compromise, but inaction always favors the oppressor.

Do you have a plan for fighting copyright without using copyright? If yes, then I withdraw my objection. If not, then I ask you to consider whether using copyleft is better than nothing. The oppressive copyright system will continue doing damage without you.

I've never claimed to be a good activist. But when it comes to matters like these, when fighting deeply entrenched systems, I think they usually only fix themselves after a massive correction and that correction usually involves a lot of pain and misery. So I settle for education and generally passive resistance. I don't think copyleft on its own is going to fix anything.

Otherwise, I just try to behave in a way that is consistent with my ethics, while balancing practical matters. In this case, that means opting out of monopoly copyright interest as much as I can.

And can I just say, I really wish it were possible to have discussions about why ought to be without getting dragged into a tangent about how to get there. Like, we've gone from my taking issue with equating laws and ethics all the way to a critique of my weak activism in pursuit of demolishing the IP regime.

I agree with you 100%. I thought I was the only one who held that opinion.

So you would prefer the world where the idea of copyright isn't used for software at all (or something like that I hope). Of course, in that world anyone can do anything with it including things you may not like; a sacrifice you voluntarily choose to make. But that is (virtually) no different from what people could do today, in this world, by giving users (UN)license to do anything they want. From this perspective it seems clear to me why you choose to publish to the public domain, because the outcome is the same as it would be in the world you want. And with that, the fact that you are opposed to plagiarism seems almost immaterial; yes, plagiarism is bad but believing that something is bad doesn't equate to believing that there should be a law to restrict it.

Sure. Plagiarism is just an example to show how "common sense" can't be applied to licensing at the parent poster said.

> plagiarism is bad but believing that something is bad doesn't equate to believing that there should be a law to restrict it.

That is pretty much my point, yes.