[HN Gopher] TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS
Author : cwaffles
Score : 1049 points
Date : 2021-12-17 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| greatjack613 wrote:
| China, China, China, China
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| China doesn't give a flying f*ck about your software license LOL
| majani wrote:
| Something tells me that TikTok has somehow managed to get
| people to forget their country of origin
| londons_explore wrote:
| The commitment[1] appears to say, in summary, "you can violate
| the license anytime, and as long as you stop violating soon after
| we tell you to, there can be no financial penalties".
|
| That makes the GPL _substantially_ weaker, since now a company
| can use GPL code in any place they think nobody will look. They
| will never be on the hook for court ordered damages going back
| years for unlicensed use.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-
| studio/blob/master/COMMITM...
| zinekeller wrote:
| > That makes the GPL substantially weaker, since now a company
| can use GPL code in any place they think nobody will look. They
| will never be on the hook for court ordered damages going back
| years for unlicensed use.
|
| In OBS' case, maybe. But OBS' developers' generosity doesn't
| automatically translate to other developers, and even in
| proprietary cases, there have been cases of a exact-copy
| contract that have gone significantly different ways.
| phkahler wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the GPLv3 limiting the available response to
| copyright violations. Time limits in particular. It's one of
| the less clear parts of the license IMHO, and it affects the
| primary means of enforcement.
|
| Fortunately a lot of GPLv3 code is actually 3+ so maybe if a
| version 4 ever comes along this nonsensical restriction on
| enforcement will be more limited. I do understand the reasons
| around accidental misuse, but I haven't really seen anyone
| getting into big trouble from accidental misuse. I have seen
| these high profile cases of deliberate misuse by big
| corporations.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| I'm not personally a fan of protecting against accidental
| misuse. No other law offers significant leniency for
| ignorance that I am aware of.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I am very much in favor of laws that offer leniency for
| _procedural_ violations. For example, I believe "You built
| this building before you got a permit to build it"
| shouldn't be a crime - there should only be a punishment if
| I cannot retrospectively get a permit in a reasonable
| timeframe.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| This is a common misconception. I don't know about US law
| but in English law (including contract law) there is a well
| defined distinction between "wilful" and "non-wilful"
| misconduct that rests upon whether a violation is
| intentional. Definitionally violating a contract or clause
| that you are ignorant of cannot be intentional. I know in
| the US the same concept of wilfulness is used in the
| context of tax law at the very least.
|
| tldr; in law ignorance is a defence, or at least a
| mitigating circumstance.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| It's almost like licensing is completely pointless unless you
| have the money to sue.
| tobltobs wrote:
| Enough money to sue the CCP.
| o_p wrote:
| They could simply make a library with the OBS code, open source
| that and dynamically link it into their app.
|
| Forcing copy-left doesnt really benefit the open source
| community, those who already want to contribute will do so
| without contract obligations.
| dangerface wrote:
| It seems like OBS is the opensource software every uses but has
| no idea because it gets ripped off and repackaged so much.
| endisneigh wrote:
| People expecting OBS to get millions from this are naive. Almost
| certainly TikTok will change the software to just use OBS
| independently to avoid the issue.
|
| If OBS wants money they should use a dual license.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| did anybody say OBS wanted millions?
|
| > Almost certainly TikTok will change the software to just use
| OBS independently to avoid the issue.
|
| this is a perfectly acceptable outcome.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Nobody says they want money. They likely just want the GPL
| violation to stop, one way or another.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| And yet it could be argued that TikTok saved millions they'd
| otherwise have had to pay to produce or license equivalent
| software.
| Trumpi wrote:
| I imagine that OBS merely want others to abide by their
| license.
| oolonthegreat wrote:
| apparently OBS devs don't want to share direct evidence yet and
| resolve it privately probably due to their GPL Cooperation
| Commitment. while I'm sure we all appreciate that, it would be
| nice to see the decompiled binaries and the exact violations,
| just so we can explicitly point them out and argue.
|
| I find it VERY easy to believe that Tiktok are indeed in
| violation, but right now all we have are statements and a 302
| redirect to Microsoft Directx download page.
| AustinDev wrote:
| So people that have ripped off OBS so far and violated GPL
| include TikTok, StreamLabs (Logitech), and StreamElements. Any
| other people I missed?
| kiddico wrote:
| I didn't realize streamlabs was logitech. Damn. Going to have
| to find a new go to wireless keyboard recommendation for media
| pcs instead of the k400.
|
| Should also stop singing the praises of the Pro Superlight...
| remram wrote:
| You just recommended both of them... Off to a bad start...
| dodgepong wrote:
| Streamlabs and Streamelements have not violated the GPL.
| the-dude wrote:
| How did StreamLabs violate the GPL?
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| The OBS project has accused StreamLabs of copying their name
| and stealing their trademark (By naming their software
| StreamLabs OBS). I'm not sure about any source code thievery.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| SL rebranded SL OBS to SL Desktop. They seem like another
| corporate FOSS mooch IYAM.
| r1ch wrote:
| Streamlabs violated OBS' trademarks, their fork has always
| complied with the GPL.
| AustinDev wrote:
| There were 6 to 12 months iirc where they did not
| distribute their source required by GPL. I have close
| friends on the OBS team.
| wccrawford wrote:
| If nobody asked for the source and was denied, they were
| not yet in violation. They aren't required to actually
| post it online. They can simply send it to someone when
| asked.
| jnwatson wrote:
| They are required to post the notice about how to get the
| source code.
| wyldfire wrote:
| They did post a notice....
|
| "But the plans were on display..."
|
| "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to
| find them."
|
| "That's the display department."
|
| "With a flashlight."
|
| "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
|
| "So had the stairs."
|
| "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
|
| "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the
| bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused
| lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the
| Leopard."
| [deleted]
| Liquix wrote:
| Hopefully this is high profile enough to incur some
| consequences. GPL is ironclad on paper, but the sad reality is
| unscrupulous/international companies can and do just copy code
| directly off github into their products with no repercussions
| tomcooks wrote:
| Consider donating to the EFF as a Christmas present to
| yourself
| oalessandr wrote:
| The EFF lost all credibility by jumping into the crypto
| bandwagon
| remram wrote:
| What did they do?
| reedciccio wrote:
| eff doesn't do license enforcement. Software freedom
| conservancy is the organization to support in this case:
| https://sfconservancy.org/
| fsflover wrote:
| https://fsf.org as well.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Unless a major contributor of OBS sues, nothing will come of
| it. That's unfortunately very rare, the only one doing that
| with any frequency seems to be Harald Welte (one of the
| iptables developers) [1]
|
| 1: https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases#W
| el...
| nsv wrote:
| Couldn't the FSF sue on their behalf?
| rrix2 wrote:
| On what grounds? The FSF has no standing to sue like
| that. The software freedom conservancy has lawyers who
| will work on copyleft infringement cases like this but a
| copyright holder still has to step forward as a
| plaintiff.
| trickstra wrote:
| And now they can also claim it was just autocompleted by
| Copilot.
| libeclipse wrote:
| That's not plausible
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Hey, just because it would get laughed out of court, that
| doesn't mean they can't claim it!
| randomluck040 wrote:
| I'm not so sure about it being laughed out of court
| unfortunately.
| donkeyd wrote:
| Can concur, courts don't know jack about tech and have to
| rely on experts that aren't always independent.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Rebutting the argument doesn't rely on tech knowledge.
|
| "But, your honour, I didn't copy this person's book! I
| used the autocomplete on my phone, and it just so
| happened to produce their 500 000 word novel!"
|
| You need tech knowledge to think that's even _plausible_.
| Sure, they wouldn 't dismiss it _out of hand_ (I think
| "laughed out of court" is a figure of speech), but I
| wouldn 't be surprised if it got a few giggles.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Using a tool to violate copyright isn't a valid legal
| defense.
| detaro wrote:
| StreamLabs afaik kept clear of GPL violations?
| pshushereba wrote:
| China stealing intellectual property? If only we could have seen
| this coming!
| BusyLurker3K wrote:
| This is a horrible take. A Chinese company stealing IP is very
| different from China stealing IP. Google was caught using IP
| from Sogou for its pinyin IME, but we don't say America
| stealing IP.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >Sogou for its pinyin IME
|
| What does it mean?
| criddell wrote:
| ByteDance is partially controlled by the government so I
| don't think your Google analogy is a good one.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/beijing-t.
| ..
|
| https://qz.com/1788836/targeting-tiktoks-privacy-alone-
| misse...
| rackjack wrote:
| Basically every major Chinese company is partially
| controlled by the Chinese government. (Not trying to
| detract from your point, just providing context.)
| pphysch wrote:
| Do you honestly think Washington doesn't exercise similar
| influence over Google? That Google can just throw NSLs in
| the spam folder? What do you think Jigsaw is?
| xvector wrote:
| Why are people downvoting you? You are 100% correct about
| NSLs and gag orders. This is one of the biggest issues
| the EFF focuses on: https://www.eff.org/issues/national-
| security-letters/faq
| throw10920 wrote:
| They are not correct about NSLs - the level of control
| exercised by those is not even remotely comparable to the
| level of power that the CCP holds (and exercises) over
| Chinese companies. Nobody thinks that NSLs don't exist,
| it's just that they're not comparable to the issue at
| hand.
|
| And, in particular, the US government does _not_ either
| possess or exercise the power over US companies to coerce
| them to steal IP from other countries - which is the
| issue under discussion.
| pphysch wrote:
| What can I say, I'm attempting to add nuance and scrutiny
| to what is a black-and-white issue for most of HN.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Yes.
| pphysch wrote:
| Well, you've been misled.
|
| https://transparencyreport.google.com
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| If they're equally influenced by their national
| governments, perhaps you can also direct us to
| ByteDance's own transparency report, so we can compare?
| pphysch wrote:
| That would be moving the goalposts. We're concerned
| whether companies are de facto influenced by governments,
| not whether those companies produce PR material about
| said influences.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| "You are moving goalposts"
|
| _proceeds to move goalposts_
|
| ByteDance doesn't issue such reports because everyone
| knows they cannot refuse a request by their government.
| Any report that says otherwise would be, as you say, "PR
| material".
| trasz wrote:
| Same way US-based companies can't refuse gag orders and
| other kangaroo "secret courts".
