this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
660 points (100.0% liked)

/kbin meta

200 readers
2 users here now

Magazine dedicated to discussions about the kbin itself. Provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics. ---- * Roadmap 2023 * m/kbinDevlog * m/kbinDesign

founded 2 years ago
 

I think you should see something.

Like I mentioned many time before, this isn't my first attempt at creating an aggregator. Years ago, I built something similar, and back then I drew a lot of inspiration from Postmill. This time, to avoid starting from scratch, I get some elements from my old snippets. Originally, kbin was meant to be a project just for me and a few friends, so I didn't attribute the origin authors. That's not an excuse, though — I should have done it right away when the project became public on git. I have a point in my roadmap called "Preparing a repository for contributors," where I allocated a significant amount of time to educate myself about licenses, attributions, and so on. Unfortunately, everything unfolded in the wrong order.

https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/196

I think Emma is right. Since I share my small successes with you, I also want to be transparent about my failures and mistakes. I will push the proper attributions to the repository today along with some critical fixes.

To avoid reinventing the wheel, I took some code used in federation from Pixelfed as well. Essentially, there are two projects two projects will be marked. However, I have never concealed this fact:

https://kbin.social/m/random/p/254858/The-real-reason-why-I-haven-t-published-the-pixelfed-app#post-comment-438684

I mean that I'm not a guy who wants to steal your code. It's obvious that someone will take a look at the code of a project that is very similar to theirs. Sometimes, I just become terribly messy when I have to do many things at once. This lesson will definitely teach me to prioritize tasks better.

In the end, I can only promise that once everything settles down and I manage to extract a library for ActivityPub, I will revisit the Postmill repository, this time with a pull request proposal.

You should definitely check it out.

https://postmill.xyz/ - Project page
https://raddle.me/ - Postmill instance
https://pixelfed.org/ - Of course, everyone here is familiar with this one ;)

PS. the website should be running a bit faster. I will talk about it next time.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] knoland@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't have any issue with opening an issue in the repo, that part seems reasonable. It, by definition, is an issue with the codebase.

[–] gus@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Right, I wasn't saying it shouldn't have been a public post. Just that the public post shouldn't have immediately jumped to accusations. FOSS or not, accusing someone of stealing code and intentionally trying to obfuscate its origin to pass it off as their own is a big deal for a developer. One that can destroy your reputation

A simple "I've noticed snippets in here of my work that falls under a license which is not attributed at all. Could you add the proper attributions or remove it from your project?" says the same thing and doesn't jump to any accusations that you have no idea if are true or not

[–] Rhaedas@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not knowing either parties at all, I'd say the best solution is to assume both meant the best and some mistakes were made. One for forgetting to give credit for code, the other for wording in their asking to fix the mistake. At the end of the day, credit is given and the code grows, both benefit. Don't dwell on the small stuff that got there, problem is solved.

[–] gus@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Agreed! Totally think this is a learning experience for both sides

An...earnest mistake?

I'm sorry

[–] argv_minus_one 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

accusing someone of stealing code and intentionally trying to obfuscate its origin to pass it off as their own is a big deal for a developer. One that can destroy your reputation

Is it? It sure didn't destroy the reputations of the Microsoft employees who plagiarized Stacker. And their plagiarism cost people their livelihoods, not just a smidgen of fame.