103: A Watershed Moment in Copyright Litigation

00:00SPEAKER- Somebody just tried to reset my Microsoft password.

00:02SPEAKER- Wait, what? - What the hell?

00:04SPEAKERWas it you?

00:05SPEAKER- I don't even know what email address

00:06SPEAKERyour Microsoft password would be attached to.

00:08SPEAKER- Well, apparently somebody does.

00:11SPEAKER- Look, man, people reset my Google password

00:13SPEAKERfour or five times a day.

00:15SPEAKER- Well, yeah, let's say you occupy a bit of an edge case.

00:20SPEAKER- It's a problem, okay?

00:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I think we've covered this before.

00:24SPEAKER- I can't, yeah, I couldn't remember if we had or not,

00:26SPEAKERbut okay, so who, look, I gotta imagine your Xbox.

00:32SPEAKERYou've got threat profile there.

00:33SPEAKER- So that address got out on streams years and years ago.

00:37SPEAKERThe funny thing is, so I just noticed

00:39SPEAKERwhat was actually the case is Microsoft,

00:41SPEAKERI don't think, does anybody else do this?

00:43SPEAKERMicrosoft lets you specify an email address

00:45SPEAKERdifferent than your actual email address on that account?

00:48SPEAKER- You can do that with Google.

00:49SPEAKER- As the email address you send backup,

00:50SPEAKERor to send the recovery codes, reset requests to?

00:54SPEAKER- No, 'cause then if you were locked out of the account,

00:56SPEAKERhow would you get the reset address?

00:57SPEAKER- You're totally, yes, you're totally right.

00:59SPEAKERBut in my case, it went the opposite direction of,

01:01SPEAKERI changed the email address from one that had been public

01:04SPEAKERto one that was private, but did not realize

01:07SPEAKERI also needed to separately update the recovery address,

01:10SPEAKERthe password reset email, along with that.

01:13SPEAKERSo they were able to still punch the address

01:16SPEAKEReverybody knows into a thing.

01:18SPEAKER- Oh, 'cause it's still the recovery address.

01:20SPEAKER- Right, so in my case, it worked against me,

01:22SPEAKERis what I'm saying.

01:23SPEAKER- Well, that's a problem.

01:24SPEAKER- Yeah, that's not great.

01:25SPEAKER- I once had to reset my Microsoft password

01:28SPEAKERbefore a Thursday night throw down,

01:29SPEAKERbecause it was using a password that was in it,

01:32SPEAKERlike a gizmodo hack or something, a Docker hack.

01:36SPEAKERAnd somebody was logging into it from Malaysia someplace.

01:40SPEAKERYeah, so that's the thing that happened.

01:41SPEAKER- It's a skeezy feeling, do you agree?

01:43SPEAKERLike it just-

01:44SPEAKER- It feels awful.

01:45SPEAKER- It makes your skin crawl a little bit

01:46SPEAKERto think that somebody is trying to get into your thing.

01:48SPEAKER- It feels like an actual violation, yes.

01:50SPEAKER- It really does.

01:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:52SPEAKER- Let's bring this all together here.

01:53SPEAKERCan I tell a little known giant bomb story?

01:55SPEAKER- Ooh, yeah, always.

01:56SPEAKER- Since you mentioned Thursday night throw down

01:58SPEAKERand we're talking about accounts getting compromised,

01:59SPEAKERlet's just tie this all together.

02:01SPEAKERSomeone there who will, I guess I won't name and shame,

02:06SPEAKERused the same password for their giant bomb account

02:08SPEAKERthat they had used apparently everywhere else.

02:10SPEAKER- Oh, boy.

02:11SPEAKER- And it got compromised in one of those hacks,

02:13SPEAKERjust like that gizmodo hack you were just talking about.

02:15SPEAKERSomebody got into their account,

02:16SPEAKERand of course they had back in the full staff CMS access.

02:20SPEAKER- Oh, crap.

02:21SPEAKER- We only found this out.

02:22SPEAKERThey didn't get in there.

02:24SPEAKERSo this was, I have to, as nefarious as this was,

02:26SPEAKERI have to admire their ingenuity or their insidiousness.

02:29SPEAKERThey didn't go in there and upload a bunch of porn

02:32SPEAKERonto the site and make it the top slot

02:34SPEAKERall over the front page.

02:35SPEAKER- It would have been hard to figure that out in fairness.

02:37SPEAKER- What they did was go pull up a bunch of old reviews

02:40SPEAKERand old articles and just very subtly go through

02:43SPEAKERand insert a bunch of profanity

02:45SPEAKERin the most inconspicuous way.

02:47SPEAKER(laughing)

02:52SPEAKERThey just inserted single swear words

02:54SPEAKERin the middle of paragraphs

02:55SPEAKERof a bunch of different reviews and stuff.

02:57SPEAKERThey very, very carefully and meticulously vandalized

03:00SPEAKERa bunch of reviews, and it took quite a while, I think,

03:04SPEAKERfor somebody to catch on to that.

03:05SPEAKEREventually access logs were queried

03:09SPEAKERor whatever activity was tracked,

03:11SPEAKERand it was, I assume, fairly trivial to roll that stuff back

03:15SPEAKERfor quite some time.

03:15SPEAKERIt took a while to discover the wrongdoing.

03:18SPEAKER- This is my favorite kind of vandalism.

03:20SPEAKERSomebody came to Adam's shop one time

03:24SPEAKERwhen they were visiting Tested,

03:25SPEAKERand I want to say it was Peter Sagal,

03:28SPEAKERbut it might've been Paul and Storm.

03:30SPEAKERI can't remember who.

03:32SPEAKERAnd he had all of the drawers on his,

03:35SPEAKERlike bazillions of toolboxes everywhere,

03:37SPEAKERand they were all labeled with a label maker,

03:39SPEAKERand the label maker usually was just hanging on a hook

03:41SPEAKERin the shop, 'cause when he would put something new

03:43SPEAKERin a drawer, he'd make a new label and stick it on there,

03:45SPEAKERso you could just kind of scan the drawers

03:47SPEAKERand find out what it was.

03:49SPEAKERAnd so whoever this was took the label maker

03:53SPEAKERand just put A, some gag ones

03:57SPEAKERthat were like left-handed spanners and stuff like that,

04:00SPEAKERbut then they also made ones that were much, much worse

04:02SPEAKERthat were just like slight typos on the existing labels,

04:06SPEAKERand they put them right on top of the existing labels

04:09SPEAKERand then didn't say a word.

04:11SPEAKERWe didn't realize it for weeks.

04:13SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Adam, you can't spell for shit."

04:16SPEAKER- You know this was the technique

04:18SPEAKERof the East German Stasi, right?

04:19SPEAKER- What, really?

04:20SPEAKERThey would just-

04:21SPEAKER- To psychologically manipulate people

04:23SPEAKERwithout their knowledge

04:24SPEAKERuntil they just basically lost their marbles.

04:26SPEAKER- Oh no.

04:27SPEAKER- Wait, hang on.

04:28SPEAKERAre we, are you friends with the secret police?

04:30SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:48SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

04:59SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Bot."

05:01SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:02SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

05:03SPEAKER- And we have a very special guest today joining us

05:06SPEAKERfrom what looks like the basement of CERN

05:09SPEAKERsomewhere in a beam path is one Chris Dabona.

05:13SPEAKERChris, welcome to the show.

05:14SPEAKERHow are you doing, man?

05:15SPEAKER- I'm good.

05:16SPEAKERThank you so much for having me.

05:17SPEAKERThis is gonna be fun or not merely awful,

05:20SPEAKERbut you know, I'm looking forward to it.

05:21SPEAKER- You'll find out in 45 minutes.

05:23SPEAKER- If it's not fun,

05:24SPEAKERwe'll just play with the particle accelerator and-

05:25SPEAKER- Right?

05:26SPEAKERYou know, throw some mouans.

05:30SPEAKER- So Chris, people may know you from your work,

05:34SPEAKERlet's say a while ago on Slashdot.

05:38SPEAKERBut for what, the last 15-ish, 20-

05:42SPEAKER- 17.

05:43SPEAKER- 17 years.

05:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

05:45SPEAKERSo you've been the open source licensing compliance person

05:49SPEAKERfor Google?

05:50SPEAKER- Sounds so institutional, sounds bureaucratic.

05:53SPEAKER- Technically, my title is the director of open source

05:56SPEAKERor alphabet and Google.

06:00SPEAKERI add some other stuff on my title.

06:02SPEAKERHonestly, I've had two titles at Google.

06:04SPEAKERFirst was the open source programs manager

06:06SPEAKERand they promoted me to director.

06:08SPEAKERSo I was like, "Oh, I should change my title."

06:10SPEAKERAnd so I became the director.

06:12SPEAKER- Do you get a fancy chair with like the fold up arms

06:15SPEAKERand the canvas back or anything like that?

06:16SPEAKER- You know, you'd think there'd be like a special watch

06:19SPEAKERor a special handshake, that's not really how it works.

06:23SPEAKER- No, okay.

06:24SPEAKERWell, that's disappointing, but I'll allow it.

06:27SPEAKERSo director of open source, what does that,

06:29SPEAKERwhat do you do, Chris?

06:31SPEAKER- So I have sort of a tripartite job, okay?

06:33SPEAKER- Okay, that means there's three parts, I believe.

06:36SPEAKER- Sure.

06:37SPEAKERSo actually I have a multifaceted job.

06:41SPEAKERSo I look after, and when I say I,

06:44SPEAKERI mean, I have a team of like 60 people, okay?

06:47SPEAKERSo I have a mission to look after

06:51SPEAKERall the incoming source code in the company,

06:55SPEAKERmake sure that Google is able to release source code

06:59SPEAKERfrom the company.

07:00SPEAKERAnd then also I have this really privileged position

07:05SPEAKERto have the overall health of the open source community

07:10SPEAKERas one of my missions, right?

07:12SPEAKERSo about a year or two into my job,

07:15SPEAKERmaybe a year into my job, you know,

07:19SPEAKERone of our founders asked me to look after

07:22SPEAKERcomputer scientists over the summer in school.

07:26SPEAKERAnd so I was like, well, I guess my meeting now

07:29SPEAKERalso includes, you know, the health of these students

07:33SPEAKERand the health of the open source software community

07:35SPEAKERthat has created so much value for Google.

07:38SPEAKERAnd so it's kind of great, you know?

07:40SPEAKERAnd then I do some stuff in policy, and it's fine.

07:44SPEAKER- So like that XKCD, the one about the one project

07:48SPEAKERthat some random person in Nebraska

07:50SPEAKERhas been thanklessly maintaining since 2003,

07:52SPEAKERthat is the prop upon which the entire software stack

07:56SPEAKERfor the internet is based, like does that mean

07:59SPEAKERthat person falls under your domain now?

08:01SPEAKER- Yeah, no, so you laugh, but you know,

08:06SPEAKERone of the things that sort of happens in open source

08:08SPEAKERabout every six months, somebody freaks out,

08:10SPEAKERand they go, you know, open source isn't a good living.

