The object of a system of authority is order, not justice. Justice matters only after injustice sufficiently compromises order.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • This is a fast path to open source irrelevancy, since the US copyright office has deemed LLM outputs to be uncopyrightable.

    This is a misunderstanding of US Copyright. Here’s a link to the compendium so you can verify for yourself.

    Section 313 says “Although uncopyrightable material, by definition, is not eligible for copyright protection, the Office may register a work that contains uncopyrightable material, provided that the work as a whole contains other material that qualifies as an original work of authorship…”

    This means that LLM created code that’s embedded in a larger work may be registered.

    Section 313.2 says “Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.”

    Meaning that LLM created code CAN be registered as long as an author has some creative input or intervention in the process. I’d posit that herding an LLM system to create the code definitely qualifies as “creative input or intervention”. If someone feels it isn’t then all they need to do is change something, literally anything, and suddenly it becomes a derivative work of an uncopyrighted source and the derivative can then be registered (to a human) and be subject to copyright.

    In short, it’s fine. Take a breath.





  • How can you retain the original logo if you don’t have the right to use their trademarks?

    I’m confused by that as well.

    This feels like a sleazy attempt to find a loop hole in the AGPL language to restrict commercial use.

    That cannot be the case; OnlyOffice has been working with Nextcloud for years to provide interoperability.

    If Only Office doesn’t want people to do this, they could have very easily just chosen a different license from the beginning.

    I don’t believe that “restricting commercial use” is the problem. In this article OnlyOffice has apparently been having problems with Nextcloud pushing past their licensing boundaries and even soliciting OnlyOffice’s customers directly.












  • Where in the bill does it say that?

    I appreciate that you provided a link to the bill in your previous comment and I’m taking my response directly from there. Here’s a quote of the first sentence of the bill summary.

    "The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer’s application is downloaded and launched. " (Emphasis Mine).

    Okay so maybe it’s a bad summary, let’s look at the text of the bill. On the 2nd page it says:

    The bill requires a developer to request an age signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the developer’s application is downloaded and launched.” (Emphasis mine).

    Then again on Page 5:

    “(2) (a) A DEVELOPER SHALL REQUEST AN AGE SIGNAL WITH RESPECT TO A PARTICULAR USER FROM AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR A COVERED APPLICATION STORE WHEN THE DEVELOPER’S APPLICATION IS DOWNLOADED AND LAUNCHED.”

    So yeah, the bill literally says it in both the summary and the text.

    So what is an application?

    From Page 3 “APPLICATION” MEANS A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT BE RUN OR DIRECTED BY A USER ON A DEVICE." Huh, no ambiguity there.

    And where would that make sense? What would Notepad or File Explorer do with my age range? That would make no sense at all.

    Ask Colorado and California, it’s their legislation.

    And yes, as a professional developer I would definetely comply and use this API instead of bothering my customers…

    That’s good because if you don’t then you cannot have users in California nor in Colorado (assuming this legislation passes in Colorado).

    …every time by askIng them to confirm their age, but since I’ve never worked on any age restricted software in the first place, it does not affect any of my products.

    **Why do you think that matters?**There is no exception for your apps in the the Colorado or California legislation! You as a dev MUST comply with this law. If you choose not too then I hope you are prepared to deal with up to a $2,500 fine per user that turns out to be a minor!

    “6-30-104. Enforcement - penalties.3 (1) A PERSON THAT VIOLATES THIS ARTICLE SHALL PAY A CIVIL PENALTY OF NO MORE THAN TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EACH MINOR AFFECTED BY EACH NEGLIGENT VIOLATION, OR NO MORE THAN SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EACH MINOR AFFECTED BY EACH INTENTIONAL VIOLATION. THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SHALL ASSESS AND RECOVER THE PENALTY IN A CIVIL ACTION .”

    Hmmm, okay well what is an “app store”, maybe your app is distributed in a way that allows you to sidestep the law?

    "(5) (a) “COVERED APPLICATION STORE " MEANS A PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INTERNET WEBSITE , SOFTWARE APPLICATION, ONLINE SERVICE, OR PLATFORM THAT DISTRIBUTES AND FACILITATES THE DOWNLOAD OF APPLICATIONS FROM THIRD- PARTY DEVELOPERS TO USERS OF DEVICES .”

    Soooo, if you’re stuff is available on Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, GOS, STEAM, EA, or anyone else’s app store you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed from your own website you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed from GitHub you need to comply. If your stuff is distributed via package manager on Linux (that’s a software application!) then you need to comply.

    Colorado’s legislation is slightly smarter than California’s in that it at least carves out some exceptions regarding applications for Enterprise, Commercial, and Government use but there are still caveats.

    tl;dr This law and California’s clearly and specifically apply to applications as well as Operating Systems, are not “neat”, and its easy to predict that most F/OSS developers absolutely will not comply with these restrictions.



  • I actually don’t believe that any of the accused in this care were intentionally cheating. Honestly it seems damn difficult to make any kind of consistently predictable trajectory change with the touches we’ve seen on video.

    Your math and mine both show that a touch can impact the rock but I have to imagine that curling is like golf where you train and hone your swing (release) trying to make it as consistent and repeatable as possible. With that in mind you wouldn’t WANT a touch that mucks with the trajectory of the rock because you couldn’t ever do it precisely and repeatably enough to make it worthwhile.

    In my opinion this controversy is happening because some curlers have an ingrained release routine that includes an unnecessary movement / flourish and competitors have decided to make issue of it because it’s getting close to giving a competitive advantage. That’s my two cents for what it’s worth.