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Open source code with absent author and no stated license - what would you do?

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bsdphk:

--- Quote from: AlfBaz on April 30, 2022, 01:17:31 am ---If the device has closed source code and some entity suspects copyright infringements is there some legal mechanism that forces the designer to provide source code for scrutiny?

--- End quote ---

A court-order, issued during the discovery-phase would do that.

What evidence you would need to get to that point depends on pretty much anything.

cdev:

--- Quote from: AlfBaz on April 30, 2022, 01:17:31 am ---Allow me to be Ralph Wiggum for a moment...

So you build and release a product containing code to carry out its intended function.

Regardless being able to protect the code from being read within the device, even if you could it would be a binary blob, at what point do you have to provide to others source code?

If the device has closed source code and some entity suspects copyright infringements is there some legal mechanism that forces the designer to provide source code for scrutiny?

I ask because I have always found it strange on the insistence of code source stipulating that copyright notices in comments must remain and should not be used without prior consent etc

Is this simply a case of not being a thief and being honest about it and if you were how easy would it be to be found out?

--- End quote ---
The US Government wrote a demand for source code into its contracts.. Way back in the 90s. with DFARS.. Because they had been burned too many times.. I saw some of these source code gold CDs.

Thats where open source originated from. After being burned quite a few times, the USG started writing this into contracts. So that all computer relaed products they buy included a gold CD with SRC. I think this has now changed in that now the US is demanding that nobody should be required to provide source...  At least we've been proposing that in the WTO proposals we are now making. Corporate lobbyists for big Indian staffing companies are demanding this. They say that requiring source would break the deal we made with them which the WTO is part of.  They seem to be tryijng to patent certain business processes.. which they claim to have invented.. And demand the "right" to create a proprietary software ecosystem. Obfuscate everything, And lock people in.   They really see FOSS as a threat to their (IMHO elitist) business model. Its too egalitarian.

Cerebus:

--- Quote from: cdev on April 30, 2022, 05:42:09 pm ---The US Government wrote a demand for source code into its contracts.. Way back in the 90s. with DFARS.. Because they had been burned too many times.. I saw some of these source code gold CDs.

Thats where open source originated from.

--- End quote ---

Utter rubbish. Open source was alive and well long before then. If you want to cite an origin, a much more likely proximal origin would be the source tapes that circulated among members of various user groups in the 1970s, including the IBM user group and DECUS to name but two.

bsdphk:

--- Quote from: cdev on April 30, 2022, 05:42:09 pm ---Thats where open source originated from.

--- End quote ---

Ehh no ?

Open Source originated with computers, because the first generation of programmers were smart enough to recognize that their job was hard enough with the source code, and impossible without.

Academia has of course always been open source, you get no publication credit for things you dont publish.

Throughout the 1960'ies, Open Source was the norm, also in commercial settings.  You might not get the source in machine readable form, you might get it on actual printouts, or you might get microfiche (IBM!) but you (could) get the source if you wanted it.

Closed source was very much a phenomena which came in and grew with the microprocessor in commercial environments, very much exemplified by Bill Gates' famous rant.

(Looking through the thread I see a lot of other crap you have been spewing, but I wont address that, I'll merely note that you seem to have very little clue about things you very confidentely pontificate on.)

cdev:
i'll try to moderate pontifications, as your experience is more extensive than my own! And predates it.

:) Hopefully I am wrong as to these forces I describe as against open software. If that is the case, I wouldn't mind that one bit. Crossing my fingers..

The WTO since the beginning oif 1995 has controlled "Goods" and "Services" (around 80% of the global economy) seems to see open licensing as a trade barrier, and therefore prohibited by treaties.

Kind of like they seem to see any regulations like wage and hour laws, and labor standards .Framing such laws as speed bumps on the highway of trade. TRIPS and TRIMS regulate the new "IP" landscape. Not the Berne Convention, these days. (Or so I am told)  Patents, such as patents on drugs.. were a benefit to being in it. If you are a country and you want to trade, you must accept their rules.. in order to become a WTO member.. first. So this meant that a great many poor people would die. Since they didnt have that money.

What are the implications of that? Well one was the acceptance of the drug IP landscape.. a story laid out in the award winning 2013 film Fire in the Blood..  These laws made the manufacture of patented drugs incredibly profitable for the "owners" of these patents, even though they cost literally pennies to make, they cost tens of thousands in most of the world. Buy ir die, they seemed to be sayiing. Its now said that COVID-19 represents a once in a lifetime, Business opportunity.

They are trying to patent natural substances that should be unpatentable because they have shown promise in improviong the body's resistance to certain viruses. Because vaccines gradually offer less protection to evolving pathogens..And the SIRT system evolved to fight them. They claim a right to patent it. Buy or die.

Since Jan 1, 1995 Science doesn't belong to the Earths people. Irt belongs to the IP owning corporations! There is no such thing, legally, it seems, as a gift to everybody. At least that seems to be the officials position. That its holding the making of money back. Thats what scares me. The taking of science away from we the people. If you get better, you have to pay.  Pay to live?  Thats what we are heading towards with the Market spiral pricing of drugs.

Wheredoes FOSS stand without anybody standing up for it showing how many millions in sales that it has?

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