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willnorris / webmention

Go library and CLI for assisting in sending webmentions.
https://pkg.go.dev/willnorris.com/go/webmention
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
50 stars 5 forks source link

This library is copyright Google #9

Closed ghost closed 5 years ago

ghost commented 5 years ago

Why?

willnorris commented 5 years ago

Because, even though Google isn't using this library themselves, I wrote it as part of my employment there, so they own the copyright. It's still under a BSD license, so there's zero impact for users of the library.

ghost commented 5 years ago

Thanks for the info @willnorris. I remember now those terms of the Google contract. They really got ahead of the law there, though I believe the same to be true of any open source work performed while under similar employment contracts—I'm just not aware of any precedent set yet (maybe you know?)

Anyway, thanks for creating this library. If you happen to know of a similar work written in Go and not copywritten by Google I'd love to get my hands on it.

Cheers.

willnorris commented 5 years ago

I'm just curious, why does the Google copyright matter? It's still under an open source license, so your rights as a user of the library are exactly the same.

(Not saying you don't have your reasons, I'm just curious what they are.)

ghost commented 5 years ago

I disagree with the GNU's definition of free software. To me free software is simply one which is free of burden, thereby maximizing its potential for reuse. Burden, in this sense, means software which is difficult to use because of onerous licensing requirements (like the GNU) or limitations of warranty and liability. But that's just my turn off with the BSD and the like. Google is a different matter entirely and one I've been concerned about since the day Google purchased DoubleClick.