/kbin meta

This is the kind of transparent communication that buys so much goodwill and trust from the community. I've been enjoying my first experience in the Fediverse with Kbin, and the response here only makes me love it that much more. Nicely handled.

Seems just like another day with open source software.
You gotta be careful about licensing and attribution and it can get really messy, but no big deal really.
Seems like you're correcting this and acting in good faith.

It shouldn't happen, but it happens. Thanks for the transparency

@ernest Hey man, if it's of any help, I have a PHP (laravel) project which mostly federates fine, license is AGPLv3 as well, so feel free to reuse what you see fit.

We appreciate the transparency and hope everything can be solved without much friction. Keep it up!

@ernest I thought you killed someone, based on the title 😂

I agree with the other commenter. Seems like you’re making it right. This is a new and sometimes messy frontier for a lot of people and processes. If someone is worried about protecting their IP, this isn’t the hill to die on.

I like you even more now for admitting your mistake without any hesitation and taking the steps to rectify your error. Keep up the good work!

Cross-posting my comment:

This is one of my largest frustrations with the open source community. Everything is immediately assumed as malicious. There is no escalation, it's "you screwed me over" from the jump.

I suppose it's bred from decades of large corporations pilfering open source for profit. However, this post could easily have been, "I noticed there's some code I wrote that wasn't attributed, would you mind adding that?". Escalate from there if the appropriate actions aren't taken.

Frankly, it's very refreshing to see someone running the show that has this combination of work ethic, passion without hunger for power, and honesty. Thank you for the transparency!

You've obviously got a million things going on a minute here. Like someone juggling flaming swords, I don't think anyone is going to blame you for dropping one accidentally while more fire-soaked swords keep being tossed at you. Seems like you know what to do and that there are a lot of talented folks here willing to provide help anyway they can. We're with you (me in the sentimental sense, I'm not so talented when it comes to coding)!

The title here scared me so much haha. It just seems like there's a credit issue? I don't think you've done anything wrong. Small projects naturally are like that, and kbin kinda exploded in size quite fast, so it's understandable. Transparency is good. There's no rush I think. Honestly this post just makes me realize even more how awesome kbin is and how great of a dev and admin you are. It's rare to see. Massive kudos.

It's alright. I do think the actual issue was worded perhaps a bit harshly and combative, and I think you responded correctly. Very much appreciate the accountability here. To be honest if anything, this probably gives me more faith in you in the long run. There are many ways you could have dealt with it, but as far as I can see you've dealt with the issue as honorably as you could have.
Proper attribution can be tricky. We all learn. We all make mistakes. A lot of us will never release a project that makes it as far as yours has so even our issues don't become even nearly as visible.
Keep your head up and stay calm. You're doing great. We got you.

Seems that so long as the attribution is in place the Postmill people aren't going to push it further. I (and I hope the community) appreciate your transparency and honesty. That's the sort of thing that makes me want to stick around here and support this project.

And for fun, I will check out those other sites, since I hadn't heard about Postmill/Raddle before.

Everyone makes mistakes. Your response was not to deny or try to redirect blame, but to own up to it and fix the problem - and there is no lasting harm. Honestly if anyone asks for more than that they're being an arse! Keep doing what you're doing, I'm one of the trillions of Reddit refugees, and I like what I see here

As a thought, this project is clearly suddenly getting much bigger than you intended. Maybe see if you can take inspiration from Linux Torvalds about how to manage a project on this scale while retaining control of it - he is basically the benevolent dictator of the Linux kernel, what he says goes (and he has had some very famous arguments!), but he does delegate and take help where he needs it.

Damn emma really tore into you in that issue lol. A lot of assumptions about malicious intentions when a simple mistake seems much more likely. I mean I know they're in the right defending their work but damn idk if they needed to make such a big public stink about it lol

If there's anything I've learned from programmer humor reaching all it's that 95% of code is creatively liberated.

That being said I'm happy to hear you being transparent and giving the credit where it's due!

Keep up the good work man and try not to burn yourself out, I know this just be a stressful time!

Website is definitely running faster. Thank you @ernest

Licenses are hard. The fact that you are being transparent means this was not malice. Keep improving, and it all will work out in the end.

I honestly don't see this as a big deal, but I'm glad that you're being honest and open. Attribution is cool and all, but Emma makes it sound like you committed some sort of cardinal sin. I can never understand why someone who uses a permissive license gets so upset when their work is not attributed, you gain almost nothing from it.

Again though, attribution is still a net good. I think it's the polite thing to do, and I'm glad you're doing it.

Seems to me you're handling it the best way possible - yes, re-using open source code without proper attribution is an unfortunate mistake, but you've also clearly explained the reasons it happened. I also understand why the original code author reacted very strongly; when code is stolen maliciously and with intent, it's a huge "fuck you" to the original authors, who have freely released their code on the basis that they receive attribution of their use.

Good to see you've subsequently made up, and the code can stay. Thanks for being transparent, @ernest!

Don't stress ernest. Mistakes happen

Thank you for the transparency

This is exactly what we like to see, people actually taking responsibility for their mistakes and rectifying them in an open and transparent manner

@ernest thank you for being transparent with us, it's what we can hope for when on platforms like this. I am happy to be here on kbin!

We appreciate your honesty and transparency, keep up the good work!

You, sir, are an honorable person. I think I can speak for all open-source hobby programmers when I say: you make us proud.

Is 'LitigiousEmma' an inside joke, or an extremely relevant username? haha

Edit: For some reason this keeps bouncing around in my head and the more I think about the more I believe that Emma should have contacted you privately (at first, anyway) instead of jumping right into attempting to publicly shame you.

Mistakes happen, what matters is how you recover from them. Keep doing what you’re doing!

Lol, she picked a hell of a username on codeberg. Very fitting.

"Hey Ernest, I see you have used my code from (project) without proper attribution as required by the license. Can you please correct the attribution or remove the infringing code?"

How hard would that have been? If she didn't get the response she wanted she could then escalate.

That's ok dude. That's the nature of coding. We all copy and paste and take ideas from other places. Attributing is a low priority for minor personal projects and now suddenly your personal project is a bit bigger.

All good. No harm done. I look forward to seeing how this platform grows even more.

However I feel about the wording Emma chose, at the end of the day it was within her right to call you out. It's a great sign of good faith that you took the criticism, apologized, and are acting on it. From personal experience I also take stuff from the internet for personal projects... except my personal projects don't grow a thousandfold in terms of users almost overnight.

Don't sweat it, man. You're doing great.