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Moving goal posts would be more like claiming that,
| because we have evidence Google cooperates with the US
| Government for some investigations, the US Government has
| similar influence and control over Google as China does
| over ByteDance, without any scrutiny or review of the
| severity of China's influence on ByteDance.
|
| Also, to the very point you bring up... recipients of an
| NSL can file a legal challenge to an NSL which would
| trigger a judge to have to review the request. NSL's also
| do not allow the government to request all sorts of data,
| but mostly direct PII and service metadata. NSLs are
| problematic but I seriously doubt any comparative limits
| apply to Chinese agencies' requests for data from
| ByteDance.
| pphysch wrote:
| Bottom line: virtually all large (tech) companies are
| influenced by governments. They will surveil you on
| behalf of your government. Period.
|
| Any attempts to muddy the waters for ideological point-
| scoring are beside the point. If you want to dig deeper,
| please bring evidence instead of speculation.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| In the original comment you responded to, the CCP put a
| party member in the ByteDance board of directors.
|
| The CCP is also known to enforce censoring government
| critical speech on their platforms including TikTok. http
| s://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-.
| ..
|
| National Intelligence Law also allows the CCP to request
| from businesses any data unlimited in scope without a
| warrant or possible recourse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of...
|
| It's not ideological; one clearly exerts more control
| than the other, by an order of magnitude. To say the
| surveillance, censorship, or control on businesses are
| similar because Google has complied with some government
| requests (the only evidence _you_ have provided) is naive
| at best, or disingenuous at worst. Of course the US
| performs intelligence gathering on its citizens or
| foreigners for national security. The difference is the
| scope, oversight, and recourse businesses in the US have.
| pphysch wrote:
| > The CCP is also known to enforce censoring government
| critical speech on their platforms including TikTok.
|
| Donald Trump? Jan 6? Julian Assange? Chelsea Manning?
| There are countless examples of USG censorship. Just
| because you don't ideologically agree with the victims
| does not absolve the act of censorship.
|
| > National Intelligence Law also allows the CCP to
| request from businesses any data unlimited in scope
| without a warrant or possible recourse.
|
| Do you _really_ believe that Washington doesn 't have
| this same power? That they will just go "oh well, guess
| we can't investigate this national security crisis
| because Google said so". That's clearly ridiculous.
| Washington has the power and resources to break into
| datacenters if compelled.
|
| > It's not ideological; one clearly exerts more control
| than the other, by an order of magnitude.
|
| It is clearly ideological (a priori, CCP = bad) and you
| have not demonstrated that one is vastly more controlling
| than the other.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| American tech companies _can_ say no to data requests,
| they often do. Then they publish the details of those
| requests, publicly.
|
| Chinese companies not only can't say when such requests
| were made, they cannot reject them either. Every Chinese
| firm must give all their data to the government, at all
| times, for any reason (which will remain secret of
| course).
|
| The fact that you are trying to, as you say, "muddy the
| waters" (amazing the amount of projection you do) with
| conflating the two might work as an augmentation tactic
| (maybe fool a person or two), but logically it is
| unsound.
| throw10920 wrote:
| One of the parent comments in the chain that you wrote
| said "Do you honestly think Washington doesn't exercise
| similar influence over Google?"
|
| Note the "similar".
|
| You then amended your point to "virtually all large
| (tech) companies _are influenced_ by governments ", which
| is completely different than _similar levels of
| influence_.
|
| Nobody cares that governments have _some_ level of
| influence over companies - that 's a feature, in fact,
| because some regulation is necessary for markets to work
| - the issue under hand is _exclusively_ whether the level
| of control is excessive. (and, in this specific thread,
| whether "A Chinese company stealing IP" is comparable to
| "China stealing IP")
|
| That's moving the goalposts.
|
| (the answer to that last question is "yes" - the Chinese
| government does, in fact, use Chinese companies to steal
| IP from other countries (including, but not limited to,
| the US, Japan, and parts of the EU), while the US does
| not)
| pphysch wrote:
| If only you (and others) would be as pedantic about
| verifying claims made by the Washington
| establishment/media about "the evil See See Pee" as you
| are about winning internet arguments.
|
| It is impossible to have a practical discussion on these
| issues when one side unironically believes China is a
| Mordor-esque land ruled by comic book villains. Totally
| misinformed.
|
| Anyways, the level of influence _is_ similar. If the
| Washington wants my private data from Google, they will
| get it. No amount of wishful thinking and handwaving
| about "well Google could say no, but bytedance will
| definitely comply because reasons" will change that.
| throw10920 wrote:
| You _completely_ ignored the points that I made, and
| instead chose to pontificate about things completely
| irrelevant as a distraction from the fact that you did,
| indeed, move your goalposts, and couldn 't come up with
| any counter-arguments to the fact that:
|
| The Chinese government does, in fact, use Chinese
| companies to steal IP from other countries, while the US
| does not and cannot.
|
| Irrelevant chaff that you have attempted to throw up:
| "would be as pedantic about verifying claims" "winning
| internet arguments" "one side unironically believes China
| is a Mordor-esque land ruled by comic book villains"
| (yeah no) "If the Washington wants my private data from
| Google, they will get it" (also no)
|
| > If the Washington wants my private data from Google,
| they will get it
|
| > the level of influence is similar
|
| As someone who works _with the US government_ , I can
| verify that both of these statements are _factually_
| false. (and, again, still a diversion from the actual
| topic under discussion which is _governments compelling
| companies to engage in IP theft_ )
|
| It is non-trivial (in the legal sense) for the US
| government to get the data of a single US person, and it
| certainly cannot do it en-masse, nor force companies to
| hand over all of their data unencrypted, both of which
| are things that the CCP can (and does) do. Therefore, the
| levels of influence are not similar. End of argument.
| pphysch wrote:
| Are we at that point?
|
| _Blah blah blah, brainwashed government contractor doing
| PR for his paymaster..._
| criddell wrote:
| Yes, I honestly think Washington doesn't exercise similar
| influence over Google or other American companies.
|
| CNN likes to pop up a PIP view of what's being broadcast
| in China when they talk about things that embarrass the
| Chinese government. When they start talking about Peng
| Shuai it takes about two seconds before the Chinese
| broadcast becomes a test pattern.
|
| When's the last time you saw a test pattern when watching
| a foreign news channel?
| pphysch wrote:
| If you want to uncritically believe everything US
| establishment media says about enemies of the US
| establishment, that is your problem.
| criddell wrote:
| Where did I say that? Keep in mind that I'm not saying
| the US government has no influence, but it isn't anywhere
| close to what the situation in China is.
| [deleted]
| fortuna86 wrote:
| I think he's changing the subject to what he wants to
| discuss, what he thought this conversation was about the
| whole time.
|
| Happens a lot in online discussions.
| throw10920 wrote:
| The US government does _not_ either possess or exercise
| the power over US companies to coerce them to steal IP
| from other countries (or companies thereof), which is the
| issue under discussion (despite attempts to redirect it).
| Neither NSLs nor Jigsaw give them that power. These are
| facts.
| pphysch wrote:
| Characterizing a Ctrl-C Ctrl-V of a publicly available,
| open-source codebase as _government-coerced theft_ is
| hilariously overdramatic.
| Lhiw wrote:
| If you think the CCP doesn't have a hand in every major
| company or export you're naive.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pshushereba wrote:
| My comment doesn't meet any of this criteria. The original
| article was about a Chinese company's unauthorized fork of
| OBS. It's semantics whether or not you consider an
| "unauthorized fork" as stealing, but I certainly do.
|
| So it's neither unrelated or a generic tangent, as it relates
| to intellectual property theft. It's beyond question both
| that China as a country is known for stealing intellectual
| property, and that Chinese companies work closely with the
| CCP.
|
| In the introduction of The Wires Of War by Jacob Helberg, he
| cites a statistic that estimates that "Chinese theft of
| intellectual property costs Americans anywhere from $225
| billion to $600 Billion every year..."
| c0balt wrote:
| Not like US companies would be any better. They usually just
| take more care of hiding it, cause you know, cause you know
| lawsuits.
| adventured wrote:
| US (and European) companies are typically a lot better about
| it, precisely because they fear lawsuits, they fear the
| consequences.
|
| China and its large companies don't fear lawsuits the way US
| corporations do. That's how Jack Ma was able to steal Alipay
| from Yahoo shareholders and laugh all the way to the bank,
| there were no consequences to worry about. It's why Yahoo
| capitulated in dealing with Alibaba as a major shareholder,
| they knew the end result would have been their ownership
| stake could just be zero'd out at any time. That's why China
| can arbitrarily point at Didi and tell them to delist,
| regardless of what it does to foreign shareholders - there's
| nothing to worry about, there will be no meaningful
| consequences.
|
| You can't get at them domestically if they don't want you to,
| because they're a nation that operates by the shielded,
| arbitrary dictate of the CCP rather than laws, and nearly
| everyone is afraid of their retaliation (including the
| richest corporations in the world like Apple).
|
| Nobody much fears the US will retaliate the way China does.
| That's why the EU has been pounding US tech companies with
| mega fines, and wouldn't dare behave that way toward China.
| It's why the green virtue signalers are so very scared to
| publicly lambast China, and they'll harangue the US and EU
| all day. It's why the NBA will intentionally ignore any and
| all atrocities of China (they're intensely terrified to utter
| even the slightest of negative words toward China), yet they
| have almost zero fear of jabbing the US 24/7 - it's because
| for the most part nobody is afraid of the US.
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| The Swedish bank oligopoly once illegally used Moxie
| Marlinespike's GPL code in their closed-source app:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/moxie/status/530252445725642752
|
| They even refused to get in touch. Why would they when they
| have most Swedish political parties in their pocket? And
| that's in one of the world's least corrupt countries.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > Why would they when they have most Swedish political
| parties in their pocket? And that's in one of the world's
| least corrupt countries.
|
| Political parties in your pocket literally defines
| political corruption.
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| I don't think this is unique to China lol. Organisations around
| the globe steal IP all the time.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Until they get caught.
| randomluck040 wrote:
| It won't change if it's not prosecuted.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In what court that protects IP and has jurisdiction in
| China would one file that lawsuit?
| randomluck040 wrote:
| Good point and as expected, I have no idea. The question
| is if I have to file the lawsuit in China. My knowledge
| of law goes towards zero so I can't even ,,armchair
| lawyer" it. However, the question would be if it was
| possible to file the lawsuit in a country where TikTok
| has a headquarter.
| [deleted]
| symlinkk wrote:
| It happens a lot more in China though
| [deleted]
| KoftaBob wrote:
| It's not unique to China, but it's particularly prolific in
| China. One of the major reasons for the US tariffs against
| China was pressure for them to actually respect IP.
| pphysch wrote:
| That is the official story. Obviously, though, it's really
| about kneecapping PRC's rapidly growing high-tech
| industries and "containing China's rise".
| jetsetgo wrote:
| Like American companies leeching off immigrants is any
| different
| [deleted]
| a2tech wrote:
| Well not illegal. It looks like they need to acknowledge and
| include the OBS license.
| 1_player wrote:
| Not only the license, the source code as well. The GPLv2
| license exists for a reason.
|
| """
|
| These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for
| you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify
| it.
|
| For example, if you distribute copies of such a program,
| whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all
| the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too,
| receive or can get the source code. And you must show them
| these terms so they know their rights.
|
| """
|
| https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/COPYING
| NeutronStar wrote:
| Illegal until then.
| [deleted]
| Rygian wrote:
| If they are not already acknowledging and including the OBS
| license, then it's already in breach of the license (ie.
| "illegal" in the informal sense that you used).
| [deleted]
| h2odragon wrote:
| So will all those outlets that had "Trump's social network is
| violating the GPL" stories be jumping on this with equal fervor?
| Considering they didn't cover the _compliance_ with the GPL that
| "truth social" (awful name) did, I think we can safely assume
| they won't.
|
| That said, TikTok using and backing OBS makes perfect sense, the
| terms of the license aren't onerous and everybody benefits. "Open
| source works like its supposed to" isn't a eyeball grabbing
| headline tho.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Are they technically obligated to provide the source code online,
| or could they just say: "Well it's available on request, and no
| one has done so"? The just mail out a USB stick or DVD to anyone
| who asks?
|
| I believe that's with in the limits of the GPLv2.
| throwhauser wrote:
| Sure but then couldn't whoever receives the USB or DVD post the
| source code someplace more convenient? I'm not sure what that
| "workaround" would accomplish.
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's much worse for them actually. They're obliged to offer
| this for _no more_ than the cost, unlike a typical "cost
| plus" basis on which they could profit even minimally - and
| yet they're also obliged to fulfill _all_ orders from
| _anybody_. The offer isn 't valid only for whoever you gave
| binaries to, it's an offer to _any third party_ that 's what
| the requirement says.
|
| In the CD era, it _might_ have made sense to go with written
| offer if the source is far larger than the binary you ship
| (e.g you ship a 500MB game on CD, but the source would be
| 1400MB so that 's like 3 CDs, ugh) and you're happy to
| periodically pay the office intern to burn some source CDs
| and post them off for the inquisitive customer who asked for
| them.
|
| In the Internet era it definitely doesn't make sense. Just
| pop a link to the source next to the binaries and don't sweat
| it.
|
| Unless, of course, you have no intention of complying anyway.
| r1ch wrote:
| It's designed to discourage people from exercising their GPL
| rights. If they push code every day and the only way to get
| the most updated code is to pay for a CD to be mailed to you,
| it becomes quite tiring to keep an up to date online copy.
| dodgepong wrote:
| GPLv2 requires you to either distribute the source with the
| binaries, or provide the recipient information on how to obtain
| the source code. It also states that providing a link to the
| source code next to the binary download on your website is
| sufficient. See GPLv2 section 3 for more details.
|
| TikTok have not provided a link to its source code, not are
| there instructions on their site or within the download package
| indicating where users can obtain the source code. Therefore,
| it's a violation.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Yep. "available on request" is perfectly allowed, there's no
| requirement that it be on a publicly available webpage.
| teddyh wrote:
| No, the offer of source code must be _explicit_ , not just
| available if anyone happens to ask.
| r1ch wrote:
| The binaries must be accompanied with an offer of the source
| code. There is no mention of source code anywhere during the
| download, install or execution of TikTok Studio, nor any offer
| inside the application folder or similar.
| mrweasel wrote:
| That makes sense, they need to let people know how to obtain
| the source code.
| paxys wrote:
| Not strictly enforcing license terms only deteriorates the
| standing of the license. A tweet or blog post is fine, but unless
| someone is willing to take TikTok to court over this the takeaway
| is clear - violate GPL if you want and nothing will come out of
| it.
| xwdv wrote:
| This is exactly how licenses work. If there isn't some entity
| willing to take people to court for instances in which the
| license is violated, it will have no teeth and people will
| steal and use licensed code with glee.
| dvt wrote:
| How can you be so inept that you're literally stealing software,
| but are too incompetent to properly obfuscate it?
| entropie wrote:
| Right? They are not even trying.
|
| Probably there is also a little spike in the logs of
| obsproject.org which could lead to some investigation.
| 1_player wrote:
| Thieves are known not to be smart. If you're smart enough,
| you'll know that stealing probably isn't worth it.
| EGreg wrote:
| Some people on HN make fun of "code is law", but in this the "law
| about code" is hardly enforceable internationally. Putting the
| snark aside - let's at the broader picture !
|
| Web disrupted journalism, cable, tv, radio, magazines, newspapers
| and made it permissionless across geographic boundaries
|
| Smart contracts can do the same for finance, voting, banking,
| legal enforcement and more
|
| The question here is, can we enforce copyright without the threat
| of force (like SWAT teams taking down a grandma or Kim DotCom)
|
| And do we need artificial scarcity at all, as seems to be the
| case now with NFTs and metaverse?
|
| These are major topics andI can't do them justice in a small text
| comment. For whoever is interested, explored these topics and
| Internet economics in our recent episode of the Intercoin Show:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=72kaDtfuIG4
|
| If you don't want to have scarcity for digital content but still
| want to get paid at scale, here is another approach that is
| completely web based: https://qbix.com/token
|
| Ignore the token part and look at the iframes part. Would love
| feedback:
| vmception wrote:
| "Right click and save as" jokes not looking so funny anymore?
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The original Tweet (embedded one from HunterAP) says TikTok
| installs OBS and uses it in the background with a TikTok front-
| end. It doesn't say that they've illegally forked it.
|
| EDIT: See comments from OBS developer below for a more clear
| explanation of the issues than the linked Tweet
| platz wrote:
| the developer installs obs and copies its dlls into a new app,
| not the user.
| yorwba wrote:
| > The original Tweet (embedded one from HunterAP) says TikTok
| installs OBS and uses it in the background with a TikTok front-
| end. It doesn't say that they've illegally forked it.
|
| It does say "illegal fork" below HunterAP's username and above
| the screenshot.
| r1ch wrote:
| OBS developer here. It doesn't "install OBS in the background".
| They ship several executables as part of their software that
| contain code derived from OBS and there is no offer of source
| code. They're currently in violation of the GPL, but per our
| GPL Cooperation Commitment we are trying to work this out with
| them privately.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification.
|
| Is there anywhere where this is written up more clearly? Even
| on Twitter? Would be good to circulate a more clear
| explanation of what's going on.
| r1ch wrote:
| Not at the moment, we're trying to resolve it in private.
| Similar to how the Streamlabs situation unfolded, we don't
| want to "go public" until all other options have been
| exhausted, though it's looking like this choice may be out
| of our hands.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| The use of the word "illegal" seems problematic if this is a
| contractual dispute over (GPL) license terms. No one _seems_ to
| be claiming that TikTok actually committed a criminal act
| (although, perhaps they did, if this was intentional as it
| appears, and TikTok is engaging in criminal-levels of
| distribution. Not a lawyer, so just speculating here.)
|
| It probably would have been better if the OP had said "violated
| the license agreement".
|
| Still, many other companies have eventually caved under GPL
| lawsuits, but apparently none in China; probably because it's
| virtually impossible as a foreigner to win a tort case against a
| Chinese company.
|
| https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The use of the word "illegal" seems problematic if this is a
| contractual dispute over (GPL) license terms
|
| No, it's not.
|
| > No one seems to be claiming that TikTok actually committed a
| criminal act
|
| "Criminal" is not the same as "illegal", the latter includes
| any violation of law whether or not it is criminal.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| This definitely looks like egregious and apparently
| intentional infringement, but violating the GPL is not
| violating a law in most countries; it's violating a license
| agreement. Contracts are not law. Therefore, violating the
| GPL by itself probably isn't illegal (but it could probably
| become illegal if other statutes, like CFAA or RICO were
| brought into play.)
|
| If I violate deed restrictions on my property by building a
| shed, then that wouldn't be _illegal_ per se; it 'd simply be
| a breach of contract and the _private_ organization could sue
| me for redress.
|
| But, if I built that same shed in the middle of a public
| street, then that might be illegal and the city might have me
| arrested and prosecuted.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is not violating a law; it's violating a license
| agreement. Contracts are not law.
|
| _Following_ legally-valid contracts outside of any
| legally-valid excuse is law, which is why breach of
| contract is a cognizable legal cause of action.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > This definitely looks like egregious and apparently
| intentional infringement, but violating the GPL is not
| violating a law in most countries; it's violating a license
| agreement.
|
| If they're not following the license, then aren't they
| breaking copyright laws?
| nnvvhh wrote:
| Not complying with an open source license can be enforced as
| copyright infringement rather than a contractual dispute.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Please cite an example. Most countries' copyright law tips
| civil license agreement disputes back into the civil courts,
| not criminal, with relatively few exceptions.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > The court disagreed that Neo4j granted a naked trademark
| license, pointing out that the open source licenses granted
| to third-parties on the open source software repository
| were copyright licenses, not trademark licenses. Users of
| the open source version of the software did not have any
| right to use the Neo4j trademark without a separate
| trademark agreement. Naked licensing does not occur where
| there is no trademark license.
|
| Neo4j used GPL by the way.
|
| https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/articles/open-source-
| so...
