lj_dev: Six Apart and ownership of code

Brad Fitzpatrick (

bradfitz) wrote in

lj_dev,
@ 2005-01-07 19:48:00

Six Apart and ownership of code
I know some of you are still apprehensive about the Six Apart acquistion, so I wanted to give you guys some updates.

Six Apart doesn't want to own your code.
They don't even care too much about owning Danga's code. They just want a right to use it, and they want to make sure somebody is able to legally go after any company that tries to violate the GPL'ed code by selling server software based off LiveJournal code without releasing their modifications. (no, this does not mean attacking DeadJournal, because DeadJournal doesn't sell/distribute their changes, and DeadJournal even gives stuff back from time to time....)

We're in talks now with the Free Software Foundation to figure out how to best do this. (well, they sent us some mail offering help and we replied saying that'd rock, but that was just today, so "in talks" might be overstating it... but we're working to start talks)

Under our old pre-SixApart TOS it said something like we own all your contributions. That was just boilerplate stuff that I personally never wanted it in there, but I wasn't good at legal documents, so I left it. When SixApart bought the company they left that in, but their lawyers changed some words a little to make it clearer. So while technically SixApart could arguably own your contributions now (if you agreed to the TOS), they don't want them. We want you guys to own them, as long as we have a license to use them. (under the GPL, Artistic, BSD, whatever....)

I'll give you guys an update when we're further along in these talks. Probably next week ... not this weekend.

Future LiveJournal contributions
People think we're ditching this codebase and moving to TypePad or Movable Type. You know how hard that'd be? Think how many LiveJournal features and formats we'd have to port. We love the LiveJournal code and associated codebases and you're still going to see us hacking on them, adding new stuff, fixing stuff, etc.

To come..
More announcements when we know more. Feel free to flood us with questions and we'll answer. We don't want anybody left in the dark about stuff.

(Post a new comment)

	signe 2005-01-07 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	Any new job openings? :P (Reply to this) (Thread)

	bradfitz 2005-01-07 07:55 pm UTC (link)
	http://www.sixapart.com/jobs/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mart 2005-01-08 07:57 am UTC (link)
	Also, see http://jobs.perl.org/job/1019 Same job, pretty much. It's much cooler on jobs.perl.org, though! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	thevoicewithin 2005-01-07 07:55 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for the update Brad. One possible cause for concern of mine in the new TOS is section XII - Advertisements and Promotions. What is the likelihood of LJ becoming an advertising supported site? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	supersat 2005-01-07 07:56 pm UTC (link)
	That was in the old TOS as well. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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thevoicewithin, 2005-01-07 07:57 pm UTC (Expand)

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supersat, 2005-01-07 08:04 pm UTC (Expand)

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thevoicewithin, 2005-01-07 08:11 pm UTC (Expand)

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hughe, 2005-01-07 08:17 pm UTC (Expand)

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rahaeli, 2005-01-07 08:44 pm UTC (Expand)

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supersat, 2005-01-07 08:53 pm UTC (Expand)

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rahaeli, 2005-01-07 08:57 pm UTC (Expand)

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hughe, 2005-01-09 03:52 am UTC (Expand)

	way2tired 2005-01-07 08:01 pm UTC (link)
	I cannot imagine how much work it would be to port. Probably wouldn't be worth it even from just a buggy-ness standpoint, let alone the time. That would totally suck. (Reply to this)

seattlesparks
2005-01-07 08:03 pm UTC (link)

Question here, since I'm not sure where else to ask it...

What're the chances of LJ supporting the Moveable Type posting API in the future? I only ask because it would make the lives of anyone writing blog-posting software far, far easier. (Heck, I would be willing to work on hacking this in, honestly.)

It'd also open up more options for LJ users in terms of clients; much as I love Xjournal, it'd also be nice to use ecto2 for both my personal blog (on LJ) and making entries to my employer's public blog (on Blogger) which I help write in.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

crschmidt
2005-01-07 08:12 pm UTC (link)

The Blogger API is already supported, as is the AtomAPI. I don't remember the exact URIs for either: Blogger API support code is at http://cvs.livejournal.org/browse.cgi/livejournal/cgi-bin/Apache/LiveJournal/Interface/Blogger.pm?rev=1.8&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup . I know that I posted using the Atom API for a while: worked well (via NetNewsWire, even better than Xjournal in some respects).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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seattlesparks, 2005-01-07 08:14 pm UTC (Expand)

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crschmidt, 2005-01-07 08:21 pm UTC (Expand)

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decadence1, 2005-01-08 01:03 am UTC (Expand)

