Comment by Brian_K_White
1 year ago
There is de-facto anything wrt anything. All it means is "as good as" or "might as well be" or "no different from" or "in effect" etc.
If no one is publishing a copy of something with an open license, then that is the definition of de-facto closed.
de-facto means what is the reality vs what is the theory.
In theory you can get a copy because it has a license that says so.
In reality you can not get a copy because you are not one of the people with physical access to some existing copy.
It is de-facto closed while that set of facts is true.
So am I understanding correctly that there was a private repo that had original code, and in that private repo, someone added the MIT licence? Which didn't make the code open source, because that licence hadn't actually been given to anyone*?
And then Roman made the repo public, effectively distributing the licence to people and thus making it open source, without coordinating with the other contributors?
I don't see any replies by Alexandr, but it feels like this could have easily been resolved with a less antagonistic response by Roman - but of course, I don't know what other history they have.
* I guess technically, it was given to the other contributors with access to the private repo - i.e. Roman did have the legal right to distribute it further under the MIT licence. Presumably, the original contributor (Alexandr) just applied that licence by mistake.
The MIT license was added by Alexander himself in the initial commit in June 2021. Since then Roman has contributed actively to the code and Viktor started to contribute more recently.
So there are people who contributed the code under the MIT license, so its not a sole work of Alexander and the license was not added as a mistake.
IMO from a legal standpoint Roman is absolutely in his right to redistribute the code.
Yes, as I mention in my footnote, Roman was absolutely legally in the clear. I'm just saying that Alexandr's initial adding of the licence was probably a mistake in the sense that he did not intend to do that (that led to people contributing under different assumptions), and one they probably could have found a way to resolve had he communicated about the difference in assumptions.
This sounds like it is de-facto true but it isn't. A private file repository with a closed source license is in-facto different than a private file repository with an open source license. The license is not altered by the access permissions of the repository, and the access permissions of the file repository are not altered by the license. A compiled version of code in a private repository with a closed source license can be released publicly without that code. The same is not true if the private repository contains code with an open source license.
I don't know how you can still be so confused about what de-facto means. But you are.
I'm not confused, I'm pointing out that the license in a private source repository changes the legal rights of the person with respect to distribution of the software defined by the contents of the repository, and than therefore a private repository with open source code inside is not a de facto closed source repository.
4 replies →
the definitions of closed source and open source that you are using are not de facto correctamundo. If I download a copy of your copyright noticed and unlicensed closed source software from your server, no matter how I got access, it's still closed source and I am not entitled to even the copy I have. de facto, and ipso facto: in fact-o
How the F are people so confused about the definition of this simple term for this simple concept? Go find a dictionary or something FFS.