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| > OBS is free for anyone to use, for any reason. Other developers
| can use the OBS code in their own projects as long as they obey
| the guidelines set forth in the GPLv2 license. OBS has no
| watermarks or other limitations and can be used commercially with
| no restrictions.
|
| So I guess there's nothing wrong with that.
| dtech wrote:
| It depends on how they integrated. GPLv2 requires that TikTok's
| version is either GPL-compatible itself (I doubt it), or they
| use OBS as an external program.
|
| _edit_ This comment [1] claims GPL code is compiled into their
| non-GPL program, which is a huge no-no
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592556
| jmcs wrote:
| It would depend if Tiktok Editor is legally considered a
| derivative application or not. If it is, then it's in breach of
| GPLv2.
| neyme wrote:
| I've always wondered if these license are legally enforceable.
| What if TikTok ignores the criticism and does nothing. Do the
| developers sue the company and will they get any money?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| They could try to get money but they could also try to get a
| cease and desist order to compel them to stop if they don't
| even post suit. Not sure if that means violating is criminal or
| anything but means you're ignoring a court order which is a big
| no-no legally.
| [deleted]
| nunez wrote:
| Damn two big names stealing from OBS in one year! It is great
| software, though; I can see why companies would go that route.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I think it's useful for developers to have a rough mental model
| of how open source licensing works, as it's not that complicated
| yet affects what you can legally do, both as a user of open
| source software as well as as a contributor.
|
| Coincidentally I recently did a Twitter thread on it, in case
| anyone's interested. I know not everyone like the medium, but at
| least it's also posted on Mastodon, so there's that:
| https://fosstodon.org/@VincentTunru/107382356640669971
| nick__m wrote:
| There is less correct but funnier comparison. It's a cartoon
| comparing the various licences as if they were a dad:
| http://www.wtfpl.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/wtfpl-strip....
|
| TikTok probably tought that OBS was licensed under the WTFPL ;)
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Could GPL include a clause such that, when abused like this, the
| code of the offending app would become GPL code as well?
|
| Imagine people start "stealing" TikTok code, TikToc sues, and now
| the defendant has their day in court to defend the GPL, at
| TikToks expense.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| In almost all cases, TikTok's offering would be considered a
| derived work because you cannot swap out the OBS part for another
| and still have it work. So they are likely in full violation
| unless they agree to open source all their code.
|
| Seems like a pretty open and shut case to be honest - that is, if
| they intend to pursue legal action and the powers that be rule
| appropriately.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Like others have said though, any derivative works of OBS must
| also contain the same GPL License. It was pointed out in that
| thread that Reddit also forked OBS for their live steaming but
| they didn't get into hot water because they followed the rules
| and open sourced their software like the License required them
| to.
| dathinab wrote:
| Given that it only affects a beta client they could:
|
| - pay damage for the violation the the client, given that's
| only beta that would likely not amount to much
|
| - and stop the beta program, while replacing their OBS
| dependency with something completely different.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I'm out of my depth here, but what makes you say they can't
| swap out the OBS part for something else? Do you mean they
| can't swap it without modifying the rest of the code, or can't
| swap it at all?
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| If they swap it out, they have to build code which does
| exactly the same/ has the same interface. It can still be
| considered a "derived" work. I'm not a lawyer but that was
| what op meant.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I'm not sure, that sounds a lot like the Oracle v Google
| argument on whether an API is copyrightable.
| onphonenow wrote:
| To hell with this open source stuff then, the STUPID idea
| that these interfaces are copyrightable is total garbage.
|
| That said, we should be able so sue open source developers
| - a fair bit of open source is reverse engineering
| interfaces (drivers, ACAPI, power management and more). If
| this violates the copyright of the underlying proprietary
| firmware - bring on the lawsuits!
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Chinas whole economy is built on illegal copying, who is
| surprised? Not me.
| zfxfr wrote:
| So concretely what are the risks they encours ?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Open source software license should include a clause saying that
| it is mandatory for commercial users to pay a certain amount of
| contribution annually, let's say 0.01% of gross revenue?
|
| So if they find it too expensively they can simply turn away and
| build their own, which is good for whoever get the chance to do
| some lower level programming, and if they find it OK the open
| source authors/maintainers can get some good money. It's a win-
| win. Of course this might request open source authors/maintainers
| to form a more rigid organization (how to share the profit).
| ghaff wrote:
| Then it's not an open source software license.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| I suspect you're conflating Free, Libre, and Open-Source
| Software. The first can be free (as in beer), the second free
| (as in you can do whatever you please with it), and the last
| is that the source is publicly available.
|
| GP's proposition would be Open-Source, but not FLOSS IIUC
| andrewshadura wrote:
| You are mistaken. All three terms have the same meaning.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general people use the open source definition and the
| licenses approved by the OSI as what defines open source.
| These don't allow you to discriminate based on usage, such
| as commercial use. (If you own the copyrights, you can dual
| license under both an open source and a non-open source
| license of course.)
|
| "Source available" or "shared source" licenses are not
| generally considered open source.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Open source software is a name for free software which was
| intended to make it sound less ideologically loaded. Libre
| software, on the other hand, is a name for free software
| intended to make it less ambiguous while preserving
| ideology. Anyone who claims otherwise is either: a) trying
| to be an ideological purist fighting with those not
| following their ideology to the maximum, or b) trying to
| mislead you to try and devalue the terms, or has been
| misled by (a) or (b).
| ghaff wrote:
| The impetus for the term was supposedly that people kept
| being confused the distinction between free as in beer
| and free as in freedom/libre. However, to your point, one
| suspects that some prominent people like Tim O'Reilly
| latched onto "open source" as a less ideologically-
| aligned term.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| the goal of free software is _freedom_.
|
| money has nothing to do with any of it.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| You can have both IMHO.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| sure but they're not compelled by the license itself. They
| are compelled to pay for the software in the form of hiring
| developers to work on it, donating to the foundation behind
| it, etc. Companies like Red Hat have done this very
| successfully for a long time because they prefer to keep
| the supply chain feeding the lifeblood of their enterprise
| healthy.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Maybe a dual license then?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Is it clear whether it's a "fork" (i.e. the entirety or a
| significant portion of the code is used in the derivative work),
| or whether they just found some utility snippet in an open source
| project and forgot to wash it?
|
| Also isn't TikTok Chinese?
| oliwarner wrote:
| It's concerning how many self-labelled software engineers on
| Twitter are chipping in with comments like "it's open source so
| it's fair game" or "they just need to add attribution".
| koonsolo wrote:
| Maybe it's a generational thing. In the olden days, Open Source
| was basically GPL. But nowadays, Open Source is basically BSD.
|
| So I get it that all the npm developers don't really consider
| that some licenses might be restrictive.
| yumraj wrote:
| Probably they are employed at companies who are themselves
| violating GPL and have seen this being done there.
| delusional wrote:
| How do you think companies end up violating GPL. Maybe
| sometimes it's a heartless executive, but a lot of enterprise
| software devs are completely unconcerned with licenses. If
| they can get their hands on it, the license doesn't matter.
| tombert wrote:
| I think a lot of software engineers nowadays write server
| software, where they can often be somewhat allowed to be
| unconcerned with licenses [1], since the actual binary
| produced from the code lives on the server, and is
| typically not distributed outside the company.
|
| As a result of this, I think there's this mass
| misunderstanding of how licenses work in the software
| engineering field.
|
| [1] With the exception of AGPL if I understand correctly.
| LambdaTrain wrote:
| A lot of companies do not hire software engineers to
| implement the system; instead, they contract it to third
| party (tech service companies such as Cognizant). I think
| some sort of auditing is done at the delivery, if they
| concern about the license. But in the context of Java web
| app, the enterprise software is usually built on
| dependencies under APA, so it should be of less concern
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I had a senior dev at a past job who did this constantly.
| And when it was found out how much he actually stole, our
| entire team was laid off and replaced by the company that
| did the audit.
|
| He just refused to believe that software licenses were
| real. That and I dont think he could actually code anything
| from scratch without stealing large swaths of code from
| open source repositories.
| midasuni wrote:
| He can believe the GPL isn't real all he wants. In that
| case how did he justify breaching copyright law?
| trulyme wrote:
| > I had a "senior" dev...
|
| Ftfy.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| His resume seemed to back up his claim. Not sure if it
| was real, though. HR called every one of my past
| employers and my references, so I figured they would have
| followed up on his, too.
| trulyme wrote:
| Yes, I know the type - I have met a few of "senior" devs
| that were anything but. I can imagine their past employer
| didn't even know their true worth, or lack of. Sorry you
| had that experience.
| vkat wrote:
| Copy/paste without attribution to license or permission
| is more blatant.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Organizationally he was given free reign to do whatever
| he wanted, and that lead to the entire teams downfall. He
| canceled code reviews... for himself. Well, he actually
| stated, all code reviews go through him, thus he "code
| reviewed" his own code. I remember he was once a few
| weeks late on delivering a basic landing page, and when
| it finally got to QA at 9pm on a Friday, our entire team
| was forced to work the weekend and QA gave me a TFS
| export of more than 200 defects I had to fix because he
| was unreachable. Needless to say, our entire team was
| upset we all got laid off, but also relieved because we
| all ended up in better jobs. At least everyone I've
| talked to, which is everyone but him, as he has never
| responded to a single text message or email since he quit
| after the layoff (he refused severance, and just walked
| out), all his socials went off line, and any record of
| his name has disappeared from the internet. I'm fairly
| certain he was a conman, but I have no way of finding
| out.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Maybe hired by a competitor to tank the company
| intentionally? I would not put it past many big companies
| to do something like that.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| That takes some skill. I was almost duped like that by
| someone we nearly hired for a sales position, which is
| much easier to fake for a few months, especially working
| remote.
| vkat wrote:
| In all the enterprise companies I worked for we are drilled
| with required learning and assessments which often include
| training on software licenses. The aim of these training is
| devs to keep an eye for license and defer to someone higher
| up if in doubt. These processes are manual and catch only
| so much.
|
| In companies with mature software processes there is always
| tooling that will block a release if it finds unacceptable
| license. To me it looks like TikTok hasn't properly
| invested in tooling and this somehow slipped.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Enterprises of even modest size take it very seriously.
| They'll be juicy targets to go after. It's everything
| between startups to midsize companies where this is not
| clearly defined. Just ask the VCs who do due diligence.
| Almost everyone of them will audit your licenses before
| they invest. One of the things they ask for is the list
| of libraries you use and their licenses.
| fhfhrhfjfjfhfh wrote:
| Helo Eros sacke
| rectang wrote:
| As a open-source-license expert dev, in the past I've
| been able to offer a lot of value to my employer by
| assembling that list in such a way that the buyer could
| have high confidence in our audit of dependencies.
|
| This doesn't protect anybody against illegal copy-pasta
| by ignorant/irresponsible devs, though.
| bahmboo wrote:
| We couldn't ship software until we cleared every bit of
| code flagged by a tool that scanned our code for open
| source. Most of the hits were for projects with a safe
| license and there were many false positives but all in all
| it was a great step in our static code analysis. I find it
| astonishing that a company of any size would skip this
| step.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Well, TikTok is a Chinese company, so it seems safe to
| assume that it's just part of the culture ?
| criddell wrote:
| It might not be like this everywhere, but in the US all
| software engineers are self-labelled. It's not like medical
| doctor (MD) or professional engineer (PE) where the title
| actually implies some license to practice.
| oliwarner wrote:
| But you can be considered a software engineer by your peers,
| usually demonstrated through qualification and professional
| experience.
|
| The differentiation I was trying to draw with those two words
| is: I don't know if they're actually working software
| developers or people who just hack on code in their free
| time. If they're professional devs, that's obviously much
| worse.
|
| Honestly, not the part of that I was expecting to have to
| discuss.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Common misconception, but Software Engineer is actually a
| licensed profession in many states (with vague industry
| exemptions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineeri
| ng_professio...
|
| But virtually nobody does it. The NCEES even abandoned their
| Software Engineer licensing exam a few years ago because
| nobody was taking it.
| hhh wrote:
| Lightly glancing it seems like there are hard requirements
| for a college education for some of these. That's a hard-
| stop for many (including myself.)
| dnautics wrote:
| yeah, that's fine. You should call yourself a software
| developer (or, as I call myself, a software plumber). An
| software engineer, minimally IMO, is someone who can 1)
| produce a software BOM, and 2) can craft an SLA. I can
| _maybe_ do 1, and can 't do 2. So, I don't call myself a
| software engineer.
| tata71 wrote:
| Even if you had a degree, working in this field should
| teach you it's not a requirement.
| voakbasda wrote:
| This does not deserve to be downvoted. A degree is
| secondary to actual talent. Too many students in my
| graduating class were undeserving of their degree, and
| plenty of folks can do the job without it.
| criddell wrote:
| > Software Engineer is actually a licensed profession in
| many states
|
| Last time I looked, I couldn't find any. Some states tried
| for a while, but I think they all gave up.
| 88j88 wrote:
| Looks like they stopped offering exam to license people:
| https://www.nspe.org/resources/pe-magazine/may-2018/ncees-
| en...
| anthk wrote:
| In Europe being an engineer has civil accountability on
| issues.
|
| You can be fined really high if you hire a self-called
| engineer without a proper degree. Or at least decades of
| alleged experience in the field.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Especially without the accountability. Call yourself a
| software engineer? Did your code break? Is it vulnerable
| to exploits? What was the damage? Did you ship it knowing
| it was not fit for public usage? Congratulations! you're
| no longer allowed to program for a living and the state
| is suing you and your employer for damages.
| saghm wrote:
| I think part of the problem is that compared to more
| traditional forms of engineering, software engineering is
| still really young and not as rigorous. Right now,
| _nobody_ can write code without any bugs it in
| whatsoever. If we banned people who wrote buggy code,
| pretty soon we'd have no software engineers left.
| Regardless of whether you think that's a good idea, it
| seems pretty clear that at the very least there is a lot
| of demand for programmers, so it's unlikely the industry
| would get behind limiting that further in such a drastic
| way.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The issue is not banning, rather lack of liability.
|
| Even the cook at the bistro on the corner is liable if
| the food, cleaning or refrigeration isn't as it is
| supposed to be
| criddell wrote:
| > If we banned people who wrote buggy code
|
| That's not the standard for any kind of engineering.
| Professional Engineers make errors all the time. But they
| also design systems with fail safes, redundancies, safety
| factors, etc... You design systems with the expectation
| that failures will happen. Users will do stupid things.
| Highly improbably sequences will probably happen.
|
| Not all code needs to be designed so carefully. Nobody
| cares if Hacker News is offline for a few hours. But the
| software systems in self driving cars or running an MRI
| machine probably should be designed by licensed
| professionals who can stand up to their bosses and say
| "this can't ship until these improvements are made"
| because if it does ship, they can be personally sued for
| malpractice and lose their license.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| Well, yes, this applies to engineering. But not to
| software engineering.
|
| Personally, I like ,,software engineering" as it is --
| being a free profession where talent counts more than a
| degree.
| mcguire wrote:
| What's talent got to do with it?
| winphone1974 wrote:
| The degree is part of the training of an engineer, not
| the professional designation itself. The challenge with
| our current understanding of the title software engineer
| is that practitioners are not held to the same standards
| and responsibilities as other engineering fields. It
| doesn't have anything to do with talent.
| mcguire wrote:
| * not held to any standards and responsibilites.
|
| FTFY.
|
| Cynically, Me.
| paxys wrote:
| You can only be held to some standards if there exist a
| common set of standards that the entire industry can
| agree on. This is impossible for software.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It surely does, e.g. in Portugal you can't even name a
| Software Engineering degree without approval from the
| Order.
|
| You are not required to do the exam, provided there is no
| civil liability or signing projects as the legally
| responsible Software/Informatics Engineering.
| anthk wrote:
| >Well, yes, this applies to engineering. But not to
| software engineering.
|
| Good luck with that here.
| criddell wrote:
| > talent counts more than a degree
|
| Are you saying for MD or PE that talent doesn't matter?
|
| Anybody can say they are a software engineer. The title
| means nothing.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Yes. A degree matters much more than talent. If you can
| get a degree you can practice. The most talented person
| in the world with no degree can't.
|
| Some people go to places where their low talent but high
| cash flow allows them to get a license.
| mcguire wrote:
| Oddly enough, I don't think I'd care to visit a medical
| professional whose sole virtue was talent. I'd kinda
| prefer some knowledge and skill, too.
| criddell wrote:
| Okay, so for an MD a degree is necessary that's true. But
| an MD with a degree and no talent probably won't be an MD
| for long.
|
| MD at least means something. "Software engineer" means
| nothing.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| There are a lot of incurious paint-by-numbers doctors in
| the US. Doing your job by rote won't get you fired.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Once you are an MD unless you challenge powerful forces
| in your association or hospital you are free to practice
| bad medicine as long as you can stay within some
| reasonable guidelines around billing and when to order
| tests. This gets exposed with surgery but is a lot easier
| with a GI doctor.
|
| They both mean something. You have to dive in to get the
| real scope regardless. If you just need a title for your
| commerical MD would carry more weight around diet
| products and a developer around a new software offering.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| It has been many years since After The Gold Rush was
| published and we are no closer today than we were then. At
| some point software engineering will be a real profession but
| I doubt anyone will take action before some huge catastrophe
| pushes the issue.
| duped wrote:
| I don't like the idea of gatekeeping, it's hard enough to
| hire people.
|
| In the US we don't really have licensing for engineers
| (there is PE, but it's not anything close to ubiquitous). I
| think it's one of the best parts of our engineering/tech
| culture.
|
| You're an engineer based on the skills you employ to solve
| the problems you do, not because some body of people gave
| you a slip of paper that says you can employ those skills
| to solve those problems.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| In the US, PE has made it so the word "engineer" is
| legally protected, like "doctor". No one enforces it for
| software, so I wonder if it's even enforceable anymore.
| But the law is there.
| simplestats wrote:
| In some fields of engineering PE is pretty nonexistent.
| Some people come from other degrees (like math, physics)
| and call themselves engineer without difficulty. But
| engineering fields require a much more narrow and deep
| set of skills. generally the key classes to learn those
| skills come at the end of three or four years of
| prerequisite classes, so it's a pretty high barrier to
| starting without doing the degree.
|
| In programming you can learn your way to advanced skills
| while getting paid. Once you know roughly one class worth
| of basics there's valuable contributions you can make, at
| least if you are decent at figuring things out on a
| computer.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Not enforceable. Or at least entirely winnable in court.
| Such a victory happened recently in Oregon:
|
| https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-
| traffic-li...
|
| TL;DR: such restrictions violate your freedom of speech.
| indymike wrote:
| Hate using this preface, but, unpopular opinion follows:
| The issue in the US is that the word engineer has been in
| common use to describe technical workers for a very long
| time. I've had friends who were:
|
| * Engineers (and operated trains) * Manufacturing
| Engineers (who were really equipment techs) * Sanitary
| Engineers (who were really trash truck drivers) * UX
| Engineers (who were really web designers) * Software
| engineers (programmers) * Data Engineers (kind of dba-
| ish, maybe) * Culinary Engineer (restaurant kitchen
| designer)
|
| Genericide has occurred. The boat sailed.
|
| When the real estate industry wanted a word for "licensed
| seller of property" they had to make up a new word
| "Realtor" and protect that with a certification mark. The
| engineering industry really needs to do the same thing
| instead of harrassing the garbage truck driver, computer
| programmers and the guy who fixes the conveyor belt.
| clarge1120 wrote:
| Gatekeeping in the software industry is a surefire way to
| slow down innovation. Software would stop eating the
| world, or only take a bite every couple of decades.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Sure because there is no innovation across the
| engineering fields.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| > At some point software engineering will be a real
| profession
|
| I'm rooting for the same, finally we will earn like
| management /s
| criddell wrote:
| I think you are right and it's too bad. There are some
| fields that should have it.
|
| For example, the software for self-driving cars should be
| signed off by a licensed engineer before it is allowed to
| go live. Many mechanical and electrical parts of the car
| have been designed by licensed professionals, why not the
| software?
| dognotdog wrote:
| One can verify and sign off on computations that
| approximate the physics or chemistry that will occur in a
| structure or machine, as a well established chain of
| procedures exist to go from crude formulaic
| approximations to micro or, if necessary, nano-scale
| simulations of electrical, mechanical, and chemical
| processes, and we know what to look for.
|
| I don't think the same is true for software
| "engineering," as it seems that all possible forms of
| process can be subverted and cargo-culted, from agile
| methods down to code checking. Certainly there is room to
| remedy some shortcomings, but SWE definitely is the
| engineering discipline least based in physical fact.
|
| The physics behind simulating the buckling of a structure
| is always the same, we can just choose more or less crude
| approximations of it, but SWE in general seems a lot more
| diverse. I can implement that simulation in assembly or
| some scripting language, and attach various bits and
| pieces to it to manage users and data; deploy it across
| the cloud if need be. But, there isn't a singular, time-
| invariant optimal path to achieving that, and what is
| true today may not be true tomorrow. One can work off
| basic principles, like the Agile Manifesto, but how can
| you quantify or even certify this shifting landscape?
| grandchild wrote:
| Having studied both mechanical and software engineering
| at uni, I feel that you _can_ make the parallel between
| the two. It's just that in mechanical engineering we've
| converged a lot more over time. Out of convention and
| need for accountability much more than necessity. For
| example, for mechanical calculations we have converged on
| using mostly the same algebraic notation (never mind
| having minor differences here and there, such as in
| vector notation). Having an obscene amount of different
| notations, some so different that they are for the most
| part unintelligible to half the engineers out there, that
| would be unthinkable in ME, but is the norm in SE.
