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Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

From another site a user commented that it might have proprietary modifications to ffmpeg which is LGPL/GPL (I think?). Would a leak be considered to be distribution, could others legally take these modifications and merge them into the upstream project?

I imagine other free software might have modifications too.

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No. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#StolenCopy

But the source was not stolen, merely copied

An important distinction indeed. Intellectual Property theft will get you in much bigger trouble with the Feds than just stealing something does.

Hence the anchor being "#StolenCopy".

Leaked might be a better word. It was information that was supposed to be secret and became public.

Interesting! I'd never thought about those kind of cases. (I also like how nice and clear that FAQ is).

The IP issues with the leak are interesting. There's got to be some Stack Overflow copy/pastes, perhaps some variable name changed license violating code, and I wonder if patent trolls or even rightful patent owners can now sue based on how backend code works in a way where they had no way to sue if they didn't know how it worked from interacting with a frontend.

> patent trolls or even rightful patent owners

What's the difference?

But seriously, if it takes trolling through the code to determine that Twitch's math violated their special way of doing math that no one else should get to use, it's just more evidence that software patents aren't helping protect or encourage innovation (else the violation would have been apparent from using the service). It would instead clearly be a "hah, gotcha, turns out we patented the linked-list-inside-a-hashmap construction you've got going on here, pay up! Only we can put the Legos together in that way!"

The real fun begins when the leaked Twitch code makes its way into new SO answers for others to copy.

Or when GitHub copilot starts suggesting it lol.

The merger between copyright laundering and citogenesis.

Can you use GPL code internally (ie run your backend) if you never publish it?

I believe so, and this is why the AGPL was created:

> The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public.

> The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

So in theory, FAANG could make billions of a random person's GPL'd code and they'd never know.

Spoiler alert: vast majority of FAANG systems run on Linux, making billions for them.

Don't they also provide a lot of developer time through patches?

This is a common occurrence.

Modifications don't need to be shared back to the community if the software is used internally or behind a webserver.

amazon and google both created managed version of popular open source software like grafana and airflow and they are priced at a premium.

grafana is agplv3 but grafana the company has a deal with amazon to grant them a special licence

AWS did this with a bunch of stuff including Elastic.

https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS

The AGPL was created so that for-profit, not-free software can get free QA and put an open-source blurb on their landing page, be honest.

Let me add something to be clear. As I understand it, free software was always happy to let you or your company modify and use software for your own use. The philosophy was always about respecting the users of the software, so the licenses don't kick in until someone else uses it. The problem addressed by AGPL is that someone can use your software over a network connection without running it themselves: a loophole in GPL.

Yes. You only need to share your code (or send it if asked) to people who get your modified code. If nobody gets it, then nobody can ask you for it.

Yes, it is valid. Consider for example: If you are an embedded hardware company. You modify GCC to support a new target / platform. Then, you can compile C code and create binaries for your embedded hardware.

As long as GCC is not distributed, this is a perfectly valid use case for GPL'd software.

Less abstract: Facebook famously has massive internal patches for MySQL, which is GPL'd. And of course, Google has massive internal patches for Linux kernel, which is also GPL'd.

The GPL can't actually force them to license their downstream changes, just revoke their ability to use the upstream project if they don't, and sue for infringement for damages.

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