this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Open source licenses are only as useful as your ability to enforce them.
Sorta why the FSF was formed.
Because thses lucences working effects folks other then yourself.
So best for all OS developers and users to work together.
I don't disagree, but in practice, in my experience they and other groups are not helpful when your license actually needs defending.
I have been with multiple different communities that had GPL and other licensed code stolen for profit in proprietary programs. In all instances, the FSF, SFC and EFF were all contacted and nobody cared.
These offending companies do what they do precisely because they know they can get away with it. And most FOSS developers I would argue do not have the resources or desire to go up against a big company taking or misusing their work.
at least the SFC did some enforcing that worked, but i got the feeling these organisations are too "nice" , If the case is a slam dunk maybe it is possible to get a lawyer who will work by getting a large percentage of the earnings.
Is it anymore the case with other licences though.
Obscurity is no security at all. If you have no ability to fight to keep tour copy right or patient. People will copy it open or closed.
Even direct machine code can be copied a reverse engineered fairly simply.
So non of this is purely a open source permissive licence issue. Its a big corperations acting like fudal lords issue.
The effectiveness of obscurity in operations security depends on whether the obscurity lives on top of other good security practices, or if it is being used alone. When used as an independent layer, obscurity is considered a valid security tool.
IMO Obscurity is at least as effective as the attacker's inability to locate the resource, but I don't recommend that being your only defense for everything of course.
That being said, you're absolutely right when you look at it that way. If reverse engineering or copying ASM isn't out of the question, then IMO all bets are off. Even closed source proprietary programs are not immune from that.
But in the general sense of people casually copy/pasting source code, I think the only defense is not having source available in the first place.
You can copy binary code. Just as easy as source code.
It is only when running on a different architecture it gets a bit more complex.
And give the binary is directly translatable by software. Not hugely more complex for any company of the size you are unwilling to fight in court over open source code.
Sorry but no you are wrong. Hading the source in no way makes code harder to copy. Its how most of us hacked into games in the 1990s.
After all binary code is just simpler instruction set that takes very very minimal effort to convert into assembly language. And can be read by many even without that effort.
Its hardly a secret encrypted format. (Unless you are also designing your own hardware and not letting anyone see that. )
I think we majorly disagree on the definition of "harder" and "just as easy" here. I don't consider that making me "wrong", I consider it a difference of opinion. One could argue that it is indeed harder to copy assembly code especially when you do not understand it, or like you contradictingly already stated, when the architecture differs. I was speaking in the context of "the general sense of people casually copy/pasting source code" which I was also implying that meant that those people also did not easily understand assembly already. Sorry for the confusion.