|
| The _physics_ of a buckling structure may be always the
| same. But already the modelling techniques are far from
| obvious consensus: Do you do it analytically? Do you use
| FEM? BEM? Then there are a bunch of simulation
| techniques, i.e. for numerical integration, which you
| could use, much like you could use functional or
| imperative programming or OOP or whatever else.
|
| So if we were to behave more like the _software_ branch
| of the engineering discipline in general, then we'd have
| a _much_ tighter space of languages that would be at all
| acceptable for any work deemed critical, like medical,
| administrative or aeronautical software.
| mirker wrote:
| I agree you can make software rigorous like in ME. The
| part which is hard is that debugging or proving
| properties about a program is much more difficult than
| writing the program. These costs are currently hard to
| amortize over multiple projects. Real-time systems have
| some of these facets (e.g., spacecraft).
|
| For example, a memory allocator can be studied in the
| usual algorithmic sense or perhaps how they impact the
| stability of the system under randomized load. Can you
| prove the system remains stable? Yeah. Is it worth it
| when you can reboot machines and add some heuristics? No.
|
| Currently, the big places which are getting any attention
| for verification of functionality are embedded
| applications and OS kernels. Even then, the depth of
| verification is limited to common bug categories.
| zardo wrote:
| > Many mechanical and electrical parts of the car have
| been designed by licensed professionals, why not the
| software?
|
| Maybe some companies have some internal requirement for
| that, but generally speaking that's not true. Legal
| requirements for review and approval by a PE only apply
| to building drawings.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Engineer is a legal term in some place where a degree is
| required in engineering.
|
| The term developer doesn't require a license neither does CEO
| or board member or president of the US.
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I wish "software engineer" meant something.
|
| There are CMU/MIT grads using the tittle alongside 3 month
| bootcamp grads.
|
| I also have to wonder, with the owners of Tik Tok really being
| ByteDance (Zi Jie Tiao Dong ) if the dissrespect for IP really
| isn't cultural.
| paxys wrote:
| The title isn't what's important, it's your skills and what
| you can do with them. The MIT grad and 3 month bootcamp grad
| both have the same opportunity to complete and prove
| themselves, which is unique to the software field. Lack of
| artificial barriers and gatekeeping is the very reason why
| the industry is able to thrive.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592556.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| In many jurisidictions "Engineer" is a licensed and regulated
| title, and their professional organizations have tried to
| regulate it, but lost the war. We know have actual engineering
| programs that focus on software and 6-week bootcamps graduating
| people who claim to be "Software Engineers", so add it to the
| list of appropriated words right next to "Geek".
| lainga wrote:
| The attitude on (mostly American) HN is against licensing
| bodies, as far as I've seen in the past.
| tata71 wrote:
| If you saw, or were exposed to, how many thousands of
| dollars and hundreds of hours it takes native professionals
| to get licensed to do hair braiding or cutting, you'd be
| disenfranchised, too.
| lainga wrote:
| Native professional like native-born American?
|
| In my case I pay about 300 CAD a year to EGBC and have
| not heard from my colleagues that getting a P.Eng in BC
| is a significant time-sink. You have to have 4 years of
| work experience, get your work certified, and then do a
| couple exams. I would believe dozens of hours, but not
| hundreds.
| emaginniss wrote:
| Right, "geek" should go back to the original definition: a
| person who bites the head off of a chicken in a carnival
| show.
| mometsi wrote:
| And he is a foole, a sotte, and a geke also, Which
| choseth a place vnto the same to go, And where diuers
| wayes lead thither directly He choseth the worst and
| most of ieopardie
|
| https://www.otago.ac.nz/english-
| linguistics/tudor/BarcEclogu...
| mikeryan wrote:
| So, I'm unclear on this if, and I don't know if this is true,
| TikTok just creates a UI that "execs" commands to an unmodified
| OBS executable cli - What is their actual responsibility here?
| pavon wrote:
| They are distributing the OBS executable, therefore they have
| an obligation to also distribute the source to those same
| people on request, and to let them know about their rights to
| receive the source under the GPL.
|
| If OBS really is running standalone, then that is the extent
| of their responsibilities. If on the other-hand, OBS is being
| combined with other software to create a derivative work,
| then they must distribute the full source of that derivative
| work as well. What constitutes a derivative work is more
| complicated. It is ultimately a decision for courts, though
| many folks (including FSF) have opinions on what should and
| shouldn't be considered a derivative work.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Most likely that's the reason of OBS' code ending up in
| TikTok's product. Some engineer disregarded the license with no
| insidious intention to steal.
| throwhauser wrote:
| It's reminiscent of people adding "no copyright intended" (sic)
| when posting other people's music online. It seems like
| intuitions about copyright have been shifting, even if the law
| hasn't.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| No, it's that no one assumes the MIT License is the default
| one that every open source project ever uses.
| slantyyz wrote:
| > It seems like intuitions about copyright have been
| shifting, even if the law hasn't.
|
| I think people actually know it's wrong and legally
| questionable.
|
| I believe they do it because they simply want to do it and in
| the back of their minds, hope adding some bogus disclaimer
| will let them get away with it... because other people seem
| to be getting away with it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I think people think it's legally wrong but not morally
| wrong, and so they add a bogus disclaimer hoping that they
| can get away with it because other people have.
| minimaxir wrote:
| At the least, the internet eventually realized that "you must
| delete your video game ROMs within 24 hours of obtaining
| them" is not a valid legal stance.
| ludamad wrote:
| Oh that jogs forgotten memories.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Anyone remember that disclaimer some pirate websites used
| to have where they said something starting with something
| like "On October 28, 1998, President Clinton signed into
| law the Digital Millennium Copyright Act", and the
| disclaimer went on to mention some DMCA exceptions like
| learning and teaching or something? Always gave me a
| chuckle. As if saying that the DMCA does not apply for
| you is enough to make it actually so.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| There are subtleties not captured by this quick overview which
| are not fully understood by (in my experience) the _vast_
| majority of programmers:
|
| https://choosealicense.com/licenses/
|
| If your project is going to be "real" (e.g., not some personal
| throwaway), you really need a lawyer if you are including
| anything other than MIT. Even Apache can be problematic when it
| comes to patenting.
| gus_massa wrote:
| What about BSD?
| [deleted]
| krylon wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but the (2-clause) BSD and MIT licenses
| look nearly identical to me. The wording is slightly
| different, but I think they express the same intent.
| znpy wrote:
| > self-labelled software engineers
|
| are you implying there should be requirements to label yourself
| as an engineer? like a degree in engineering ?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| This is already a thing in the US.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| citizenpaul wrote:
| TikTok is in China. There is no such thing as illegal forks
| their. Half their economy is based on stealing IP and mass
| producing it cheaply.
|
| Any laws or legality is just lip service to shut up companies and
| governments that complain.
| leodriesch wrote:
| The American operations of TikTok have to follow American law
| and have to follow orders given by an American court.
|
| They will then have to comply or leave the American market.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Hope there is a multi-million dollar pay-off for OBS.
| jaywalk wrote:
| OBS is willing to work with TikTok to get them into compliance.
| That would either mean open-sourcing the software or paying for
| a license.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| At this point, it's not even clear to me that paying would
| rectify the legal issue with respect to the GPL. It's an
| amalgamation of source contributions over time. Any one
| contributor could, in theory, refuse any consideration other
| than an open sourcing of the software.
|
| Of course, now I think about it, that could be an easy
| problem to fix. They say every man has a number.
| ghusbands wrote:
| Almost all relicensing efforts are actually most hindered
| by not being able to contact people. If you can't contact
| someone who holds the copyright to something, you can't
| change the licensing rights over it.
|
| A lot of projects have copyright assignment, to allow for
| relicensing. They typically ask for you to assign copyright
| to them or to a company they control, so that they can
| still relicense as they see fit, in future.
| dodgepong wrote:
| It's worth noting that if someone can't be contacted, the
| maintainers aren't out of luck yet. If the contribution
| is deleted (and then possibly reimplemented later by
| someone with whom the project _is_ in contact) then the
| issue is resolved. It can be a lot of work, though,
| depending on the size and importance of the contribution,
| and reimplementing the code in a way that doesn't derive
| from the original submission can be difficult or
| ambiguous.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Is there a way to buy oneself out of GPL license? I beleive
| there's not.
| kaetemi wrote:
| Yea. Pay someone to write it from scratch.
|
| Basically, it's practically (not ethically) fair game to
| use GPL in commercial software, until someone catches you.
| The only repercussion that the license provides is that
| your license is revoked until you resolve the violation
| (for the first violation).
|
| Meanwhile, you got to release your product, and by the time
| you got caught you've had enough time to implement it
| yourself.
| Vinnl wrote:
| The authors of the software can create an additional
| licence that they could buy. Of course, that gets more
| difficult if there are many different, hard-to-contact
| authors.
| bragr wrote:
| It's worth noting that this is why many commercially
| minded projects require you assign copyright to them
| before they'll accept your contributions.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That's not the only repercussion. They can sue for
| copyright infringement and there can be large fines.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Not a lawyer but seems like source projects would have a
| hard time showing damages since they don't charge for the
| software.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't believe you need to demonstrate specific damages
| for a copyright infringement case in the US. You only
| need to demonstrate two facts: that you are the
| legitimate holder of the copyright, and that the other
| party did in fact infringe.
| VRay wrote:
| It's pretty funny that corporations can levy a multi-
| million dollar judgement against a single mother for
| pirating a CD, but then when the tables are turned, it's
| no big deal
| vlovich123 wrote:
| As others have said, penalties are not related to how
| much you charge for the product itself. For example, when
| you start illegally distributing music your penalty won't
| be retail cost * number of copies. There's multipliers &
| things that get applied. Basically your judge/jury will
| figure out the damages amount after you're found guilty
| (assuming you don't settle).
|
| This also makes sense when you factor in that retaining
| lawyer services to prosecute the infringement costs time
| and money (not to mention the court's time & resources to
| handle the case).
| drran wrote:
| Suppose, I'm an author of GPL software. I think that my
| code costs $1M. I expected that if someone uses my
| software, according to license, then he will release his
| software under same license for me. Now, somebody used my
| $1M project in his $100M project in violation of my GPL
| license. My losses are $100M.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| You can legally dual license if you have ownership over all
| the code in question. This is common for open source
| industrial software; pay for a different license so you can
| embed it in a closed source project. The GPL doesn't
| restrict you from offering the same code with a different
| license _if you own it_.
