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“just open sourced someone else’s code ama” - a case study in fucking around and finding out (coolmathgam.es)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by self@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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from the linked github thread:

Your project is in violation of the AGPL, and you have stated this is intentional and you have no plans to open source it. This is breaking the law, and as such I've began to help you with the first steps of re-open sourcing the plugin.

the project author (who gets paid for violating the AGPL via patreon) responds like a mediocre crypto grifter and insists their violation of the law be debated on the discord they control (where their shitty community can shout down the reporter):

While keeping code private doesn't guarantee security, it does make it harder for bad actors to keep up with changes. You are welcome to debate this matter in the MakePlace discord: https://discord.com/invite/YuvcPzCuhq If you are able to convince the MakePlace community that keeping the code open-source is better, I will respect the wishes of the community.

aaaand the smackdown:

Respectfully, I won't attempt to "debate" or "convince" anyone; I'm leaving this pull request and my fork here for others to see and use. It is not a matter of "better"; you are violating a software license and the law. It does not "make it harder" for anyone; Harmony hooking exists, IL modification exists, you can modify plugins from other plugins.

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[–] locallynonlinear@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Maybe unpopular take here, but I love discord as an excellent fit for specific use cases. I think plenty of groups that should be web forums use discord wrong, but for several of my favorite communities:

They are better smaller, I don't necessarily want or need them to be discoverable aside from word of mouth.
They are better without search history, because the discussion is more ephemeral and personal instead of assuming that anyone is digging history in after hours
Ad hoc voice chat rooms is a useful boon because of exactly 1 and 2.
No ads. Yes I understand the privacy issues, but I would still prefer to have opt in subscriptions, no ads, and my chats are harvested than many alternatives for small communities that need to subsidize costs. (Again fediverse, if not ads, requires a buy in in terms of technical operational costs)
Trivial to build specialized addons in the case your community has a need.

Good examples for me are: Friend of Friend Groups for organizing dinners or parties Online gaming communities Book clubs Co-worker chat alternative to slack

[–] corbin@awful.systems 4 points 11 months ago

I'm a little surprised that people feel like Discord does a good job of (4) and (5). On (4), Discord's ToS used to permit Discord to resell your personal data in bulk (and still might allow it; haven't read the ToS in a while), all guilds are co-located in a single database, and rumor is that three-letter agencies are allowed to make relatively complex queries against that database. On (5), Discord is well-known to ban alternative clients, hacked clients, API clients, extensions, addons, and even chatbots, without any due process or recourse.

Like, yes, it's a nice service, but is it really that much nicer than Mumble or IRC?