08:14SPEAKERAnd so my goal is that I've already spoken with them

08:17SPEAKERabout how to have a good living,

08:21SPEAKERor how to not do open source anymore.

08:25SPEAKERAnd make sure that they know that Google

08:28SPEAKERis there for them proportionally, you know?

08:30SPEAKERSo for instance, a good example of this,

08:32SPEAKERthe network Time Demon was one of these,

08:36SPEAKERNTP was one of these sort of ignored pieces of software

08:44SPEAKERfor years, right?

08:45SPEAKERAnd so for about, I wanna say about seven or eight years,

08:49SPEAKERGoogle's the only one funding Harlan and Azorcon, you know?

08:53SPEAKERAnd it's the same thing with SSL.

08:56SPEAKERPeople were like, oh, nobody cares about open SSL.

08:59SPEAKERSorry about SSL.

09:00SPEAKERAnd it's like, well, you know, we've actually had

09:02SPEAKERBen Laurie working at Google for like 15 years now.

09:05SPEAKERAnd then when Heart Blade happened, you know,

09:08SPEAKERwe were the discoverers of it.

09:10SPEAKERAnd we were the ones who, I mean,

09:12SPEAKERI actually sent a guy to a marina to find Steve

09:16SPEAKERand to get him talking to us,

09:18SPEAKERand we tried to clean up the licensing situation inside SSL.

09:21SPEAKERAnd, you know, so yeah, you know,

09:23SPEAKERwe don't talk about a lot of this stuff publicly,

09:26SPEAKERbut I do talk, and my team,

09:29SPEAKERwe talk directly with these developers all the time

09:33SPEAKERso that at least they know that they have a friend at Google.

09:37SPEAKER- But, I mean, it seems like a place to make an impact.

09:41SPEAKER- Yeah, you know?

09:42SPEAKERAnd it's my thing, you know?

09:45SPEAKERIt's funny 'cause people are like, oh, you know,

09:48SPEAKERthis is a great job, you run an open source, blah, blah.

09:51SPEAKERAnd I'm like, you know what it really is?

09:52SPEAKERIt's maintaining a relationship with a completely

09:58SPEAKERchanging, moving target of a community, right?

10:02SPEAKER'Cause the community needs to change, right?

10:06SPEAKERYou know, if I think back 25 years ago,

10:09SPEAKERhow many of those people are gonna be around

10:11SPEAKER25 years from now, 10 years from now,

10:13SPEAKERfive years from now, now, right?

10:16SPEAKERYou know, it's not that they're just aging out,

10:18SPEAKERbut it's unreasonable to expect somebody

10:20SPEAKERto maintain some piece of software for 10 years

10:25SPEAKERabsent a commercial benefit or a personal benefit, you know?

10:30SPEAKER- Yeah, even with that, how many people do you know

10:33SPEAKERthat have kept the same job for 10 years,

10:35SPEAKERlike done the same job for 10 years?

10:37SPEAKERIt's unusual. - Very few.

10:38SPEAKERIt's funny 'cause I was talking to one of my teammates,

10:43SPEAKERone of my employees, and they were gonna be looking

10:45SPEAKERin another area at Google, or maybe outside,

10:50SPEAKERbut you know, I'm thinking of Google.

10:52SPEAKERAnd, you know, they're like, wow, I'm really surprised

10:55SPEAKERthat you're so supportive of this.

10:56SPEAKERAnd I'm like, you know, you've worked for me for many years.

11:00SPEAKERYou know, of course I'm gonna be supportive of it.

11:01SPEAKERIt's like, you know, the number of people who work for me

11:05SPEAKERfor their whole lives is gonna be measured as a zero.

11:08SPEAKER- Yeah. - Right?

11:09SPEAKERI've seen employees come work for me, leave working for me,

11:13SPEAKERcome back and work for me, you know?

11:15SPEAKERWhether it's working for me inside Google,

11:17SPEAKERoutside Google, you know, it's like when I came to Google,

11:20SPEAKERI brought like five, six people from VA Linux with me.

11:25SPEAKER'Cause it's just like, you know,

11:26SPEAKERwhen you find really good people that you like to work with,

11:29SPEAKERyeah, you know, you want to help them.

11:30SPEAKERYou want to help them find a better job, you know,

11:32SPEAKERor a job with more runway, if that's what they're looking for.

11:35SPEAKERWhatever it might be.

11:35SPEAKER- Okay, so Brad, we have open source licensing questions here.

11:39SPEAKER- Yes, we have a bulleted list here.

11:43SPEAKERShould I just start reading acronyms?

11:45SPEAKER- Sure, let's do it.

11:46SPEAKER- All right, GPL, LGPL, BSD, CDDL.

11:51SPEAKER- So what, do you want like the background

11:52SPEAKERon where they came from, how Google feels about them?

11:56SPEAKER- Yeah, they're kind of all of the above,

11:58SPEAKERso go ahead, Will.

11:59SPEAKER- But yeah, I was gonna say our remit on the podcast

12:01SPEAKERis to take things that people hear about

12:04SPEAKERand know kind of what they are, but don't really.

12:06SPEAKERAnd like, I don't want to do the explain it

12:09SPEAKERlike I'm five explanation, but like, you know,

12:12SPEAKERwe want to get into like a little bit of the differences

12:14SPEAKERand like what the nuances are and the things that,

12:17SPEAKERlike what do I need to understand as a user of software

12:21SPEAKERwhen I put GPL software on my computer versus MIT software

12:25SPEAKERversus CDDL versus BSD versus some other license

12:28SPEAKERthat I'm sure I've forgotten.

12:30SPEAKERAnd like, and I realized like this is a big,

12:34SPEAKERit's a big topic, right?

12:35SPEAKERThere's a lot to it, kind of, but on the other hand,

12:38SPEAKERmaybe there's not at all 'cause I can just run

12:40SPEAKERwhatever software I want on my computer,

12:41SPEAKERit works itself out.

12:42SPEAKER- Well, you know, remember, so I'm a bureaucrat, okay?

12:48SPEAKERI'm a very proud, efficient bureaucrat, all right?

12:51SPEAKERMy goal is to help developers use software

12:55SPEAKERwith as little red tape and stickiness as possible, okay?

13:00SPEAKERSo when somebody at Google or when somebody outside Google

13:03SPEAKERsays, hey, I want to use this line of code

13:04SPEAKERor this library or this program from Google

13:08SPEAKERor from outside Google, I say, okay, you know,

13:10SPEAKERwhat's the license say?

13:11SPEAKERAnd, you know, we make this very, very efficient.

13:14SPEAKERSo what I'd say is if you want to talk about licenses,

13:17SPEAKERright, you should talk about how do people think

13:19SPEAKERabout licenses when they're in my position

13:21SPEAKERso they can make a more efficient decision about what to do?

13:25SPEAKERAnd it all comes down to, well,

13:27SPEAKERwhat do you want to do with it, right?

13:29SPEAKERIf you just want to like install it on your personal,

13:32SPEAKERyou know, computer there and wherever the hell you guys are,

13:36SPEAKERyou're in Sin City and Palm Springs,

13:39SPEAKERyou know, wherever you're at, right?

13:43SPEAKERIf you're not going to be redistributing that code,

13:46SPEAKERyou don't have to care about anything, right?

13:48SPEAKERIt's very, there's very few people

13:51SPEAKERwho have to give any craps about code

13:53SPEAKERthat never gets expressed to a customer or a client

13:55SPEAKERor a partner or something, right?

13:58SPEAKERSo, you know, how do you accommodate that for a user

14:03SPEAKERis different than how you would accommodate it

14:04SPEAKERfor a Google, right?

14:06SPEAKER'Cause if somebody wants to use a library

14:08SPEAKERfrom outside the company, I have to assume as a regulator

14:12SPEAKERthat it's going to end up in a shipping product somewhere,

14:15SPEAKERright, 'cause the way that we've done our repositories

14:18SPEAKERinside the company, right?

14:19SPEAKERSo what we say to them is we have, okay,

14:22SPEAKERare you following our other standards

14:24SPEAKERaround how to build software,

14:25SPEAKERhow to bring software into the company?

14:27SPEAKERWe have areas in the software repositories

14:30SPEAKERcalled third party where all non-written

14:33SPEAKERby Google or code must go.

14:36SPEAKERAnd then we just, we give them the training,

14:39SPEAKERwe give them all the reasons to do things right

14:43SPEAKERso that when it comes time to launch a service,

14:47SPEAKERsearch, ads, Gmail, cloud products, Android,

14:52SPEAKERChromium, you name it, that the answers

14:55SPEAKERare already baked in to their build, right?

14:57SPEAKERSo you say, go ahead.

15:00SPEAKER- No, so they build the software

15:03SPEAKERand then they hit the button and your tool says,

15:05SPEAKERokay, here's the external code that's in this product

15:08SPEAKERat that point, is it that easy?

15:10SPEAKER- It's almost that easy, right?

15:12SPEAKERSo it's very easy for a Googler to find out

15:15SPEAKERwhat code is being expressed in their product.

15:17SPEAKERSo they understand what kind of launch requirements

15:20SPEAKERare associated with the software they're using.

15:22SPEAKERBut more importantly, when they bring the code

15:24SPEAKERinto their code base in the first place,

15:28SPEAKERyou know, there are standards applied to that code.

15:31SPEAKERSo for instance, if a person working on Android

15:33SPEAKERwants to bring in a library and it's under the GPL, right?

15:38SPEAKERIt's like, okay, there are places in Android

15:40SPEAKERwhere GPL code is allowed

15:42SPEAKERand there are places that it is not, right?

15:44SPEAKERSo if you're in the systems layer,

15:47SPEAKERLGPL and GPL code is generally pretty okay.

15:49SPEAKERThe carriers don't have a huge problem with complying.

15:53SPEAKERWe don't have any problems with complying in our pixel line.

15:56SPEAKERAnd so that can be all right, you know?

16:00SPEAKERBut if it's like inside the,

16:01SPEAKERwell, you consider the Android open source operating system.

16:06SPEAKERIf it's in that part of the code base,

16:07SPEAKERwe require permissively licensed code.

16:09SPEAKERSo that would be BSD, that would be Apache,

16:11SPEAKERthat would be those sorts of things,

16:13SPEAKERwhich we chose specifically because carrier consumers,

16:18SPEAKERchipset makers, the whole thing,

16:20SPEAKERthey could understand GPL compliance for the kernel,

16:24SPEAKERbut past that was never gonna happen, right?

16:28SPEAKERSo when we chose these licenses for Android,

16:31SPEAKERit was because we thought, okay,

16:32SPEAKERwhat are the developers of Android-based systems

16:36SPEAKERgoing to need?

16:37SPEAKERWhat are they gonna be able to comply with?

16:39SPEAKERWhat are they asking for?

16:41SPEAKERAnd what do we need from them, right?

16:42SPEAKERWe're trying to build out this platform.

16:43SPEAKERWe're trying to extend this platform out

16:45SPEAKERto as many people on earth as possible.

16:47SPEAKERSo that tells me we need an extremely permissive

16:51SPEAKERpatent granting license so that they don't worry about us

16:55SPEAKERcoming to them later and taking from them

16:59SPEAKERrent-seeking patent fees, right?

17:01SPEAKER- It's funny, I'd never thought about it,

17:03SPEAKERbut it makes total sense that like,

17:04SPEAKERwhen you make licensing decisions on something like Android

17:07SPEAKERthat then goes out to hundreds of partners around the world

17:10SPEAKERor thousands of partners around the world,

17:13SPEAKERthat there are then follow-on requirements for them

17:15SPEAKERfor all of the, like Samsung makes their changes

17:18SPEAKERand they have to then kick stuff down the stream.

17:20SPEAKERAnd I mean, that's a terrifying level of complexity.

17:25SPEAKER- Well, the thing is, you have to realize though,

17:26SPEAKERwhen Samsung ships a phone, it's not my problem,

17:29SPEAKERbut I wanna minimize their problems

17:32SPEAKERbecause I want Android to be successful.

17:34SPEAKERSimilarly, when we were choosing licenses for Chrome

17:37SPEAKERand Chromium, which is the open source components of Chrome,

17:40SPEAKERwe decided on BSD with actually a written second

17:46SPEAKERpatent grant for some of the components

17:48SPEAKERlike the codecs and the rest.

17:50SPEAKERAnd the reason we did that was because BSD was compatible

17:53SPEAKERwith the Mozilla Try license, where they have like,

17:56SPEAKEReverything that Mozilla was working on at the time,

17:58SPEAKERI think still, was under this triple license

18:01SPEAKERof the NPL, the MPL, and the something else.

18:04SPEAKERAnd then it was compatible with WebKit.

18:08SPEAKERSo any WebKit-consuming browser

18:11SPEAKERcould use anything we wrote forever, you know?

18:14SPEAKERAnd it was obviously compatible

18:18SPEAKERwith what would become Chromium.

18:20SPEAKERBut the idea was that what we wanted to do with Chromium

18:24SPEAKERwas bring desktop-like interactions.

18:26SPEAKERWe wanted to advance HTML5 and JavaScript

18:28SPEAKERto the point where it could be doing things like Gmail,

18:31SPEAKERdoing things like all these crazy jitsy stuff, right?

18:36SPEAKERAnd the only way we could do that

18:38SPEAKERis if all browsers could advance, right?

18:42SPEAKERSo anyways, I'm yaring a lot, I apologize.

18:47SPEAKERBut that's why we picked BSD,

18:48SPEAKERbecause everyone can consume BSD.

18:51SPEAKERNot everyone can consume Apache,

18:53SPEAKERbut everyone can consume BSD.

18:55SPEAKERThis is why you see, I think it's MIT and BSD

18:58SPEAKERas being the most popular licenses for JavaScript,

19:01SPEAKERbecause everyone can consume.

19:04SPEAKERAnd the people who work in JavaScript,

19:06SPEAKERtheir attitude was typically,

19:08SPEAKERI don't want to have to deal with any of this crap, right?

19:11SPEAKERAnd so they're like, what's the easiest way?

19:13SPEAKERI don't even want to use copyright.

19:14SPEAKERAnd it's like, well, you kind of don't have a choice.

19:15SPEAKERAnd they're like, fine, I'll just use MIT, screw you guys.

19:19SPEAKERRight, and that's what they would do, right?

19:21SPEAKERBecause MIT is a tested license that lawyers understand,

19:25SPEAKERand you're not gonna expose yourself.

19:27SPEAKERIt's got a warranty clause.

19:29SPEAKERThere's all these things.

19:30SPEAKERI could put up on the screen here, if you wanted,

19:33SPEAKERmy how to walk through a software license slide

19:36SPEAKERthat I give from time to time.

19:38SPEAKERAnd I won't do that, but it's one of those things

19:42SPEAKERwhere the licenses are very clear

19:45SPEAKERin what they expect of you if you were to redistribute them.

19:49SPEAKERAnd so that's the Northern light for us, you know?

19:54SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it might be useful to step back

19:56SPEAKERand just define a couple of terms and concepts for,

19:59SPEAKERyou know, for listeners who don't understand,

20:00SPEAKERlike a software license simply delineates your obligations

20:04SPEAKERunder using that source code, right?

20:06SPEAKER- It's simpler than that.

20:07SPEAKERSo first of all, let's just tell everyone what copyright is.

20:11SPEAKERWhen you create something,

20:12SPEAKERcopyright is already attached, okay?

20:14SPEAKERYou don't necessarily have to register it

20:16SPEAKERwith the federal government

20:17SPEAKERor your local government if you're overseas.

20:21SPEAKERAnd also if you're in what's called

20:23SPEAKERa WIPO signatory country, copyright continues to attach

20:27SPEAKEReven after you release it.

20:30SPEAKERFor second sales, for moral rights,

20:32SPEAKERthere's all this complicated crap.

20:33SPEAKERBut the long and short of it is,

20:35SPEAKERis that copyright attaches

20:37SPEAKERwhen you do a creative, unique work.

20:40SPEAKERAnd now a license to a piece of copywritten creation, okay,

20:46SPEAKERis a very simple thing that says,

20:48SPEAKERhere's what you can do with this creative work

20:52SPEAKERwhen you do, here's when you do that thing

20:57SPEAKERwith that creative work,

20:59SPEAKERthen you have an obligation that is the follow, right?

21:02SPEAKERSo every software license,

21:04SPEAKERand then there's often what's called a warranty clause

21:06SPEAKERor a disclaimer of warranty after that,

21:08SPEAKERwhich says, and since you've chosen to use this software

21:11SPEAKERunder the terms of which I've released it to you,

21:14SPEAKERyou also agree not to sue over that use

21:18SPEAKERor some alternative use that you've come up with.

21:21SPEAKERAnd so every software license,

21:23SPEAKERwhether it's commercial, open source, whatever,

21:27SPEAKERhas those sections.

21:28SPEAKERAnd in the first section,

21:30SPEAKERit's called the articulated rights of a software license.

21:33SPEAKERAnd there's seven of them.

21:34SPEAKERIt's like use, full spindle, mutilate, no.

21:37SPEAKERUse, modify, distribute, et cetera, et cetera.

21:42SPEAKERAnd so, and then in return in a software license,

21:46SPEAKERit'll say something like,

21:47SPEAKERyou need to pay me per thread if you're a worker,

21:50SPEAKERor you need to pay me per copy run per desk,

21:53SPEAKERor for how many users in your companies.

21:55SPEAKERThey have like all these terms.

21:56SPEAKERIn open source licenses, it says,

21:58SPEAKERwhen you distribute this to a person

22:02SPEAKERoutside of your company, a user, right?

22:07SPEAKERWhen a user downloads the software

22:09SPEAKERor uses the software after you've delivered it to them,

22:12SPEAKERyou agree to do the follow, right?

22:14SPEAKERIn most open source software licenses,

22:16SPEAKERthey have a couple of things that they say.

22:19SPEAKERAlmost all of them say you have to acknowledge

22:21SPEAKERthe use of this software.

22:23SPEAKERSo if you go to Android legal about licenses, open source,

22:27SPEAKERyou'll find a list, you know, a mile long

22:30SPEAKERof software that's used in that operating system.

22:34SPEAKERSo you have to acknowledge use of the software.

22:38SPEAKERYou have to sometimes share code connected to this software

22:44SPEAKERor share the code of the software you're using

22:47SPEAKERand any changes you made just to that module.

22:50SPEAKERAnd that's inherently,

22:54SPEAKERevery open source software license looks like that.

22:56SPEAKERAnd some of them define distribution in different ways.

23:00SPEAKERLike they'll say, hey, it's only distribution

23:03SPEAKERif you download it as part of a package

23:05SPEAKERto like your Windows, Linux, Macintosh.

23:08SPEAKEROr they'll say, if you download this app,

23:11SPEAKERas an app onto your phone, well then you should,

23:14SPEAKERyou know, comply with the license, that's distribution.

23:17SPEAKERAnd there's also a class of licenses that say,

23:19SPEAKERif you display it over a network connection,

23:22SPEAKERthat that's distribution.

23:24SPEAKERAnd that's sort of, these are the newer open source licenses

23:28SPEAKERlike the AGPO, which stands for Aferro.

23:31SPEAKERAferro was a content management company

23:34SPEAKERand they didn't want anyone using

23:35SPEAKERtheir content management system

23:37SPEAKERand shipping it to their customers

23:39SPEAKERwithout giving them patches, right?

23:41SPEAKERWhich was very common in the cloud business.

23:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so it seems like, it seems like a lot of this,

23:48SPEAKERI mean, did this start with the BSD license

23:50SPEAKERor did this start with the GPL or does, or I mean-

23:53SPEAKER- So the first licenses were the MIT and BSD license.

23:57SPEAKER- Okay.

23:58SPEAKER- And then the GPL came, I think, shortly after MIT and BSD

24:02SPEAKERor shortly before, it's, I'd have to go back to my notes.

24:06SPEAKERYou know, if there's one person that you should learn more

24:10SPEAKERabout from a license creation perspective,

24:12SPEAKERthere's really two people.

24:14SPEAKERThere's Hal Abelson at MIT and there's,

24:20SPEAKERGod, who would I credit the BSD to?

24:22SPEAKERNot Eric Allman, but maybe Eric.

24:27SPEAKERYeah, so the BSD license was basically created because,

24:31SPEAKERand I'm gonna say this as nicely as I can,

24:32SPEAKERthey didn't wanna use that filthy East Coast crap, right?

24:35SPEAKERThey wanted something that would work for the UC system,

24:39SPEAKERright, so Eric and other folks,

24:43SPEAKERI think they petitioned the Regents

24:47SPEAKERof the University of California

24:49SPEAKERto come up with something that they could use

24:50SPEAKERthat wasn't from MIT, and so, yeah.

24:55SPEAKER- Oh gosh, I'm not afraid to say I have spent enough time

24:59SPEAKERlooking at FreeBSD source code

25:01SPEAKERthat the Regents of the University of California

25:04SPEAKERis a phrase that is burned into my brain.

25:06SPEAKER- Right?

25:07SPEAKER- I'm sorry, go ahead.

25:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's really funny too,

25:12SPEAKERbecause like, so it probably was Bill Joy

25:17SPEAKERpetitioning the Regents.

25:20SPEAKERIf I had to guess, it was Bill Joy and some of his pals,

25:24SPEAKERand this is before they went off to Sun

25:26SPEAKERand there were asteroids, so.

25:27SPEAKER- Well, so, I mean, did all these licenses,

25:30SPEAKERlike this cascade of licenses

25:32SPEAKERthat proliferated over the last 25 years, 30 years,

25:35SPEAKERis this all to close holes, loopholes in the, you know,

25:40SPEAKERlike the distributing code over a network

25:42SPEAKERis like a JavaScript or a virtual computer thing, and.

25:46SPEAKER- Well, it's not.

25:47SPEAKERSo the reason, the people who embraced the AGPL

25:51SPEAKERwere people who, you saw it being embraced

25:55SPEAKERby database creators, by CRM creators,

25:59SPEAKERwho frankly, the experience they had

26:02SPEAKERwhen they were developing under the GPL

26:06SPEAKERwas that competitors would use their software

26:09SPEAKERand they wouldn't patch, they wouldn't support,

26:12SPEAKERthey would just try to undercut them on cost.

26:15SPEAKERAnd so they came up with the AGPL,

26:17SPEAKERturns out that doesn't do it either,

26:19SPEAKERbecause, you know, cloud providers

26:21SPEAKERare very handy at releasing patches, you know,

26:25SPEAKERand the interpretation of the AGPL

26:27SPEAKERhas been such that providers like,

26:31SPEAKERI think it's MongoDB and Elastic and the rest,

26:34SPEAKERthey've embraced these server-side public licenses

26:38SPEAKERand basically they're commercial licenses, right?

26:41SPEAKERSo because they say, if you're a cloud provider,

26:45SPEAKERyou can't use your software.

26:48SPEAKERLike these other people can.

26:49SPEAKERThat's like, well, you know, in the open source world,

26:53SPEAKERyou know, the grandparents of open source,

26:57SPEAKERone of the things we always were reticent about

26:59SPEAKERwas when people would try to use

27:01SPEAKERopen source software licenses and free software licenses

27:04SPEAKERto restrict behavior of human beings.

27:08SPEAKERSo back in, sorry,

27:09SPEAKERI don't know if you care about this history,

27:11SPEAKERbut back in the mid nineties, okay,

27:15SPEAKER'cause a lot of people said,

27:16SPEAKERwhy don't you write in a clause that says

27:19SPEAKERyou're not gonna do evil with your software

27:21SPEAKERthat you release or that it, you know.

27:24SPEAKER- Difficult to enforce.

27:25SPEAKER- And where this came from was a very idealistic

27:28SPEAKERset of developers and they added a clause

27:32SPEAKERto the MIT license at the time, I believe.

27:34SPEAKERAnd it was basically this cannot be used

27:37SPEAKERin nuclear power plants or in nuclear weapons.

27:40SPEAKERThey were very against nuclear weapons,

27:43SPEAKERwhich is a very nice thing for someone to be against, right?

27:46SPEAKERNobody likes nuclear weapons, right?

27:48SPEAKERSo they didn't want their software

27:50SPEAKERgoing into nuclear weapons.

27:52SPEAKERAnd I remember looking at that and I was like, huh.

27:56SPEAKERAnd the way they portrayed it was that

27:58SPEAKERthere's a lot of regulation around software

28:00SPEAKERfor nuclear power plants and for the military.

28:03SPEAKERSo, you know, open source people shouldn't worry

28:06SPEAKERtheir pretty little heads about such things.

28:07SPEAKERBut what it was is they were pacifists

28:09SPEAKERand they didn't want their work ending up in weapons.

28:13SPEAKERAnd so we're all like, huh, that's interesting.

28:15SPEAKERAnd then somebody did a license that was, again,

28:21SPEAKERit was, I think it was MIT or BSD,

28:23SPEAKERand they added on a clause that it could not be used

28:26SPEAKERby the state of Israel and their ongoing pogrom

28:28SPEAKERagainst the Palestinians.

28:31SPEAKERAnd then somebody said, this software is not to be used

28:35SPEAKERby abortion clinics.

28:37SPEAKERAnd then we started seeing worse restrictions.

28:43SPEAKERFrankly, racist and things that I really wanna talk about.

28:46SPEAKER- Yeah, the internet goes bad pretty quickly.

28:47SPEAKERYeah, yeah, yeah.

28:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so things went bad really quickly.

28:49SPEAKERSo the grandparents of open source,

28:52SPEAKERwe all got together at some,

28:54SPEAKERprobably in a rally conference.

28:56SPEAKERAnd we said, we gotta push the brakes on this stuff, right?

29:00SPEAKERAnd so this is when the open source initiative was created.

29:04SPEAKERAnd their goal was to be the standards bearer

29:06SPEAKERfor what was and was not open source and free software.

29:10SPEAKERAnd one of the things that they came up with

29:13SPEAKERis they started with the Debian free software guidelines,

29:16SPEAKERand they created the open source definition from it.

29:18SPEAKERAnd it says, you will not indulge

29:21SPEAKERin field of use restrictions of this type, right?

29:26SPEAKERAnd so that kind of lasted for 20 years.

29:29SPEAKERAnd then we started seeing a couple of do no evil licenses

29:33SPEAKERlike jQuery and some,

29:36SPEAKERthis is to be used for good and not evil,

29:37SPEAKERbut I said to IBM and Google

29:39SPEAKERthat they could do whatever they want.

29:41SPEAKERIt's like, okay, that's great.

29:44SPEAKERAnd then we saw some,

29:48SPEAKERthe WTFPL, you know,

29:51SPEAKERwhich is the do whatever you effing want public license.

29:55SPEAKER- Yeah.

29:56SPEAKER- And the problem with that is it's actually not a license.

29:58SPEAKERIt's not articulated in a way that's defendable.

30:01SPEAKERIt doesn't articulate the seven rights that you need.

30:04SPEAKERAnd it also doesn't have a warranty clause.

30:06SPEAKERSo you could get sued and they could win

30:11SPEAKERif they use your software and it causes some injury

30:15SPEAKERor some perceived economic injury.

30:17SPEAKERSo yeah, anyway.

30:19SPEAKER- So I was gonna ask-

30:20SPEAKER- I'm sorry, I'm yammering.

30:21SPEAKERYou got me monologuing, you know.

30:22SPEAKER- No, no, this is why we brought you here because-

30:24SPEAKER- Like a villain in a bad TV show.

30:27SPEAKER- Look, look, Chris, I've had these conversations

30:29SPEAKERover breakfast multiple times.

30:31SPEAKERSo it's,

30:36SPEAKERso where is the,

30:39SPEAKERat what point is this legally defended?

30:42SPEAKERAnd at what point does Google say,

30:45SPEAKERhey, like, I guess it's a two-parter.

30:48SPEAKEROne is, do you have a list of licenses

30:50SPEAKERthat you're just like, okay, here you do this

30:52SPEAKERand you pull down the dropdown

30:53SPEAKERand you put the code in the external repository

30:56SPEAKERand it just works itself out.

30:57SPEAKERAnd then how do you evaluate,

31:01SPEAKERis it that it has to pass legal tests?

31:02SPEAKERIs it that you have to run it through the lawyers?

31:05SPEAKERLike what's the process for that?

31:08SPEAKER- So I'm sort of a weird organization at Google

31:12SPEAKERin that we're not part of the legal team

31:15SPEAKERbut we have lawyers working for them.

31:19SPEAKERI don't report to Count Walker

31:20SPEAKERor Halima, our general counsel,

31:23SPEAKERbut I still set standards on what's acceptable

31:25SPEAKERfor release of copyright.

31:27SPEAKERSo I like to think that I have a very tight relationship

31:30SPEAKERwith our copyright counsel, our patent counsel.

31:33SPEAKERI'm sorry, our lead copyright counsel,

31:35SPEAKERour lead patent counsel and our general counsel

31:37SPEAKERso that I can continue to provide to the engineering staff

31:41SPEAKERand to the product people an efficient method

31:43SPEAKERfor software development.

31:48SPEAKERAnd I think I've lost track of your question.

31:50SPEAKER- So at what point is it legally,

31:52SPEAKERis it licensed legally tested enough that you're like,

31:55SPEAKERokay, we can use this.

31:56SPEAKER- So here's the thing, right?

31:57SPEAKERSo this will sound really imperial by the way

32:00SPEAKERand I apologize to anyone who's offended

32:02SPEAKERby that kind of statement.

32:03SPEAKERI make those decisions, right?

32:06SPEAKERSo I was hired by Google to be the person who decides

32:12SPEAKERwhat's acceptable to bring into the company

32:15SPEAKERand to release from the company.

32:17SPEAKERAnd so I'm the heat shield.

32:20SPEAKERI'm the one who has to get deposed.

32:23SPEAKERI'm the one who gives support through me and my teams

32:26SPEAKERto like the Oracle lawsuit and the rest.

32:30SPEAKERAnd we're also the ones that have helped fund

32:33SPEAKERthe defense of open source licenses

32:36SPEAKERand these non-Google contexts through various organizations

32:39SPEAKERlike the Software Freedom Conservancy

32:42SPEAKERand the Apache Foundation, the Linux Foundation.

32:49SPEAKERSo it comes down to what we wanted.

32:52SPEAKER- I was gonna say, because it's always under,

32:53SPEAKERlike there's always, there are often, not always,

32:56SPEAKERbut there've been a long series of court cases

32:58SPEAKERabout this stuff over the last 25 years, right?

33:01SPEAKER- So there have been, but it's important

33:02SPEAKERto judge risk appropriately, okay?

33:04SPEAKERSo there's been lawsuits, but a lot of people are like,

33:08SPEAKERbut what about the Sko lawsuit?

33:09SPEAKERWhat about the Microsoft Java lawsuit?

33:11SPEAKERThose are not what you think they are.

33:14SPEAKERSo the Oracle lawsuit was interesting

33:16SPEAKER'cause there was no contract between Oracle and Google.

33:20SPEAKERSo it was really about the nature of copyright

33:24SPEAKERand its application to computer interfaces,

33:27SPEAKERdot H files, you know, and the rest, right?

33:32SPEAKERAnd that's, it took us, I don't know, what, 13 years

33:36SPEAKERto finally get to the Supreme Court the second time.

33:40SPEAKER- Can you do a quick refresher on Oracle, Google?

33:42SPEAKER- So Oracle-

33:43SPEAKER- This is the one that just happened in the last year,

33:45SPEAKERis that right?

33:46SPEAKEROr that just hit the Supreme?

33:47SPEAKER- Yeah, it finally settled out in April.

33:50SPEAKERIt was my longest running litigation hold.

33:52SPEAKERIt was kind of sad when it ended, but.

33:55SPEAKERSo what happened was we released Android

33:58SPEAKERand Android uses the Java programming language

34:02SPEAKERto implement applications and the app,

34:06SPEAKERwhat you think of as Android is basically written

34:08SPEAKERin the Java programming language.

34:10SPEAKERAnd then we had what was called

34:12SPEAKERthe Dalvik virtual machine when we launched,

34:15SPEAKERand that turned into ARK, that turned into ARK.

34:17SPEAKERSo we had an evolution of virtual machines

34:20SPEAKERwould run byte code generated from that software, okay?

34:25SPEAKERAnd, you know, 'cause at the time,

34:30SPEAKERJava, frankly, was not suitable to run on mobile devices.

34:34SPEAKERJ2ME was not featureful enough to run securely

34:39SPEAKERon a modern device.

34:41SPEAKERAnd so much in the same way as we made changes

34:43SPEAKERto Linux kernels so it could run on a mobile platform

34:46SPEAKERefficiently and not destroy your battery,

34:48SPEAKERwe had to have our own virtual machine

34:51SPEAKERfor running this Java byte code.

