undefined | Better HN

0 pointsreitzensteinm5y ago0 comments

> Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product.

You are oversimplifying things here. One can be a bad actor while remaining perfectly legal.

Your friend has an upcoming surprise birthday party. You didn't enter in to an agreement not to tell them, so you do. Your friend group doesn't sue you in a court of law, they shun you.

It's totally OK to decide that you want your project to be MIT, and call out hostile forks operating in bad faith. You're not going to stop them, but the community can judge for themselves whether you've got a point and which fork they want to associate with.

It's OK to say: well if you made the project GPL, they couldn't do what they're doing legally.

It's not OK to say: well you didn't make your project GPL, so you don't get to complain.

0 comments

AsyncAwait5y ago

I agree, however it is worth noting that I don't think many maintainers consider the explicit value of copyleft these days.

I think BSD/MIT is more popular because it is simple and "less hassle", which is true but also makes it so that it is less of a hassle to be actively hostile to the project.

hitekker5y ago

> One can be a bad actor while remaining perfectly legal.

Yep, that's exactly it. Obeying the letter of the law is not the same as following the spirit of the law. Ethicality and legality are not the same thing.

If they were the same, Zig would deserve scorn and vitriol for daring to question the character of another legal entity. After all, legal entities cannot be criticized for poor ethics because only illegal entities are unethical... right?

It's a twisted, craven worldview that we ought to be more wary of.

johnnyfaehell5y ago

> It's not OK to say: well you didn't make your project GPL, so you don't get to complain.

I kind of agree with you and kind of disagree with you. You should be able to complain all you want. However, if explictly decide to give people certain rights when you complain about them using those rights it shouldn't hold much value. Which is what I think was the original point in the sentence you replied to.

reitzensteinmOP5y ago

Well if you complain about a "hostile fork" that's just somebody stripping your branding and releasing a commercial fork, that should fall on deaf ears. That's in the spirit of MIT, and you've just picked your license poorly.

But what's being alleged here is actual hostility and deception. If it's true, Zig being MIT licensed in no way removes their "moral high ground" (as GP put it) to make a post like this.

falcolas5y ago

Here's my point of view - why does Zig even care what Zen is doing? Zen's shortcomings don't impact the userbase or development of Zig in any real fashion.

The fact that the Zig foundation wrote this letter condemning the actions of Zen's founder/employees - especially when they closed the letter with a call to action to return to Zig - shows that Zen's fork actually matters to them, that they don't believe it should remain functional.

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse