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Comment by fjfbsufhdvfy | Hacker News Reader

Someone taking advantage of all this excitement to get people to download malware sounds like a very reasonable fear, especially if the software is not coming from a known and reputable person/business.

No one's saying you can't release closed source software - but of course other people are free to be afraid of running it as well.

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What’s more, I believe it is possible to release code with a closed license, permitting analysis without allowing derivative work.

Edit: IANAL but here’s a resource:

> You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license. The Open Source Guide provides additional guidance on choosing the correct license for your project.

From https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...

Ok, but again, why should I, or even Richard Stallman, be bothered about this? I couldn't care less, as does Richard, I assume..

I have the feeling OP feels left out because of closed binaries and thinks he should be entitled for everything based off Stable Diffusion __should__ be open source.

OP asks how we should deal with this, but there's nothing to deal with actually.

I believe any developer should be free to release things in the way they please. In fact some people might prefer an easy executable file. However, I do reserve the right to be suspicious and consider any such file as potentially malicious. There are some ways to deal with it, including using a virtual machine. I was just wondering if anybody else had a better idea.

It's 2022. If people using the internet don't know about "downloading malware can be considered harmful", then something is wrong with these people. I mean, it's like "using a knife can cause harm": that's obvious, right? So (most) people use knives with care. Software should be used with care as well (i.e., don't execute executables from shady sources in your personal machine).

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