34:53SPEAKERNow, Sun sold to Oracle.

34:58SPEAKEROracle sued us saying that we had expropriated Java,

35:06SPEAKERspecifically a group of code called Timsort,

35:12SPEAKERand that all of our use of the headers

35:15SPEAKERviolated their copyright as well.

35:17SPEAKERAnd so, well, it started as a patent lawsuit,

35:20SPEAKERbut they threw that out pretty much immediately.

35:22SPEAKERAnd then it turned into a copyright lawsuit.

35:26SPEAKERAnd so the Timsort stuff was hilarious

35:28SPEAKERbecause what had happened was Josh Block,

35:31SPEAKERwho used to work on Java at Sun,

35:33SPEAKERhad come to Google in like 2004,

35:36SPEAKERand he had rewritten Timsort to be more efficient.

35:40SPEAKERAnd it's literally 11 lines of code, okay?

35:43SPEAKERBut he had rewritten Timsort to be more efficient.

35:46SPEAKERAnd then we gave that to the Java community process

35:50SPEAKERfor inclusion in Java,

35:52SPEAKERbut we also gave it to Apache Harmony,

35:54SPEAKERwhich was a competing library set.

35:58SPEAKERAnd so when we included Apache Harmony in Android,

36:02SPEAKERthey're like, "Ha ha, we have caught you

36:05SPEAKERusing Timsort from Java."

36:07SPEAKERAnd it's like, "Uh..."

36:09SPEAKERAnd here's where my job kicks in.

36:12SPEAKERI'm like, "No, no, no, no.

36:13SPEAKERLet me tell you where that code came from,

36:16SPEAKER'cause I am the janitor who looks after all the code."

36:20SPEAKERSo I say, "Let's find out if this is really true."

36:24SPEAKERRight, 'cause if it's true,

36:24SPEAKERwell, we gotta deal with the consequences of that,

36:27SPEAKERbut let's find out.

36:29SPEAKERSo we went back and we're like,

36:30SPEAKER"Okay, where did Timsort come from?

36:31SPEAKEROh, it came from Harmony.

36:32SPEAKEROkay, let's go into Harmony.

36:33SPEAKERWhere did Harmony get it?

36:34SPEAKEROh, it came from Josh Block.

36:36SPEAKEROh, really?

36:36SPEAKERWasn't Josh working for us?

36:38SPEAKEROh, he's still working for us?

36:40SPEAKERLet's make sure that we understand how it got into Harmony

36:43SPEAKERand JCP and Java through the JCP."

36:46SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's completely reasonable

36:48SPEAKERbecause in my email, he had emailed me saying,

36:51SPEAKER"Hey, I wanna release something into Harmony

36:53SPEAKERand the JCP at the same time.

36:54SPEAKERShould I?"

36:55SPEAKERAnd I'm like, "Yeah, do it."

36:55SPEAKERSo we were able to say, "Hey, this was written by Google.

36:58SPEAKERIt was put into these non-exclusively licensed repositories."

37:03SPEAKERAnd boom.

37:04SPEAKERAnd so that got thrown out of court.

37:07SPEAKERYou know, they're like, "Sorry,

37:08SPEAKERyou didn't write this stuff in the first place.

37:10SPEAKERYou don't have an exclusive write to it."

37:11SPEAKERSo that was thrown out.

37:13SPEAKERIt took 16 years.

37:14SPEAKERAnd that took about nine years, okay?

37:18SPEAKERSeven years for that to loop through the courts

37:20SPEAKER'cause they protested, they appealed,

37:23SPEAKERand then their lawsuit then became about the Java headers

37:31SPEAKERthat you need to interact with the Java program.

37:34SPEAKERAnd that Harmony was basically, you know,

37:37SPEAKERit would use the headers

37:38SPEAKERand then they would implement their own implementation

37:40SPEAKERof those routines, those classes, those everything.

37:45SPEAKERAnd so that went to court and we won,

37:51SPEAKERthen we lost on appeal, then we won,

37:53SPEAKERthen we got kicked back by the Supreme Court down a level,

37:58SPEAKERthen we lost there, then it got kicked up,

38:00SPEAKERand we won an appeal with Judge Kaplan.

38:04SPEAKERAnd then we lost above him

38:09SPEAKERin the Federal Ninth Circuit Appeals,

38:13SPEAKERI don't even remember this one.

38:14SPEAKERThen we appealed to the Supreme Court on that one

38:18SPEAKER'cause we're like, "You can't possibly think

38:20SPEAKERthis is a good idea."

38:21SPEAKERAnd then the Supreme Court,

38:23SPEAKERthey went to the Supreme Court

38:24SPEAKERand it was supposed to be decided in October of 2020.

38:28SPEAKERCOVID had happened.

38:30SPEAKERSo they're like, "We're putting everything off."

38:32SPEAKERThen what's-his-name left and was replaced

38:36SPEAKERby the woman whose name escapes me, Amy Coney Barrett.

38:41SPEAKERNo, no, she came after Kavanaugh, right?

38:43SPEAKERSo Kavanaugh goes in and so we had a ruling based on eight.

38:50SPEAKERSo we promoted, I promoted the wrong one.

38:53SPEAKERWe testified before the Supreme Court to eight justices

38:58SPEAKER'cause she hadn't been seated yet.

39:00SPEAKERAnd then they pushed it off until March

39:03SPEAKERso that all nine justices could review the case.

39:06SPEAKERAnd so we're like, "We have no idea

39:08SPEAKERwhat's gonna happen at this point."

39:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:11SPEAKER- And so, and then they came back and they said,

39:12SPEAKER"No, no, no, this is actually fair use.

39:15SPEAKERYou can't be expected to create compatible

39:18SPEAKERor even competing implementations of anything

39:23SPEAKERin computer science unless you're able to interact with them."

39:26SPEAKERSo let's be clear, if this ruling was left to stand

39:30SPEAKERand it was the mid '90s or the mid '80s,

39:33SPEAKERCompaq would not exist.

39:35SPEAKERPhoenix BIOS would not exist.

39:36SPEAKERAMD could not exist.

39:38SPEAKERAll of these, the entire PC revolution,

39:42SPEAKERwhich was using the ISA reference bus

39:45SPEAKERor the Phoenix BIOS that was based on the original BIOS

39:50SPEAKERthat was in the IBM PC.

39:51SPEAKER- Or Socket 7 and all of the x86 compatible CPUs

39:55SPEAKERthat came out of that. - Oh my God.

39:56SPEAKER- And any reverse engineering is clear, right?

39:58SPEAKER- Any reverse engineering.

39:59SPEAKERSo that would be EMC, that would be Dell,

40:02SPEAKERthat would be VMware.

40:03SPEAKERI mean, none of these companies could have existed, right?

40:07SPEAKERAnd so, and Oracle itself, you know,

40:10SPEAKERthey would owe significant money to other users

40:16SPEAKERand creators of the SQL standard

40:18SPEAKERthat hadn't made it into a standards bond, right?

40:20SPEAKERSo this was a suicide note for the computer industry.

40:24SPEAKERAnd I have to tell you, I was not sure it would work out

40:28SPEAKERthis way with the Supreme court,

40:30SPEAKERbut they ended up coming back with, frankly,

40:33SPEAKERa very reasonable ruling in mind.

40:35SPEAKERSo.

40:35SPEAKER- I remember the day that ruling came down,

40:37SPEAKERthere were a lot of fingernails being bitten

40:38SPEAKERon our discord server that day from software developers.

40:41SPEAKERLike it was a kind of a tense moment

40:44SPEAKERwith that warning waiting for that to happen.

40:46SPEAKER- And the thing is that you have to remember is that

40:49SPEAKERwhile Google is not loved by everyone,

40:52SPEAKERthis was one of those things where the people who hated us,

40:56SPEAKERsome people who really hate us and are competitive with us,

40:59SPEAKERand I hate is probably the wrong word.

41:00SPEAKERLike, so for instance, Microsoft,

41:02SPEAKERthey're extremely competitive with us, right?

41:04SPEAKERWhen it comes to hiring, when it comes to the cloud business,

41:08SPEAKERwhen it comes to the operating system business,

41:10SPEAKERyou name it, they're a fantastic competitor.

41:13SPEAKERBut they wrote an amicus brief in defense

41:16SPEAKERof reverse engineering and fair use in computer science.

41:20SPEAKERSame thing's true of a bunch of people who really dislike us

41:25SPEAKERor are really good friends with Oracle, right?

41:28SPEAKERSo we had like this terrific spread

41:31SPEAKERof amicus briefs going into the case,

41:34SPEAKERlike the EFF, which we have a rocky relationship with

41:37SPEAKERas a company, you know?

41:38SPEAKERBut we managed to say, listen, what's good for all of us

41:42SPEAKERis for this case to get heard fairly for fair use.

41:46SPEAKERAnd luckily we won the day,

41:49SPEAKERbut there were a lot of people who refused

41:52SPEAKERbecause they really didn't like us.

41:56SPEAKEROr maybe they truly felt that letting Oracle have control

42:01SPEAKERof all computer science is a good idea, you know?

42:05SPEAKEROr whatever.

42:07SPEAKERSo it's really something.

42:10SPEAKER- It's, it's, Brad, you look like a man

42:13SPEAKERwith a question, actually.

42:14SPEAKER- Oh no, no, go ahead.

42:15SPEAKER- No, he's thinking.

42:17SPEAKER- He's thinking about what the world would look like

42:18SPEAKERif you couldn't write against other people's APIs.

42:22SPEAKER- It's over, man.

42:23SPEAKERYou know, the industry's over.

42:25SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it kind of went to be dramatic,

42:28SPEAKERbut I mean, I really like working in computer science,

42:30SPEAKERbut I guess I could become a farmer or something.

42:34SPEAKER- Well, here, let me pluck a question from our bullet list

42:36SPEAKERthat might usher you into that eventuality.

42:39SPEAKER- Like what would I do if I wasn't in computers?

42:41SPEAKER- Well, so we wrote down, one of the questions was

42:43SPEAKERwhat keeps you up late at night?

42:45SPEAKERLike, is there anything that you live in fear of shipping

42:49SPEAKERor not getting right on a legal basis

42:52SPEAKERor in terms of licensing?

42:53SPEAKER- So I sleep really well, right?

42:56SPEAKERGood sleep's really important.

42:58SPEAKERI'm getting older, I'm almost 50.

43:00SPEAKERSo like quality of sleep really matters to me.

43:03SPEAKERSo I make sure that I don't go to sleep worried, right?

43:07SPEAKERSo let me tell you the kinds of things that I don't worry.

43:10SPEAKERSo I am convinced that at any moment,

43:13SPEAKERthere's probably some compliance failure somewhere

43:17SPEAKERthat I'm gonna need to deal with.

43:18SPEAKERSo what I try to do is I try to make it super easy

43:22SPEAKERfor Google to get it right 99.999% of the time.

43:27SPEAKERAnd I try to make sure that my friends in computer science

43:30SPEAKERand open source know how to reach us

43:33SPEAKERfor the 0.001% chance when we screw up,

43:38SPEAKERbecause we're gonna screw up.

43:39SPEAKERAnd I can tell you something,

43:40SPEAKERwhat's really interesting about,

43:42SPEAKER'cause people are really afraid of lawsuits,

43:44SPEAKERthey're really afraid of this, they're really afraid of that

43:46SPEAKERand that fear can be somewhat useful in compliance.

43:50SPEAKERBut what I would rather have happen

43:52SPEAKERis that we're compliant so much

43:55SPEAKERso that when we get to the borders

43:57SPEAKERof what is and is not compliant,

44:00SPEAKERthat we can fix it very, very quickly and responsibly.

44:05SPEAKERAnd in the event that it's one of those cases

44:07SPEAKERwhere we're actually not out of compliance here,

44:10SPEAKERwe can educate the external complaint, right?

44:14SPEAKERAnd then people are like, "Why aren't you worried

44:16SPEAKERabout going to court?"

44:17SPEAKERAnd it's like, you know, here's the thing,

44:19SPEAKERwhen you talk to judges, when you talk to lawyers,

44:22SPEAKERwhen you talk to these people and they say,

44:23SPEAKER"Okay, so let me get this straight."

44:25SPEAKERSo this has happened, by the way.

44:29SPEAKERWe've used a piece of code

44:31SPEAKERthat we thought was under an open source license,

44:33SPEAKERbut it turns out that the person who released it

44:36SPEAKERhadn't gotten permission from their employer to release it.

44:40SPEAKERSo the employer found out that we were using this code

44:43SPEAKERafter they had addressed it with their user and all the rest

44:46SPEAKERbecause it was one of those things

44:47SPEAKERwhere it got put into our code base

44:49SPEAKERunder that open source license

44:51SPEAKERthat we had no reason to think wasn't real.

44:54SPEAKERAnd then it ended up shipping on some product.

44:57SPEAKERAnd then they said to us,

44:58SPEAKER"Hey, we had actually never released that for real."

45:01SPEAKERAnd we're like, "Okay, thank you for telling us.

45:07SPEAKERWe'll rip it out."

45:08SPEAKERRight, and so we go, we rip it out,

45:10SPEAKERthe next over-the-air update or whatever it was

45:12SPEAKERis, I don't think it was part of Android

45:14SPEAKERas far as something else, but we took it out.

45:18SPEAKERAnd then people are like, "Whoa, this is a huge problem."

45:22SPEAKERAnd I'm like, "Yeah, but is it?"

45:23SPEAKERBecause when you talk to the judge Kaplan's out there,

45:27SPEAKERthey go, "So let me get this straight.

45:28SPEAKERYou're suing Google."

45:29SPEAKEROkay, okay, you're suing Google

45:31SPEAKERbecause they used some software of yours

45:34SPEAKERthat you had released under an open source license.

45:36SPEAKERThey had every reason to think that it was theirs to use.

45:40SPEAKERAnd when you told them to stop using it,

45:42SPEAKERthey stopped using it?

45:46SPEAKERWhy don't you get the hell out of my courtroom?

45:48SPEAKERI mean, that's the reaction from judges.

45:50SPEAKERThey're like, "It seems like they..."

45:53SPEAKERSo what I tell people is like,

45:55SPEAKER"We should go into this with the right attitude

45:58SPEAKERwhere we're gonna respect the software licenses,

46:02SPEAKERwhat the software licenses say."

46:04SPEAKERNot what we think they say, not what they feel they say,

46:06SPEAKERbut what they say.

46:08SPEAKERAnd then if we need more or less,

46:12SPEAKERwe just talk to the developer, you know?

46:15SPEAKERAnd if we do that, we're gonna be okay.

46:18SPEAKERYou know, and it's like, when people are like,

46:19SPEAKER"Well, can I even read this stuff?"

46:21SPEAKERLike an AGPL or whatever,

46:23SPEAKERsome blog post or some Stack Overflow post,

46:25SPEAKERI'm like, "Of course you can read it."

46:26SPEAKERYou know, 'cause if I go before Judge Kaplan

46:29SPEAKERand he goes, "So let me get this straight.

46:31SPEAKERThis company put the software up on their blog?"

46:34SPEAKERI'm like, "Yeah, and you read it?

46:35SPEAKERYeah, and you didn't copy it, but you learned from it?

46:37SPEAKERYeah?

46:39SPEAKERWhy are we here?"

46:40SPEAKERYou know, it's like, you know,

46:42SPEAKERthe courts are actually pretty clear about this stuff.

46:45SPEAKERIt's very rare for them to say,

46:46SPEAKER"Well, Google should have known that they didn't mean that."

46:50SPEAKERThat's not how the law works, right?

46:53SPEAKER- That's changed a lot in the last 20 years, though,

46:55SPEAKERit seems like.

46:56SPEAKER- It hasn't, though.

46:57SPEAKER- Not really?

46:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so, you know, a watershed moment

47:01SPEAKERin copyright litigation.

47:03SPEAKERI don't know if you guys care about this.

47:05SPEAKER- I mean, that's gonna be the title of this episode.

47:07SPEAKER- A watershed moment in copyright litigation

47:10SPEAKERwas National Geographic versus like a zillion photographers.

47:14SPEAKEROkay, so what had happened was

47:15SPEAKERthe National Geographic organization

47:18SPEAKERhad taken like 50 years or 100 years of photos

47:22SPEAKERfrom the magazine, they put them on CD-ROM, okay?

47:26SPEAKERAnd, you know, they offered that CD-ROM

47:28SPEAKERto the outside world, right?

47:31SPEAKERAnd now before this, there was no concept

47:35SPEAKERof photo rights for compilation as a photo data set

47:40SPEAKERon CD-ROM, right?

47:42SPEAKERAnd so it went to court, the photographer's union,

47:47SPEAKERor it was like one of these unions of photographers,

47:51SPEAKERthey brought a case from all the photographers versus Nat Geo

47:56SPEAKERand they said that they were owed for that compilation

48:01SPEAKERof photos from their photographers.

48:03SPEAKERAnd remember, these are like the best photographers

48:06SPEAKERin the world.

48:08SPEAKERSo the judge in the case, first thing he did is like,

48:13SPEAKERit was really unusual too when he did it.

48:15SPEAKERHe said, "Well, the important thing first

48:17SPEAKER"is who's registered the copyright to these photos

48:22SPEAKER"with the federal government?"

48:25SPEAKERAnd only like maybe 30% of them had.

48:29SPEAKERAnd he's like, "It seems to me that copyright's

48:33SPEAKER"not important enough for you to register it,

48:36SPEAKER"so get out of my courtroom."

48:38SPEAKERAnd he threw 70% of your complaints out of the case.

48:42SPEAKERAnd people are like, "Whoa, what just happened?"

48:45SPEAKERSo, and what happened functionally is he said to them,

48:49SPEAKER"If the law is truly this important to you,

48:52SPEAKER"you should follow all of it."

48:54SPEAKERAnd so--

48:55SPEAKER- But I thought with copyright,

48:56SPEAKERyou didn't have to exert copyright

48:57SPEAKERin order to go on the copyright.

48:58SPEAKER- And what's changed is you don't need to register

49:02SPEAKERwith the federal government to have copyright.

49:05SPEAKERBut before you bring a case,

49:07SPEAKERyou register with the federal government.

49:09SPEAKERYou know, so that was like the big change there.

49:11SPEAKERBut it was a really big watershed moment

49:13SPEAKERbecause for the people who remained in the case,

49:18SPEAKERthey created a new kind of right

49:21SPEAKERthat was attached to the photos.

49:22SPEAKERAnd I believe they got a pretty good award.

49:26SPEAKERProbably proportional to whatever.

49:29SPEAKERBut after that, what you saw

49:32SPEAKERwere rights holding organizations going out there

49:35SPEAKERand securing all rights known and unknown for perpetuity.

49:39SPEAKER- Throughout the known universe.

49:40SPEAKERYeah, it's a ludicrous phrase until you think about

49:43SPEAKERthe fact that we don't have what, I don't know,

49:46SPEAKERDazed and Confused isn't available to stream anywhere

49:48SPEAKERbecause they don't have the music rights

49:50SPEAKERfor those streaming platforms

49:52SPEAKER'cause it existed before that was a thing.

49:54SPEAKER- Well, it's insidious.

49:56SPEAKERAnd it's, you know, Cory Doctorow would say,

50:00SPEAKERit's how we oppress culture.

50:02SPEAKERIt's how we keep people from learning about culture

50:06SPEAKERthat is not approved by our corporate masters.

50:09SPEAKERThere's a lot of things.

50:10SPEAKERBut it was a really interesting moment in copyright.

50:14SPEAKERAnd it presaged what would happen with Napster

50:18SPEAKERand the rest where they're like, we have a new use, ha ha ha.

50:21SPEAKERYou can't stop us.

50:22SPEAKERAnd it turns out, well,

50:23SPEAKERjust 'cause you came up with a new use

50:25SPEAKERdoesn't mean you can't be stopped.

50:27SPEAKERAnd we'll have to consider copyright.

50:30SPEAKER- The interesting stuff,

50:31SPEAKERthe interesting places that happened has happened,

50:33SPEAKERI mean, not recently anymore,

50:34SPEAKERbut there was the startup that was renting Antenna Time

50:38SPEAKERto stream TV over their net.

50:40SPEAKERRemember those guys?

50:41SPEAKERThat was a good one.

50:43SPEAKERLike people are constantly kind of poking at the edges

50:45SPEAKERof this stuff to see what's gonna fly and what isn't.

50:48SPEAKERAnd it seems like often it just ends up with being

50:51SPEAKERwhat judge you land in front of first

50:54SPEAKERis what determines the whole outcome.

50:56SPEAKER- Well, there's a lot of venue shopping, for sure.

50:59SPEAKERLike you see this in patent litigation

51:00SPEAKERwith East Texas and the New Hampshire courts.

51:05SPEAKERBut one of the things,

51:07SPEAKERthe trickiest part is getting a really good defendant, right?

51:12SPEAKERSo that you can take it to higher courts.

51:16SPEAKERSo in the DVD CCA cases, so the content--

51:21SPEAKER- The DVD CCA was the copy protection for DVDs.

51:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so there was a program called DCSS,

51:27SPEAKERwhich would take the content scrambling system keys.

51:30SPEAKERIt would rip them, generate them and provide them

51:33SPEAKERso you could basically take the content,

51:36SPEAKERthe MPEG-2 content off of a DVD

51:40SPEAKERand play it and store it and copy it, right?

51:43SPEAKER- I had a t-shirt with the code on the back.

51:44SPEAKER- Sure, I didn't have the tattoo, but yeah,

51:47SPEAKERI had the t-shirt, I had the book, I had all that stuff.

51:50SPEAKER- The tattoo would be a little bit dated now, Chris,

51:52SPEAKERit's good that you didn't get that.