|
| Often the issue is that some projects don't require
| contributors to sign over copyright ownership as part of
| contributing. So you have a project that's licensed
| uniformly, but each contributor still owns their individual
| contribution. Unwinding this after the fact can be a
| nightmare, as it involves either finding every contributor
| and asking them to sign over their code, or manually
| removing every bit of code you don't own as a project.
|
| This is why a lot of bigger projects require you sign a
| contributors agreement that assigns copyright before you
| can contribute to the main repo. Doing this in advance
| saves the project a lot of headaches down the road if dual
| licensing is deemed useful. This is true even if you want
| to license under two different open source licenses, as
| only the copyright holder can change the license.
| wolrah wrote:
| The GPL itself offers no such option, but if the copyright
| holder(s) choose to they may offer whatever alternatives
| they choose. Many significant open source applications are
| offered under this model such as MySQL.
|
| The catch is that the more copyright holders there are the
| more likely it is that someone who has contributed a non-
| trivial part of the project will not agree, in which case
| their work would have to be removed/replaced to allow for
| relicensing.
|
| Large projects that have not required a CLA from
| contributors are effectively impossible to relicense.
| throwaway934876 wrote:
| The authors can re-license right, even for one (paying)
| customer? They could also pay for the promise not to sue?
| IANAL.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Only if the project owns the copyright or otherwise has
| been granted such powers in their contribution agreement.
| Otherwise, no. They'd have to get approval from every
| autho/rewrite the code they don't have a license for to
| provide a copy that isn't GPL.
| daptaq wrote:
| I remember reading that it should be able for users to
| sue instead of the author, if they cannot ccess the
| source of GPL'ed software.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I'm fact it's only the users who have standing to request
| the source. The author's have standing to sue for
| copyright infringement.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Not at all true. It's copyright infringement if you're
| not following a license contract, of which the GPL is.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The GPL contract only says you have to distribute source
| to the users you give binaries to. The only people who
| can ask for said source are the people receiving those
| binaries and the only people who have standing to sue
| when that doesn't happen is the copyright owners.
|
| That's why you can use GPL software in your private CI
| system and not need to give anyone the source code.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I see I misread your comment. My apologies.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Class action settlement?
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _That would either mean open-sourcing the software or
| paying for a license_
|
| no, in general it means TikTok rewriting those portions of
| the software themselves
| myself248 wrote:
| So they can just steal until they get caught, make a
| bazillion bucks, and get off scot-free if they write their
| own code after getting caught?
| dodgepong wrote:
| Paying for a license would be nearly impossible, as the OBS
| team would need every contributor to sign a CLA to give the
| OBS team the rights to relicense/dual-license the OBS code
| base.
| azeirah wrote:
| Would be nice if the contributors could get some money for
| it
| telesilla wrote:
| The result would be hundreds of OBS closed source clones
| that do not contribute back to the project. It would be a
| disaster.
| Xylakant wrote:
| As long as they all pay a reasonable license fee, I don't
| see a disaster. The OBS project could then pay developers
| to build open source features that benefit all. A lot of
| the forks would likely contain features that are not if
| interest to other users anyways.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592556.
| msarrel wrote:
| It ends up being close to impossible to enforce these licenses.
| Shubhi_29 wrote:
| Tiktok is ban in India
| soheil wrote:
| How do we make sure people invoking China-stealing-intellectual-
| property-yet-again don't pile on this thread? If this is a case
| of a company wrongfully using IP we need to very much have a
| discussion about that topic alone.
| [deleted]
| sophacles wrote:
| Why? What's wrong with pointing out a pattern?
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I hope they donate to the OBS project at least...
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Doubt
| mthrow_123 wrote:
| I worked at a medium size software company in New York and our
| team lead would always say "Why make what you can take?" when
| referring to finding open source code and running with it,
| regardless of licensing or anything.
| nneonneo wrote:
| The actual Studio app is in beta and is only available to a
| select group of testers. If you're on the list, you can grab the
| installer from https://tiktok.com/Studio/Download.
|
| If you're not on the list, like me, you can go to a cached
| version of that page, find the JS code that retrieves the
| download links (https://lf16-tiktok-web.ttwstatic.com/obj/tiktok-
| web-us/tikt...), hit the API that serves up the download links
| (https://tron-sg.bytelemon.com/api/sdk/check_update?branch=ma...)
| and grab the download links to share with everyone (the files are
| identical, these are mirrors):
|
| https://lf16-live-studio.tiktokcdn.com/obj/tiktok-live-studi...
|
| https://lf1-ttcdn-tos.pstatp.com/obj/tiktok-live-studio/6974...
| andrew_ wrote:
| I'd like to see HN shy away from posting twitter threads as news.
| There's almost always a hard link to the source material, and
| twitter threads are filled with emotional, truncated, nuance-
| lacking, trite clips that more often than not do little to
| promote healthy discussion of a topic. The goal of quality here
| really is noble.
| platz wrote:
| sometimes thats where the news is
| Kinrany wrote:
| Including this case. The "original" original is a Discord
| message.
| jjulius wrote:
| >There's almost always a hard link to the source material...
|
| Do you have a hard link to the source material in this
| instance? As far as I can tell[1], there isn't an article about
| this yet; the only results at the time of this comment are
| about how TikTok will be allowing "OBS-like streaming" soon.
|
| In lieu of an actual article or blog post about this, what
| would you suggest people link to if not a Twitter thread?
| Should an issue not be discussed whatsoever if it's only on
| Twitter?
|
| [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=tiktok+obs&source=lnms&tbm=n
| ...
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| > There's almost always a hard link to the source material
|
| I don't think that's true. Twitter threads, like it or not, are
| the medium for a great deal of original insight, public
| conversation, and ongoing developments.
| Oddskar wrote:
| Why would a newspaper article that regurgitates the Twitter
| thread be any better?
|
| If the source is Twitter then I much prefer a link to Twitter.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| But the news isn't that somebody on Twitter found this
| license issue, the news is that there's a license issue. A
| tweet could be a good tip for a journalist to do journalistic
| things like finding out if its true and writing up some
| context of how this has happened before and what GPL is, that
| way the story can be understood by a wider audience.
|
| Twitter is popular for people obsessed with hearing the
| latest rumor, but if TikTok is an illegal fork of OBS, I'd
| rather hear a few days later the well researched details - or
| if its a nothingburger overreaction, then I'd rather not hear
| about it at all.
| galgalesh wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances--things
| like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-
| button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
| fathereatsass wrote:
| If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was
| the rule?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think the complaint is more about twitter being an
| unreliable trash news source akin to the daily mirror, rather
| than pedestrian complaints of how the format is annoying
| ollien wrote:
| What makes Twitter any different in reliability than
| someone's blog? HN is filled with random blog links
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| The obvious difference is that it's impossible to explain
| any complex or in depth information using 280 characters
| or less. Trying to follow a thread of tweets (without
| using a 3rd party site) is painful. Heck, this throwaway
| response barely fits.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Many times there are a series of tweets. It's as easy to
| view it is as easy as scrolling down no third party tools
| required
| btown wrote:
| Yea, Twitter has vastly improved its UX here over the
| years. Thread unrolling isn't really necessary any more.
|
| Twitter is actually an incredible feed _if_ you
| meticulously scope your feed or lists to industry folks,
| people doing advocacy for various marginalized groups,
| and individual journalists ( _not_ their news outlets,
| whose editors add the clickbait). If you do this, Twitter
| becomes a place where people proudly try to summarize
| their own intensive research and journalism into 280
| characters, and thus present varied insights at extremely
| high density. Every tweet tends to link the long-form
| work itself, as well as a thread, by them, that is
| essentially an abstract for their long-form work. And
| professionals who want to post off-brand content will
| often times open up a second account for trivialities,
| which you can choose not to follow.
|
| To put it another way: If you wanted to capture the
| zeitgeist of, say, a machine learning conference, and
| made a user interface to let people summarize their work,
| speak excitedly about it, be able to present _multiple_
| levels of depth (single-sentence, abstract, images, full
| paper), and throw in the occasional meme whose comment
| section is actually an insightful take on challenges
| people are facing... odds are your interface would look
| very similar to Twitter as it currently exists. The
| difference, as always, is the content.
| ufo wrote:
| If only it were that easy. Twitter displays a complex mix
| of follow up tweets and replies from other people, so the
| follow up can be burried and hard to find. It also may
| require clicking to load more tweets and there is little
| indication when there is important information in the
| replies. There is no way to know if scrolling through the
| replies will be a worthwhile use of time, or just have
| useless twitter noise.
|
| This very comment thread is evidence of this. Look at all
| the people who didn't know that there were infringing
| binaries, because that is only mentioned in a reply by an
| obs dev in another tweet.
| dang wrote:
| It's still a tangential annoyance and thus against that
| guideline.
| zymhan wrote:
| If the link is "trash", it won't get many upvotes. That's
| the premise of HN.
|
| Twitter threads can be insightful an informative.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| You follow the letter of the law, not the spirit.
|
| Or maybe you do not: examples given are not similar to what
| GP refers to.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Also in the guidelines
|
| > Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
| something found on another site, submit the latter.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| That doesn't solve the problem that Twitter is, in fact, a
| popular link destination and a giant pain to load on slow
| devices.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://nitter.net/Naaackers/status/1471494415306788870
| aembleton wrote:
| I'd like to see Twitter threads go to Threadreader as its
| easier to read. For example, this thread would be
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1471494415306788870.html
| estaseuropano wrote:
| The same critique applies however also to Reddit and any other
| site with social comments.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Hacker News has a "post the original source" rule. In this
| case, Twitter is the original source.
|
| One of my most recent grievances is with HN is the ranking
| penalty of Twitter submissions as that has been the primary
| source of news lately, for better or for worse.
| sp332 wrote:
| Twitter is not the original source. The first image in the
| tweet is of an earlier post.
| tekacs wrote:
| The image you're talking about in the tweet is of a Discord
| message -- this tweet is presumably the most original
| source that's linkable as a normal page on the web.
| sp332 wrote:
| Thanks, I was trying to figure out what platform that was
| from.
| jetsetgo wrote:
| When Logitech and StreamElements do it; it's fine?
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| At this point, would it even hurt TikTok to open source their
| code? The network effect and user profiles are their moat, not
| their codebase.
| dodgepong wrote:
| If the app includes ByteDance's proprietary BVC1 or BVC2
| encoders, it's possible those would have to be open-sourced.
| jackTheMan wrote:
| if they remove all surveillance stuff.. maybe not
| hkalbasi wrote:
| Isn't (important part of) surveillance stuff on the server
| side?
| jrm4 wrote:
| Yup. The best thing we can all do is shine a light on it. I'm a
| lawyer and one thing that's important to remember in all of this
| is the interconnectedness of things, and being strategic about
| how to proceed is important. Shine the light everywhere.
|
| As in, one thing to consider is that some proponents of Free
| Software do not actually want certain types of high-profile
| public cases on the GPL _even when_ they law appears to be very
| much on their side, mostly because it could be really bad if a
| judge gets it wrong and sets something stupid as precedent.
| bogwog wrote:
| > mostly because it could be really bad if a judge gets it
| wrong and sets something stupid as precedent.
|
| At this point, isn't precedent already set? There have been
| more than a few GPL lawsuits where the courts ruled in favor of
| the GPL. This wiki has a list
| (https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases) of
| them.
|
| Some of those are in the US, others in the EU. Not sure if US
| judges have to consider precedents set in EU countries?
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'd say there's not "enough," and in a sense, precedent is
| never binary, like "yes or no?" The law having distinctions
| and extensions and so on. US will probably find EU law
| persuasive but not binding.
|
| So broadly, I think at least part of the strategy is "don't
| wake the beast." You really don't want e.g. "Microsoft v.
| Tiny GPL guy" as a big case because the law is far from
| perfect and there would be a lot of potential
| incentive/influence in MS's favor. (True, you'd get lots of
| Amicus action from Mozilla et al, but that would probably not
| be enough)
| ghusbands wrote:
| People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not
| problematic. Ben Torrell (an OBS developer) notes later in the
| thread that there is indeed GPL code compiled into TikTok's
| executables; since source is not available and they have not got
| another license, it is unlicensed and hence illegal.
| ignoramous wrote:
| I wonder if the GPLv3 violation pulls in TikTok's other
| software and infrastructure under it. That'd be one for the
| ages (like OpenWrt was [0]) if FSF manages to reign it in!
|
| [0] https://thenewstack.io/the-open-source-lesson-of-the-
| linksys...
| borodi wrote:
| OBS is GPLv2 so I don't think it would get to that level. Tho
| if the other GPL code is v3 then who knows.
| dathinab wrote:
| No it doesn't that's not how GPL (or any license) works.
|
| What happens is that it's a breach of contract (licenses are
| contracts) which lead to an termination that contract (1)
| (license) which grants the usage rights (copyright) for the
| software.
|
| Which leads a company to (roughly) following choices:
|
| - start complying with the license in time "before" the
| license gets invalidated
|
| - buy a proprietary license from the license holder
|
| - stop using the software, and pay damages for previous
| usage/contract violation/copyright infringement(1)
|
| This means you are not _ever_ forced by law to release your
| software under GPL, but you might be forced by economics to
| do so, as you might not be able to afford not doing so (or it
| 's just simply cheaper).
|
| (1): The topic how/when the contract becomes invalid and for
| which terms you can sue is tricky, and depends on the country
| in question.
|
| EDIT: Also even if GPL would work like that, there is no
| reason why e.g. their non-OBS boundled apps or infrastructure
| should be affected.
| overeater wrote:
| In option 1, when does the license get invalidated? Is it
| invalidated in the first place because the offending
| software broke the license? Or is it invalidated after
| notification from OBS? Or even later, after some amount of
| time after notification and non-correction?
|
| If it's violated before notification, then option 1 is not
| possible, and option 2 is at the discretion of OBS, so
| option 3 is the only real legal outcome.
|
| But if it's violated after notification, it seems like the
| optimal strategy for any company using GPL software is to
| not comply, until they are notified of violation, which
| apparently is not that common unless you're already a major
| product.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/ provides a great
| explanation
|
| > There is no provision in the Copyright Act to require
| distribution of infringing work on altered terms. What
| copyright plaintiffs are entitled to, under the Act, are
| damages, injunctions to prevent infringing distribution,
| and--where appropriate--attorneys' fees. A defendant
| found to have wrongfully included GPL'd code in its own
| proprietary work can be mulcted in damages for the
| distribution that has already occurred, and prevented
| from distributing its product further. That's a
| sufficient disincentive to make wrongful use of GPL'd
| program code. And it is all that the Copyright Act
| permits.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It is absolutely problematic. Corporations will go to hell and
| back to make sure their IP rights are respected. The open
| source community should expect nothing less from them.
| mynameismon wrote:
| Relavant Tweet:
| https://twitter.com/dodgepong/status/1471522226520346632
| trynewideas wrote:
| See also
| https://twitter.com/dodgepong/status/1471528656199692292 and
| https://twitter.com/dodgepong/status/1471524716477300737
|
| too twitter; didn't read: there's apparently OBS code evident
| in the decompiled app, and other GPL code as well, and OBS
| found out independently and are working to resolve it
| mynameismon wrote:
| Also important to note: OBS developers also found incidents
| of OBS code outside of that instance, and they are working
| with TikTok on the same.
| 4684499 wrote:
| That's pretty fast for a beta released yesterday. Are the
| devs actively monitoring and reverse engineering every
| binary released that related to streaming? Also, where can
| I get the live studio executable? None of the links I found
| works, is that public release?
| r1ch wrote:
| I'm the one on the OBS team who originally found this. I
| saw a tweet yesterday from someone that's in the beta,
| and as with any desktop live streaming software (and
| especially with "Studio" in the name) I was curious if
| they were using any OBS Studio code or if it was
| developed all in-house. The download link is available in
| their JS, you can find the most recent installer link
| here: https://tron-
| sg.bytelemon.com/api/sdk/check_update?branch=ma... (note:
| you probably won't be able to actually use it without
| being in the beta group)
|
| Without even installing it, opening the setup files
| showed some immediate red flags, notably the
| "GameDetour64.dll", "Inject64.exe" and
| "MediaSDKGetWinDXOffset64.exe" look awfully similar to
| the way the OBS Studio game capture hooks work with our
| "graphics-hook64.dll", "inject-helper64.exe" and "get-
| graphics-offsets64.exe". I don't jump straight in to
| disassembling everything I come across, but when it's
| this obvious it begs further investigation, and after
| some disassembly I was able to confirm that OBS code was
| present in their binaries.
| throwaway413 wrote:
| This is why I HN. Thank you for that clear account of the
| discovery, funny what a little curiosity can lead to.
|
| Not masking the names further makes me wonder if whoever
| actually implemented this may not have been aware of the
| repercussions.
| samspenc wrote:
| Wow this is amazing, thanks for digging in and doing this
| work. If this were Reddit, I would give you a gold award,
| but since this is HN, all I have to give is my 1 upvote.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| People are misunderstanding this and claiming it's not
| problematic because the tweet in the HN link is idiocy.
|
| They show one URL in one installer script with an
| obsproject.com domain and conclude, from the presence of that
| URL alone, that the entire project is a whole cloth copy of
| OBS.
|
| That URL is nothing but a 302 redirect to the directx runtime
| at https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/Download/confirmation.aspx?i...
|
| The linked tweet tells us nothing except that TikTok is
| essentially using obsproject.com's web server as a URL
| shortener.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Yes, clearly, the TikTok employee writing that original bog-
| boring DirectX dependency installer script felt his best
| choice here was to use the OBS URL as a URL shortener.
|
| Truly this is the strongest possible interpretation of this
| circumstantial evidence and does not make you look like an
| idiot (re idiocy) at all. You would rather write this comment
| than simply navigate to the OBS github and find the copy of
| this installer script in there.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Why would a company the size of tiktok want to depend on some
| open source project maintaining a URL? Would they be liable
| if it instead redirected to malware?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Possibly. But most likely there was a bug "crashing when
| DirectX is not installed" and some developer hacked a
| silent install for DirectX in without thinking too much.
| adolph wrote:
| > a company the size of tiktok
|
| Is made up of smaller teams composed of individuals who may
| or may not take shortcuts and make good decisions on behalf
| of their company. If the choice is between "executive said
| 'hey use this open source in secret'" or "programmer took
| shortcut," my bet is on the latter.
| [deleted]
| dodgepong wrote:
| Again, to be clear, we've decompiled the TikTok LIVE Studio
| binary and confirmed that it uses code derived from OBS
| Studio.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| If the link took us to evidence of that it would be great.
| Instead the link takes us to misinformation from a rage-
| monger who clearly has no understanding of what they are
| looking at.
| dang wrote:
| Please make your substantive points without name-calling.
| The latter is against the site guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and
| also makes your comments less credible, which is
| particularly bad if you're correct on the issues (https:/
| /hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...)
| .
| humanistbot wrote:
| > that the entire project is a whole cloth copy of OBS.
|
| That is a straw man argument. It doesn't matter what percent
| of the infringing product uses GPL-licensed code.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| What if it's one character?
| mixedCase wrote:
| I believe the parent poster implicitly meant "as long as
| it's copyrightable" as a caveat
| dralley wrote:
| But it's not one character.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 12ian34 wrote:
| Could someone please help explain to me and (others who might not
| know) what is the concrete problem caused by this forking that
| doesn't comply with the license?
| ilaksh wrote:
| Read the GPL. You can't fork without releasing the source code.
| Unless you buy a commercial license (if they sell that).
| kaslai wrote:
| The GPL requires that any derivative work of GPL licensed code
| must also be licensed under the same (or compatible) license as
| the original GPL'd code. This is the "viral" aspect of the
| license. It applies even if the only interface between your
| code and the GPL code is dynamic linking, and not a single line
| of the GPL'd code is in your application.
|
| There are acceptable ways to bundle GPL code with closed source
| software in a single distributable, however it must be made
| clear which parts of the distribution are licensed under the
| GPL and the GPL license must be clearly present. Even in the
| most charitable reading of the situation, TikTok violated this
| basic requirement.
| JoeCee wrote:
| Sorta side question: is it legal/ethical to say, "open source
| unless you're a company of more than X people then it's X * $Y to
| license"
| jmull wrote:
| That's fine, except don't call it an "open source" license.
| That's a commercial license.
| dnissley wrote:
| It's perfectly legal/ethical, but it would not be open source
| at that point. Same as licenses that prevent companies from
| running the licensed product as a cloud service, even if the
| source is freely available to view or use in a private
| capacity.
| s7r wrote:
| First thought while reading headline: this is why copyleft is
| useful.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-17 23:00 UTC)