this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 223 points 10 months 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 67 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] hperrin 224 points 10 months 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 1 points 10 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 10 months 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 33 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah piracy is with like boats.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

And eyepatches and scimitars

[–] tb_ 1 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

I wouldn't call pirating stealing either so

[–] [email protected] 78 points 10 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months 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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think that's what AGPL tries to prevent

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months 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 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months 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 4 points 10 months ago

That TOS would be sus under any other situation.