51:54SPEAKER- Yeah, and also, do I look like a kind of guy that tattoos?

51:59SPEAKER- You never know, man, 21st century.

52:01SPEAKER- My biker tattoos would probably work on me, but.

52:04SPEAKER- You'd need a bike though.

52:06SPEAKER- I don't, I have an e-bike.

52:07SPEAKERI stuck like a motor on an old bike I had, so.

52:11SPEAKER- That's not what we're talking about here.

52:12SPEAKER- Okay, okay, let's keep going.

52:14SPEAKERBut so DCSS happened, right?

52:16SPEAKERAnd one of the aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright

52:21SPEAKERAct, Section 1201(c)(3) said that not only could you not

52:27SPEAKERshare this code, you couldn't share a link to the code,

52:31SPEAKERright, and so there were all these great lawsuits

52:34SPEAKERfrom this, I don't know, I'm going off on a tangent, right?

52:37SPEAKER- But linking is illegal. - That's like 20 years ago.

52:39SPEAKER- Linking is legal as a result of the DCSS people messing up

52:42SPEAKERand putting up in the system, right?

52:44SPEAKER- Yeah, but it wasn't them, right?

52:45SPEAKER'Cause they lost in New York court and frankly,

52:48SPEAKER2600 was not a sympathetic client.

52:50SPEAKERSo it would take another, I don't know,

52:53SPEAKERsix or 10 years before you'd have a sympathetic client.

52:56SPEAKERIt was like one of the newspapers, that's right,

52:58SPEAKERone of the news organizations of their websites

53:01SPEAKERand the rest.

53:02SPEAKER- So I've got a pretty insightful question here

53:04SPEAKERfrom our Discord I want to throw at you,

53:05SPEAKER'cause you just mentioned Stack Exchange a few minutes ago

53:07SPEAKERand Will just mentioned poking at the edges of things

53:10SPEAKERand I have not heard this subject addressed before.

53:11SPEAKERI think this is pretty interesting.

53:12SPEAKERSo this is from the Fish of Wisdom.

53:14SPEAKERWhat are the implications of copying and pasting answers

53:17SPEAKERfrom Stack Overflow being a widely accepted

53:19SPEAKERto industry practice considering Stack Overflow's content

53:23SPEAKERcarries a viral creative commons by SA license?

53:26SPEAKERWhat should developers do

53:28SPEAKERto utilize Stack Overflow help responsibly?

53:31SPEAKER- Okay, so first of all,

53:34SPEAKERwe released all of our documentation

53:37SPEAKERthat touches on these issues at opensource.google/docs.

53:42SPEAKEROkay, so if you've got a company

53:44SPEAKERand you don't want to start from scratch

53:47SPEAKERon creating these policies, go there.

53:49SPEAKERAll right, now let's talk about Stack Overflow.

53:51SPEAKERStack Overflow, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky

53:55SPEAKERcreated this thing.

53:55SPEAKERSo they created this really great site

53:57SPEAKERfor people to talk about coding, right?

53:59SPEAKERAnd so there's a lot of snippets

54:01SPEAKERthat are extremely useful on this site.

54:04SPEAKERSome are a little old, some need to get updated,

54:06SPEAKERbut they're all very useful.

54:08SPEAKERSo originally when they created the site,

54:10SPEAKEReverything was by default accepted from the user

54:14SPEAKERand then re-released as CC non-commercial NC.

54:19SPEAKERIt was like version two at the time.

54:21SPEAKERAnd I have to tell you something,

54:23SPEAKERnon-commercial means Google can't use it.

54:26SPEAKERIt means you can't use it in any commercial setting.

54:29SPEAKERAnd the number of people who actually

54:31SPEAKERaren't in a commercial setting, it's very, very low, right?

54:35SPEAKER- Especially if they're re-releasing the software, like.

54:39SPEAKER- Well, this is the thing, right?

54:41SPEAKERIt's, you know, people want to use stuff

54:42SPEAKERon Stack Overflow in their programs,

54:45SPEAKERwhether it's an app that you download from an app store or,

54:50SPEAKERyou know, honestly, there are a lot of university groups

54:53SPEAKERthat I don't consider non-commercial at all.

54:55SPEAKERThey're being funded by for-profit entities.

54:58SPEAKERThey're making an enormous amount of profit

55:00SPEAKERfrom tech transfer and IP rights.

55:02SPEAKERSo what do you mean by non-commercial?

55:06SPEAKERSo I consider non-commercial unacceptable for release

55:11SPEAKERor for consumption.

55:14SPEAKERAnyways, I wasn't alone.

55:16SPEAKERSo Stack Overflow, I think it was about 2016,

55:20SPEAKERthey said, "Everything is now a BSD,

55:23SPEAKERbut without even the acknowledgements clause."

55:27SPEAKERAnd everyone's like, "What the fuck?"

55:29SPEAKERAnd this stretches back into perpetuity.

55:33SPEAKERAnd all this- - So they retroactively

55:34SPEAKERchanged all of the answers on Stack Overflow

55:36SPEAKERto be accessible by everybody with basically no attribution

55:39SPEAKERand, okay, no share alike, whatever.

55:42SPEAKER- And here's the thing, right?

55:44SPEAKERTheir terms of service before

55:47SPEAKERprobably didn't allow them to do that.

55:50SPEAKERBut the nature of the site

55:52SPEAKERwas people sharing information for use.

55:56SPEAKERSo when they decided to do this,

56:01SPEAKERthey basically forced a change

56:06SPEAKERthat maybe they didn't have complete

56:08SPEAKERand total rights to make.

56:12SPEAKERBut from 2016 on, any contribution to Stack Overflow

56:16SPEAKERwas under this new weird, not really great version

56:20SPEAKERof the BSD, but it's acceptable.

56:25SPEAKERAnd instead of counting on the intention

56:29SPEAKERof the people sharing information on Stack Overflow

56:31SPEAKERto be pure, now we actually have a proper license.

56:34SPEAKERSo that intention is way more clear.

56:36SPEAKERWhereas the NC stuff, I mean, we had to tell people,

56:39SPEAKERit's fine to learn from Stack Overflow,

56:40SPEAKERyou can't copy from it.

56:42SPEAKERAnd if we find you're doing it,

56:43SPEAKERwe're gonna make you take it out

56:45SPEAKERand I'm gonna ruin your weekend, you know?

56:48SPEAKERAnd when they did that, we were able to say,

56:50SPEAKER"Okay, I still want you to take anything

56:52SPEAKERyou get from Stack Overflow

56:53SPEAKERand put it in our third-party directories

56:55SPEAKERso we can track it, but it's okay to use.

56:57SPEAKERIt's okay to learn from, then it's okay to use."

57:00SPEAKERSo.

57:01SPEAKER- So when you say you can't copy it,

57:04SPEAKERdoes that mean you can't look at the code

57:07SPEAKERand then rewrite the code in a different way?

57:09SPEAKEROr does that mean you can't copy and paste it

57:11SPEAKERinto your existing program or add or-

57:13SPEAKER- Control C, control V.

57:15SPEAKER- Okay. - Right?

57:16SPEAKERSo here's the thing, depending on the language,

57:19SPEAKERwhen you read something and you re-implement it,

57:23SPEAKERit's gonna look very, very similar, right?

57:26SPEAKERBut if you truly do not copy it,

57:29SPEAKERhighlight it with your mouse, copy it, drag it over,

57:31SPEAKERcontrol C, control V, whatever it might be,

57:33SPEAKERwhatever your mechanism is.

57:35SPEAKERAs long as you don't do a, okay, H, H, T, T, T.

57:40SPEAKERAs long as you really don't copy it,

57:42SPEAKERyou really make it a new creative work, I'm cool with it.

57:46SPEAKERYou can learn anything you want.

57:47SPEAKER- This is a legal judgment, not a moral or-

57:52SPEAKER- That's right, but the trick is I'm not being clever.

57:55SPEAKERI really mean it.

57:56SPEAKERDo not copy it letter for letter.

57:59SPEAKERBe inspired by it.

58:00SPEAKERLearn from it.

58:01SPEAKERDo not fricking copy it if you don't have a license to it,

58:05SPEAKERbecause I'm gonna have to take it out.

58:07SPEAKER- Look, I think your rule on plagiarism

58:10SPEAKERand my sixth grade teacher's rule on plagiarism

58:13SPEAKERprobably are slightly different.

58:14SPEAKERMaybe you have a conversation with her.

58:19SPEAKER- Well, so here's the thing.

58:21SPEAKERThe MLA standards for- - What's the MLA?

58:25SPEAKER- The Library Association.

58:28SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah, yeah.

58:29SPEAKERSo they have very specific standards

58:31SPEAKERon how you can copy information from a book,

58:33SPEAKERfrom a paper, from a movie, you name it,

58:36SPEAKERand indicate it in your paper, right?

58:39SPEAKERAnd aren't those just like our open source licenses?

58:43SPEAKERSo long as you give credit, it's not plagiarizing.

58:47SPEAKERSo long as you have rights to use it, it's not plagiarizing.

58:52SPEAKER- That is very true.

58:54SPEAKERI hadn't considered it that way before.

58:55SPEAKER- It's like, I said this to my kids and I'm like,

58:57SPEAKERit's always okay to take stuff and use it in your papers

59:00SPEAKERso long as you give credit.

59:02SPEAKER- Quotation marks, very important to do that.

59:05SPEAKER- Especially my daughter when she was growing up

59:08SPEAKERwas when teachers were trying to figure out

59:10SPEAKERwhat Wikipedia was and how to use it in the academy

59:14SPEAKERand in elementary school and the rest.

59:17SPEAKERAnd sometimes they'd say ridiculous things

59:19SPEAKERlike don't use Wikipedia.

59:20SPEAKERIt's like, what is she supposed to use, the Britannica?

59:24SPEAKERIt's like, give me a break.

59:26SPEAKERAnd so I say, no, what you should do

59:28SPEAKERis you should use the best sources of information

59:30SPEAKERavailable to you and you should credit them.

59:34SPEAKERAnd if you do that, you're always gonna be fine.

59:37SPEAKERAnd that's the right way to go.

59:40SPEAKER- I think that's fair.

59:41SPEAKERI think that sounds exactly right to me.

59:45SPEAKERBrad, you wanna talk about games?

59:46SPEAKER- Yes, I have a question here.

59:48SPEAKER- I have a side project, you know.

59:50SPEAKERSo five years ago, I was running a process at work

59:55SPEAKERthat would release intellectual property to employees.

59:59SPEAKERSo they'd come up with some side project they wanna do.

1:00:01SPEAKERGoogle doesn't care about it.

1:00:03SPEAKERSo we came up with this mechanism

1:00:05SPEAKERwhere Google would tell people that they don't care.

1:00:08SPEAKERAnd they could have fun and all the rest.

1:00:10SPEAKERAnd it made a lot of engineers really happy.

1:00:13SPEAKERAnd I was running this process because somebody had to do it.

1:00:16SPEAKERAnd I was the open source guy.

1:00:17SPEAKERSo they're like, yeah, I made Chris do it.

