[logicprog]

I just don't see how it's relevant whether he did look or didn't. In my opinion, it's not just legally valid to make a re-implementation of something if you've seen the code as long as it doesn't copy expressive elements. I think it's also ethically fine as well to use source code as a reference for re-implementing something as long as it doesn't turn into an exact translation.

[atomicnumber3]

It's actually not legally fine, or at least it's extremely dangerous. Projects that re-implement APIs presented by extremely litigious companies specifically do not allow people who, for instance, have seen the proprietary source code to then work on the project.

[jpc0]

I don't think fear or legal action makes it illegal.

If I know it is legal to make a turn at a red light. And I know a court will uphold that I was in the right but a police officer will fine me regardless and I would need to go to actually pursue some legal remedy I'm unlikely to do it regardless of whether it is legal because it is expensive, if not in money but time.

In the case of copyright lawsuits they are notoriously expensive and long so even if a court would eventually deem it fine, why take the chance.

[atomicnumber3]

That's my point. It's dangerous and there are sharks in the water. That sounds like you're not going to have a good time if you do the described approach to someone who might assert you're infringing.

[sunshowers]

My understanding is that that is a maximalist position for the avoidance of risk, and is sufficient but probably not necessary.

[simonw]

Right. The alternative is that we reward Dan for his 14 years of volunteer maintenance of a project... by banning him from working on anything similar under a different license for the rest of his life.

[sarchertech]

Ignoring the legal or ethical concerns. Let’s say we live in a world where the cost of copying code is so close to zero that it’s indistinguishable from a world without copyright.

Anything you put out can and will be used by whatever giant company wants to use it with no attribution whatsoever.

Doesn’t that massively reduce the incentive to release the source of anything ever?

[satvikpendem]

No, because (most) people don't work on OSS for vanity, they do it to help other people, whether it's individuals or groups of individuals, ie corporations.

It's the same question as, if an AI can generate "art", or photographers can capture a scene better than any (realistic) painter, then will people still create art? Obviously yes, and we see it of course after Stable Diffusion was released three years ago, people are still creating.

[sarchertech]

I don’t know what a world without copyright does to corporate sponsored open source. It certainly reduces it because there are many corporate sponsored projects that monetize through dual licensing. My guess is in a world where you can’t even guarantee attribution, it’s much harder to convince your boss to let you open source a project in the first place.

So ignoring people who are being paid by corporations directly to work on open source, in my experience the vast majority of contributors expect to be able to monetize their work eventually in a way that requires attribution. And out of the small number who don’t expect a monetary return of any kind, a still smaller number don’t expect recognition.

If this weren’t the case you’d see a much larger amount of anonymous contributions. There are people who anonymously donate to charity. The vast majority want some kind of recognition.

Obviously we still see art, if you greatly reduce the monetary benefit to producing art, you’ll see a lot less of it. This is especially true of non trivial open source software that unlike static artwork requires continual maintenance.

[joshjob42]

If the cost to copying code based on specifications, tests, etc is so close to zero as to be functionally zero cost, then any user can simply turn their AI on any library for which there is documentation and any ability to generate tests, have it reverse engineer it, and release their reverse engineered copy on GitHub for others to use as they like.

So I'm not sure it matters whether a giant company uses it because random users can get the same thing for ~ free anyway.

[sarchertech]

You can mostly stop that with enoiugh lawyers and requiring and agreement not to reverse engineer to access documentation or use the software.

[intrasight]

Most commercial software that I've used has the model of a legal moat around a pretty crappy database schema.

The non IP protection has largely been in the effort involved in replicating an application's behavior and that effort is dropping precipitously.

[sarchertech]

You must not have used much commercial software outside of crappy business SaaS.

[intrasight]

Truth

[pocksuppet]

Yes, and it reduces the incentives to release binaries too. Such a world will be populated by almost entirely SaaS, which can still compete on freedom.