What are the licenses of the code provided? [LWN.net]

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Mar 31, 2016 16:08 UTC (Thu) by southey (guest, #9466)
Parent article: A single Node of failure

Surely we should not have to relearning the past when this type of thing happens. This keeps illustrating the importance of using code with appropriate licenses and why those licenses are so important!

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What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Mar 31, 2016 19:18 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (7 responses)

What does a license have to do with this?? Anybody is entirely within their rights to stop distributing the code under any license.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Mar 31, 2016 20:10 UTC (Thu) by butlerm (guest, #13312) [Link] (6 responses)

The license makes all the difference in the world as to whether a third party has to stop distributing a previously released version of your code when you decide to.

Any operator of a public package management system is a de facto publisher. If they allow arbitrary contributors to un-publish their previously released contributions, they are promoting a unstable foundation that cannot be trusted to be used for anything.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Mar 31, 2016 20:38 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

> The license makes all the difference in the world as to whether a third party has to stop distributing a previously released version of your code when you decide to.
How? I fail to see a clause in the GPL saying: "NPM must always distribute the version 0.0.3 of left-pad library".

> Any operator of a public package management system is a de facto publisher. If they allow arbitrary contributors to un-publish their previously released contributions, they are promoting a unstable foundation that cannot be trusted to be used for anything.
That's true, but it had NOTHING to do with licenses.

It's entirely within NPM's legal rights to lock out the author and distribute the earliest possible version of left-pad with a couple of deliberate security vulnerabilities and a special 'crash often' mode.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Apr 1, 2016 12:09 UTC (Fri) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link] (2 responses)

Nobody except you is talking about the GPL, though.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Apr 1, 2016 16:21 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

It's just a example. Cyberax jumped ahead in terms of logical consequences of the discussion.

A copyright owner isn't restricted by his own copyright. Thus any copyright license he has isn't going to restrict what he can do with his own code.

What is being argued here is that there exists a license which prevents a programmer from making his software unavailable from a hosting service.

It's silly.

One could argue that the hosting service itself is restricted by copyright so if some programmer puts his code on their servers then the hosting service is required by law to comply to the source code's copyright license. But I still think it's a frivolous line of reasoning that I doubt could hold much weight in court. The only person that can sue over copyright violations is the copyright holder. If the copyright holder wants to withdraw his code from a hosting service then it's going to be weird that he would turn around and sue them for doing exactly what he requested.

_maybe_ if it was a GPL license AND it was derivative of other people's work those other people could go to the hosting service and say that they must keep distributing it to comply with the terms of the GPL. But that's really pushing it.

All in all licensing has almost nothing to do with the issue at hand.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Apr 7, 2016 11:20 UTC (Thu) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]

It's just a example. Cyberax jumped ahead in terms of logical consequences of the discussion. A copyright owner isn't restricted by his own copyright. Thus any copyright license he has isn't going to restrict what he can do with his own code.

From the FL:

2. Basic Permissions. All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met.

This is for the GPL v3). See the "irrevocable" up there? The GPL v2 hasn't such a clarification as far as I can see, but still names no restrictions on your right to distribute code other than the well-known copyleft restrictions. This would cover Cyberax's example. I don't think other free (or any!) licenses allow revoking the rights granted unless explicitly stated. So no, the copyright holder can't (retroactively) take the right from you it has granted you in the first place. Now releasing new versions with a different license would be fair game, but this isn't what we are talking about here. Therefore I think that yes, an explicit license would help here.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Apr 4, 2016 5:39 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (guest, #13312) [Link] (1 responses)

> How? I fail to see a clause in the GPL saying: "NPM must always distribute the version 0.0.3 of left-pad library".

No. However, any open source license worth its salt gives NPM the _right_ to so, and given the business they are in, they need that right or their service is worthless.

What are the licenses of the code provided?

Posted Apr 4, 2016 7:07 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Sure. But please, re-read the message I was answering to.