	Copyright for Debian Packages? jaybonci 2005-01-07 08:15 pm UTC (link)
	Currently, your Debian packages list the copyright as owned by Danga, Inc. Is this still the case, or should I update them to say Copyright SixApart, Inc/LLC/Co, etc? Write me back here, or privately. Congratulations very much on the corporate "growing up". It had to happen some time, and it looks like you all will weather it with grace and respect for the community. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Copyright for Debian Packages? bradfitz 2005-01-07 08:26 pm UTC (link)
	Danga's still a legal entity that is just a division of Six Apart, so leaving it (C) Danga should still be fine. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashi_moto 2005-01-07 08:54 pm UTC (link)
	brad, would you ever be willing to party with me if I came to San Francisco? (Reply to this)

	flying_blind 2005-01-07 09:15 pm UTC (link)
	Heh. And here I was, thinking that SixArms bought LJ so they could ditch TypePad and move their users to the LiveJournal code base. I'm so out of step with the zeitgeist. (Reply to this)

	ipain 2005-01-07 09:19 pm UTC (link)
	legally go after any company that tries to violate the GPL'ed code by selling server software based off LiveJournal code without releasing their modifications. does this mean that 6A will release all future modifications of their code based off lj? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	museumfreak 2005-01-08 10:37 am UTC (link)
	I can't provide an official answer . . . but the chick who's the CEO of 6A posted something roughly saying that this is true in her weblog. Brad linked the post off the original announcement in news. (Reply to this) (Parent)

secksiewolfie
2005-01-07 09:30 pm UTC (link)

So while technically SixApart could arguably own your contributions now (if you agreed to the TOS), they don't want them. We want you guys to own them, as long as we have a license to use them. (under the GPL, Artistic, BSD, whatever....)

Will this also apply for non-code contributions (documentation, translation, etc), and if so how will this be managed? It's not a big deal to me anyway, just wondering.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	bradfitz 2005-01-08 12:03 am UTC (link)
	Those things aren't under any license, so the only reason we have a right to use them is because they're legally ours, according to the TOS. But perhaps if we had volunteers license them under the GFDL or something? That could work. I'll bring it up and ask. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

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secksiewolfie, 2005-01-09 04:47 am UTC (Expand)

	Posession is nine tenths of the law... triptrashbang 2005-01-07 09:32 pm UTC (link)
	Regardless of how 6A feels about ownership of the code, ("They don't want it.") what matters is if they actually own it or not, right? (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... mambos 2005-01-07 09:50 pm UTC (link)
	This is my concern as well. Does Six-About own the code, in a legal sense, or don't they? While the spirit seems very congenial, I'm not quite sure about the letter. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

virga, 2005-01-07 10:36 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

bradfitz, 2005-01-08 12:04 am UTC (Expand)

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triptrashbang, 2005-01-08 05:37 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

mart, 2005-01-08 04:51 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

triptrashbang, 2005-01-08 07:37 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

mart, 2005-01-08 08:10 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

triptrashbang, 2005-01-08 08:46 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

mart, 2005-01-08 09:04 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

triptrashbang, 2005-01-08 09:30 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

mart, 2005-01-08 10:27 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

triptrashbang, 2005-01-08 10:46 am UTC (Expand)

Re: Posession is nine tenths of the law... -

mart, 2005-01-08 10:59 am UTC (Expand)

	scsi 2005-01-07 10:08 pm UTC (link)
	DeadJournal even gives stuff back from time to time heh, yeah, i guess panic'd phone calls about a unique bug is giving something back.. Are you still taking patches in zilla? I have some small tweaks that i want you guys to look at (to see if you want). (Reply to this) (Thread)

	daveman692 2005-01-07 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	Frank, if you have stuff that you think will get lost in Zilla, feel free to email me directly and I can make sure either I review them or the appropriate person does. (Reply to this) (Parent)

jamesd
2005-01-07 11:53 pm UTC (link)

Might be worth clarifying the past status legally, to protect against the buyers of the buyers of Six Apart, who might go looking for things they think they own. Assignment of any transferred rights back to the original author. That is: to assume that corporate hacks eventually get control sometime and protect against them. You know the SCO types.

One TOS term which has bugged me is requirement not to "Upload, post or otherwise transmit any material that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment"

Something like Querybane is designed specifically to interrupt the normal functioning of database queries, to keep the server from being killed by that normal operation of nasty queies. You'd know better than to invoke that clause for that case but Support has advised me in the past that even posting the registry code to enable the administrator kill bit (this ActiveX control is not allowed to run on this computer) is a prohibited reghack, presumably because it interrupts the normal functioning of the thing that it is supposed to interrupt the normal functioning of...:)

It's increasingly likely that I'll be uploading things specifically intended to limit the normal functioning of routers and switches, for both service level control and DOS/DDOS limiting.

Might benefit from some added language in there to let authorised users control their own equipment, discuss how to do it and security vulnerabilities within it - some of which are definitely going to involve posting code snippets which that clause would prohibit.

(Reply to this)

	jc 2005-01-08 04:11 am UTC (link)
	Gods, Brad, all of a sudden your posts read like they were written by your new secretary. (Reply to this)

mart
2005-01-08 04:56 am UTC (link)

I always thought the GPL was a bit of an odd fit for “web applications”, since unlike traditional software people can use it without you having to distribute it. I suppose you could argue that the “user” in the GPL sense is the person running the software and not the end-user, but it still seems a bit wacky. It seems to defeat the GPL to a certain extent.

The BSD-licenced bits (which fb and wcmtools are, right?) don't matter so much, since there's no “infection” in the BSD licence.

(Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	crschmidt 2005-01-08 06:37 am UTC (link)
	I realized that the other day: Since I write almost entirely web tools, the GPL hardly ever applies to me. I don't have to give back patches I use unless I am actually distributing the code to people (In which case, for the most part, I'm distributing code anyway, since it's always been PHP.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

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triptrashbang, 2005-01-08 07:50 am UTC (Expand)

vampwillow
2005-01-08 06:51 am UTC (link)

"we own all your contributions ... they left that in, but their lawyers changed some words a little to make it clearer. So while technically SixApart could arguably own your contributions now ... they don't want them."

Speaking as someone from outside the USA we have noted a tendency over there to head legal-action-wards on such things (SCO, etc) after saying one thing but having a legal case to do the other.

It would appear that, whether they want them or not, the current legal statusis that SixApart *do* own it as successors of title to the LJ ownership. Something to retify the "don't want them" with legal status would appear to be required therefore, even better to push parts of the code off-shore to ensure GPL/open status of some definiable type.

imho, of course ...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Fork the codebase? bsdguru 2005-01-08 01:27 pm UTC (link)
	One could always fork the codebase or move the codebase to say Sourceforge.net and setup a core groupd of "Live Journal Developers" persay and assign the rights over to the development team. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

Re: Fork the codebase? -

mart, 2005-01-08 04:34 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: Fork the codebase? -

bsdguru, 2005-01-09 03:23 am UTC (Expand)

mart
2005-01-08 08:25 am UTC (link)

Regardless of my positive comments above, I would like to state that I do have a healthy fear of companies, and US companies in particular. By selling Danga you've basically taken the future of the company and the site out of your hands, despite any current co-operation. Even if Six Apart's current board does co-operate with your wishes, there is no guarantee that Six Apart will not get bought out at a later date, especially once Six Apart hits IPO which I assume is a future goal.

At minimum, I would like to see a proper public statement from whoever is legally allowed to make it explaining exactly where everyone stands as far as Six Apart is concerned. My particular concern is code contributors, but I'm sure support volunteers and others would like to know where they stand legally as well. I would like it even more if some gesture was made to ensure that the situation cannot change in the future. An example would be to give an outside entity some control over the direction of the open-source part of the software, thus assuring that it is not Six Apart's software, but that Six Apart (via Danga) is using and contributing to an open source project in the same relationship as Six Apart using and contributing to Perl. (and also, will hopefully keep providing facilities to help development continue, such as code repositories and the bug tracker. I'd hate to have to use SourceForge's nasty stuff! ;))

The (rather nasty) worst-case scenario is that someone ends up forking LiveJournal, FotoBilder and the related stuff because they want to do things which don't directly support Danga/SA's goals, and like most forks that would end up being bad for everyone as it would probably result in lots of wasted work.

I'm not trying to be an ass, I'm just concerned that this could get ugly at some point in the future and so I'm being careful not to mince my words.

(Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

triptrashbang
2005-01-08 09:45 am UTC (link)

mart,

I think your feelings and concerns are perfectly valid. With respect to Brad, I don't think much thought went into the business aspects of Danga, Inc., by which I mean it seems as though a lot is being made up on the fly, which gives me even *greater* concern for the future of LJ, because it seems atypical of these situations that someone will start to put controls in place to protect the competitive interests of the business. As you stated, quite wisely, 6A will more than likely go public, and before that happens, the housecleaning will start.

I've been around big business and small business long enough to know what it takes to survive, and idealism has no place in business. Perhaps this is the base of your fears? It's true, nobody has come forth and made a clear, legal statement about how things are going to work.

If I were a contributor or volunteer of LJ right now, I'd be demanding some straight answers as well. Personally, from my own experience, I would hold off any colaborative efforts with LJ knowing they're in league with the competition right now--they have an investment to protect and anything goes. That's the game, and they're not making any new rules. Six Apart got a lot of flack from people already when they took this direction--no matter how "buddy buddy" they're trying to seem right now, I wouldn't trust them, either.

johnny :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Ask Mena? -

bsdguru, 2005-01-08 01:26 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: Ask Mena? -

mart, 2005-01-08 04:32 pm UTC (Expand)

IPO -

vampwillow, 2005-01-08 03:28 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: IPO -

jamesd, 2005-01-09 12:52 am UTC (Expand)

Re: IPO -

vampwillow, 2005-01-09 03:53 am UTC (Expand)

Re: IPO -

jamesd, 2005-01-11 05:25 am UTC (Expand)

	kunzite1 2005-01-08 08:04 pm UTC (link)
	arent the servers gonna need to be moved? how's that gonna work? (Reply to this)

	secretbutterfly 2005-01-09 10:00 am UTC (link)
	I know this has been flooded about in another post, and it's really a bit trivial, however maybe some people would feel a little less freaked about this whole thing if the cartoon goat that represents LJ hadn't been shot up and maimed. It's really kind of disturbing and worrisome. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ianiceboy 2005-01-16 07:43 am UTC (link)
	It was branded, not shot. My advice is to not look at the lj_maintenance userpic if you don't like to think of Frank in trouble. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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