this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
826 points (95.0% liked)

Technology

72876 readers
3070 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 222 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Reminder that this is made by Ben Zhao, the University of Chicago professor who stole open source code for his last data poisoning scheme.

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 67 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Pardon my ignorance but how do you steal code if it's open source?

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 223 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You don’t follow the license that it was distributed under.

Commonly, if you use open source code in your project and that code is under a license that requires your project to be open source if you do that, but then you keep yours closed source.

[–] fidodo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I still wouldn't call it stealing, but I guess "broke open source code licenses" doesn't have the same impact, but I'd prefer accuracy.

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 90 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It’s piracy, distributing copyrighted works against the terms of its license. I agree stealing is not really the right word.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 33 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nah piracy is with like boats.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] msage@programming.dev 5 points 2 years ago

And eyepatches and scimitars

[–] tb_@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Distributing it would be one thing, but profiting off it?

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 years ago

I think it makes the most sense to think of it like stealing the way plagiarism is stealing.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 13 points 2 years ago

I wouldn't call pirating stealing either so

[–] Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 78 points 2 years ago (1 children)

He took GPLv3 code, which is a copyleft license that requires you share your source code and license your project under the same terms as the code you used. You also can't distribute your project as a binary-only or proprietary software. When pressed, they only released the code for their front end, remaining in violation of GPLv3.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Probably the reason they're moving to a Web offering. They could just take down the binary files and be gpl compliant, this whole thing is so stupid

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think that's what AGPL tries to prevent

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, but if the code they took is not AGPL then this loophole still applies

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, I meant more that AGPL was created to plug this particular loophole. As in, if it was AGPL, they couldn't do this.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That's true

Although I personally am not a fan of licences this strict, MIT+Apache2.0 seems good enough for me. Of course, that might change with time and precedents like this 😅

[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

And as I said there, it is utterly hypocritical for him to sell snake oil to artists, allegedly to help them fight copyright violations, while committing actual copyright violations.

[–] HelloHotel@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

That TOS would be sus under any other situation.