[Aurornis]

> easy to see benefits of but really hard to see the downsides

I think like most hypothetical discussions, the commenters proposing these ideas aren’t interested in practical versions of the idea with tradeoffs. They imagine a perfect version of it in their minds with no downsides that accomplishes everything they want.

The demand for professional licensure doesn’t even make sense in this context. Is professional licensing supposed to stop developers from naming their packages names that LLMs produce? Is it going to force the package repos to check that everyone has a professional license before submitting packages from the United States (or other countries with licensure)? Can it be worked around by changing your country in the drop-down box to a country that doesn’t have licensing?

The calls for software licensure never seem to take into account the global nature of the Internet and software development.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

Yes. If they nefariously typosquat, that could be grounds for losing your license.

Adding a link to your verified license in your package.json or personal website so that installers can check that the author of the package they are using does have a license sounds perfectly fine.

Proving you reside or are licensed in some country before you can publish to that countries repository sounds very doable too.

We don't even have to do this perfectly. It's not about preventing people from skirting the system, it's about giving users and developers the option to install from only verified sources.

Would you rather get heart surgery from a licensed doctor or an unlicensed one? What if both existed where you live? I'd probably ask to see their license before going through with it.