Comment by jraph
14 hours ago
> If one did wish to use Singularity for nefarious purposes, however, the code is MIT licensed and freely available — using it in that way would only be a crime, not an instance of copyright infringement.
Too bad the author picked the MIT license. Had they picked (A)GPL, it would have forced the criminals to distribute a copy of LICENSE.TXT alongside their improved copy of the source code on systems they compromise. Failing this, using it in that way would be both a crime and an instance of copyright infringement.
Although, it occurs to me that if they don't give credits to the original author, it's also already a copyright infringement under the MIT.
If I might interject for a moment, you should've recommended the (A)GPLv3.
The anti-tivoization clause in Version 3 would allow users to modify and replace the rootkit with their own, more or less malicious version, even if it would otherwise violate copyright law.
> crime and an instance of copyright infringement.
Well-made distinction; +1.
It's nice until you get spammed with emails from angry users. I think it happened to the sqlite and other popular open source project authors. Non technical users think they are polluting their computer.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42358470
It happened to thttpd
https://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/repo.html
The person in that thread could explain the situation a lot more better to the non technical users. You could do this:
"I don't know what happened to your computer but you seem to be saying someone hacked your computer and installed some software and you found acme.com mentioned on it. This was not done by me. acme.com is open source software that is freely available to anyone. This is the same as if someone installed software on your computer that mentions the google chrome web browser - that would not indicate google had anything to do with that action, since google chrome is freely available too."
Thank you for the laugh!
It's probably an old joke, but heard it here first. LOL
I don't know about you, but for ethical reasons, I only allow libre rootkits to run on my systems.
It's just like a gun free zone. You glue a prominent sign to your laptop that uses bright colors and an imposing font. "No proprietary software permitted!" Problem solved.
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Do you compile them yourself then? For possible arch specific optimizations
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They checked with their lawyers first… lol.
Pretty sure all laws are null and void in their mind.
HAHAHAHAHAH I genuinely laughed a lot, thank you