Comment by alekun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alekun | Hacker News Reader

> Instead of buying the hardware from me, they simply built their own devices. And because the software has a permissive open-source license, they were free to use it in their company without paying me anything.

> This is an extremely common problem in open-source. An open license helps people discover your product and encourages them to use it, but it also allows big corporations to profit from your work while offering nothing in return.

in the same way you do not contribute back to https://pikvm.org but you make profit from it

> It is my code… sort of. The freelancers who work on TinyPilot sign a contract saying that I own the intellectual property of code they contribute, but I also have accepted a handful of contributions from volunteer developers. My understanding is that developers who contributed free code technically co-own the copyright to TinyPilot’s code with me.

> I released TinyPilot under the MIT license because it gives me flexibility as well. I think I can “fork” the code myself into a different license and just say that it also uses MIT-licensed code, but I’m not totally sure how that works.

again, not true. Your code is based on someone else code, https://pikvm.org and you are making profit from it without contributing.

>Your code is based on someone else code, https://pikvm.org and you are making profit from it without contributing.

TinyPilot is not based on PiKVM.

I started the project before I was aware of PiKVM, and the PiKVM author invited me to check out his project.[0] That led me to uStreamer, the video streaming tool that PiKVM published. I use uStreamer under the GPL and keep all the code in a separate repo. That's the only component that TinyPilot and PiKVM share.

>in the same way you do not contribute back to https://pikvm.org but you make profit from it

I do contribute to uStreamer. I actively maintain the Ansible role[1], and I've also contributed financially.[2] I'm in regularly contact with Maxim about how we can work together.

If Maxim is unhappy with our arrangement, I'm happy to hear from him. PiKVM seems to have an odd contingent of fans who have taken it upon themselves to pop up whenever people are discussing TinyPilot to claim that I'm exploiting Maxim.

[0] https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/#borrowing-from-a-similar-proje...

[1] https://github.com/tiny-pilot/ansible-role-ustreamer

[2] https://github.com/pikvm/pikvm/commit/2eda123bba2b2d531b30f5...

1. Creating an ansible role is not contributing.

2. > PiKVM seems to have an odd contingent of fans who have taken it upon themselves to pop up whenever people are discussing TinyPilot to claim that I'm exploiting Maxim.

no, people speak-up when they see injustice, thank you for the free insult.

How is creating an Ansible role not contributing? What exactly is your gripe, if mtlynch isn't using PiKVM?

please check Brian_K_White comment, my english is not good enough.

Given that he spoke directly with the creator of pikvm, and talks about that in the first tinypilot blog post (https://tinypilotkvm.com/blog/build-a-kvm-over-ip-under-100) I doubt that what you're saying holds water.

I don't think TinyPilot is copying any GPL code from pi-kvm. Feel free to post evidence to the contrary.

I don't know the specifics of how TinyPilot is supposedly based on Pi-KVM, but seeing how the all Pi-KVM repositories seem to be licensed under GPL 3.0[^1] even distributing his code under MIT seems potentially legally problematic. See the "same license" clause of the GPL 3.0 for derivative projects and projects even just using GPL 3.0 code.

This is of course only relevant if the above comment is correct and TinyPilot actually derives from and/or uses code from GPL 3.0 licensed parts of the Pi-KVM project. I do not know if this is the case.

[1]: https://github.com/pikvm/pikvm/blob/master/LICENSE

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