1:00:19SPEAKERSo I came up, so I got an email

1:00:21SPEAKERfrom my old friend, Sam Mahat.

1:00:25SPEAKERHe said, Chris, I'll understand if you delete this email,

1:00:28SPEAKERbut I gotta do a video game.

1:00:30SPEAKERCan we do another video game?

1:00:31SPEAKER'Cause we had done a video game together before Google

1:00:34SPEAKERand it was a disaster.

1:00:35SPEAKERWe lost tons of money and it was awful, right?

1:00:39SPEAKERAnd so I admit at this point, I got this email.

1:00:43SPEAKERIt was like close to Christmas in 2015 or 2014.

1:00:47SPEAKERAnd I was like, yeah, I miss working on games.

1:00:50SPEAKERI miss the creativity, the story and all the rest.

1:00:53SPEAKERSo I turned around and I asked our head of conflicts,

1:00:56SPEAKERAndy Hinton and our general counsel, Ken.

1:00:59SPEAKERI was like, I really want to work in this game.

1:01:01SPEAKERAnd they're like, yeah, it's fine.

1:01:02SPEAKERJust keep it out of Google.

1:01:03SPEAKERI'm like, all right, thanks, oh, okay.

1:01:05SPEAKERAnd so that was five years ago.

1:01:08SPEAKERSo, okay, but now ask your question.

1:01:10SPEAKER- Yeah, so in light of your experience,

1:01:11SPEAKERI wanted to run this by you.

1:01:13SPEAKERA John Carmack tweet caught my eye recently.

1:01:16SPEAKEROkay, so here's his tweet.

1:01:17SPEAKERI'm just curious about your thoughts.

1:01:19SPEAKERHe says, I always found it curious

1:01:20SPEAKERhow so much of game development outside of low level systems

1:01:23SPEAKERseemed fairly hostile to the ideals of open source.

1:01:26SPEAKERThere is some aspect of business reality

1:01:28SPEAKERand some aspect of artistic ownership,

1:01:30SPEAKERbut there is something else going on culturally as well.

1:01:34SPEAKERI was always disappointed

1:01:35SPEAKERthat there weren't more serious open source uses

1:01:37SPEAKERof the quake code,

1:01:38SPEAKERbut I may be out of touch with the current state of things.

1:01:41SPEAKERAre popular mods often open source today?

1:01:43SPEAKERAre there any multimillion user games

1:01:45SPEAKERbeing actively developed and open source?

1:01:47SPEAKERDo you have any thoughts on why that is the state of things?

1:01:50SPEAKER- So there's a reason why I'm doing a game, okay?

1:01:56SPEAKERSo what games do is games take creative thinking,

1:02:01SPEAKERlike stories and worlds and quests and arcs

1:02:08SPEAKERand narrative arcs and even visual creativity,

1:02:13SPEAKERand they turn them into a per copy sales model, right?

1:02:19SPEAKERSo the beautiful thing about software licensing,

1:02:22SPEAKERnot open source software licensing,

1:02:23SPEAKERis you can charge per copy, okay?

1:02:26SPEAKERNow, what games do is they convert the creative output

1:02:32SPEAKERof a group of people

1:02:34SPEAKERand turn it into software licensing revenue,

1:02:37SPEAKERand that's how you pay for that creative output, okay?

1:02:42SPEAKERGame engines exist to help the game developer

1:02:49SPEAKERtake that creative output

1:02:50SPEAKERand put it out there for people to use it.

1:02:52SPEAKERNow, so what about open source and open source games?

1:02:56SPEAKERSo there have been open source games

1:02:59SPEAKERthat have gotten somewhat popular,

1:03:00SPEAKERand there have been open source engines.

1:03:02SPEAKERThe EdTech engine was under the GPL.

1:03:04SPEAKERThe reason they chose the GPL is they knew

1:03:07SPEAKERthat people who wanted to actually ship a game

1:03:10SPEAKERand get per license, per copy revenue

1:03:14SPEAKERwould end up paying them for the non-GPL copy of its engine,

1:03:20SPEAKERbecause if they had to release their code,

1:03:24SPEAKERas the GPL would require,

1:03:26SPEAKERfor their game as part of their release,

1:03:28SPEAKERthen people would not be challenged by the game.

1:03:31SPEAKERThey would have everything they needed from the game,

1:03:34SPEAKERand that was it.

1:03:36SPEAKERAnd you'll notice that the EdTech releases

1:03:39SPEAKERwere only with that first initial map, right?

1:03:42SPEAKERIf you wanted the rest of the WADs.

1:03:44SPEAKER- Right.

1:03:45SPEAKER- You know, I mean, this is where,

1:03:47SPEAKERand so what Ed was doing is, when it came to Quake,

1:03:50SPEAKERthey were making money from the maps, the creative output.

1:03:53SPEAKERThey had figured that out.

1:03:54SPEAKERThat was their very first release

1:03:55SPEAKERwith their shareware components.

1:03:56SPEAKERLike, you would get that first map for free,

1:03:58SPEAKERbut every map after that, you had to pay for it, right?

1:04:01SPEAKERSo, you know, so John, frankly,

1:04:07SPEAKERunderstands open source licensing perfectly.

1:04:09SPEAKERHe understands how to use it

1:04:10SPEAKERto turn it into per-software licensing revenue.

1:04:14SPEAKERAnd if anything, the way he wrote that is really interesting

1:04:22SPEAKERbecause he's like, I'm surprised that open source communities

1:04:25SPEAKERhave not taken this and turned it into a Quake size revenue,

1:04:32SPEAKERQuake size impact on culture, right?

1:04:35SPEAKERAnd the reality is that the amount of work

1:04:38SPEAKERthat goes into creating a Quake kind of game

1:04:42SPEAKERor a Half-Life, right,

1:04:44SPEAKERwhich the first version of Half-Life

1:04:45SPEAKERwas based on the id engine, right?

1:04:48SPEAKERYou know, and they paid id for that use.

1:04:53SPEAKERThey didn't release their stuff as open source.

1:04:58SPEAKERWhere was I going with this?

1:04:59SPEAKERAnyway, long and short of it is,

1:05:00SPEAKEReverything is working as intended,

1:05:02SPEAKERbut building a game is expensive.

1:05:05SPEAKERIt's really expensive to do that kind of creativity.

1:05:08SPEAKERAnd like, if you look at like Minecraft, right,

1:05:11SPEAKERit's like, people are like, but Minecraft,

1:05:12SPEAKERyou have all these mods, you have all this stuff,

1:05:14SPEAKERyou have all this fun, you know,

1:05:15SPEAKERand there's so much open source activity

1:05:17SPEAKERand you're not wrong.

1:05:18SPEAKERIt's not really open source

1:05:19SPEAKERbecause it's not really licensed like that.

1:05:21SPEAKERBut if you actually dive deep on Minecraft, right,

1:05:25SPEAKERthe core Minecraft code itself, a commercial,

1:05:28SPEAKERyou know, not open source project,

1:05:33SPEAKERif you look at the modding community with the eye

1:05:36SPEAKERof a lawyer, of a copyright bureaucrat like me,

1:05:40SPEAKERyou realize they've reached the point in Minecraft

1:05:44SPEAKERwhere they're post copyright.

1:05:46SPEAKERAnd what I mean by that is that

1:05:48SPEAKERthere is no untangling possible.

1:05:52SPEAKERSo it went from Minecraft and then they ripped

1:05:55SPEAKERthrough Minecraft's code to create Forge,

1:05:57SPEAKERan external community, created Forge,

1:06:00SPEAKERand Forge is ostensibly under an open license.

1:06:02SPEAKERBut they use so much code that they just ripped wholesale

1:06:06SPEAKERout of Minecraft that they can't really claim

1:06:08SPEAKERthe rights that they have.

1:06:09SPEAKERThen people would take Forge and they would build

1:06:12SPEAKERall this stuff on top of it, right?

1:06:14SPEAKERAnd so, and they would share code back and forth

1:06:17SPEAKERand back and forth, it's really breathtaking.

1:06:20SPEAKERAnd the developer velocity and the love

1:06:22SPEAKERthat went into these mods was terrific, right?

1:06:25SPEAKERAnd at the same time, no one had any rights

1:06:28SPEAKERto any of this stuff, right?

1:06:31SPEAKERAnd so they ended up using textures from each other

1:06:34SPEAKERand it became basically, it was a postmodern free for all.

1:06:37SPEAKERIt wasn't open source, it was just postmodern.

1:06:39SPEAKERIt was post copyright, it was this weird utopia

1:06:42SPEAKERand at its core was a commercial transaction

1:06:46SPEAKERfor the original Minecraft Java client.

1:06:49SPEAKER- So as long as Microsoft keeps getting its cheddar

1:06:52SPEAKERfor the Minecraft Java copies, they don't care

1:06:56SPEAKERwhat happens in the mod community.

1:06:58SPEAKER- It was funny 'cause when Mojang was up for sale,

1:07:04SPEAKERI didn't think that Google wanted it,

1:07:06SPEAKERbut I sort of, 'cause I was enjoying myself,

1:07:09SPEAKERI went through the code of the popular Forge mods

1:07:13SPEAKERand Forge itself and Minecraft and I was like,

1:07:16SPEAKERoh yeah, no, whoever buys this just has to be okay

1:07:20SPEAKERwith chaos and saying that, you know what,

1:07:24SPEAKERthe modding community, de facto has the rights

1:07:27SPEAKERto do what they've been doing.

1:07:29SPEAKERWe're not gonna mess with them, you know, and the rest.

1:07:31SPEAKERAnd what Microsoft did was kind of interesting.

1:07:34SPEAKERSo they bought Mojang for $2 billion, whatever,

1:07:37SPEAKERand they were making a lot of money

1:07:42SPEAKERfrom the Java client individual sales

1:07:44SPEAKERand they put a lot of time and a lot of money

1:07:46SPEAKERinto the C++ PE version.

1:07:48SPEAKERMade a good amount of money from that,

1:07:50SPEAKERbut what they were doing is they were,

1:07:54SPEAKERthere's an old sort of saying, it's kind of a joke, right?

1:07:59SPEAKERThat Xbox only made money on Halo release years, you know?

1:08:04SPEAKERAnd that was really true for like 10 years.

1:08:06SPEAKER- For a long time, yeah.

1:08:07SPEAKER- If they released Halo, they made money.

1:08:09SPEAKERIf they didn't, they didn't, right?

1:08:12SPEAKERAnd so Minecraft was the chance

1:08:15SPEAKERto have another Halo project,

1:08:19SPEAKERmeaning this kind of Halo, not that kind of Halo,

1:08:22SPEAKERfor the Xbox platform.

1:08:24SPEAKER- He pointed at his head, by the way.

1:08:26SPEAKER- The other Halo.

1:08:27SPEAKER- And the rest.

1:08:28SPEAKERSo yeah, and it's just, it's a really interesting,

1:08:31SPEAKERI would love to talk to whoever kicked off that acquisition

1:08:35SPEAKERand see what was the motivation internally,

1:08:37SPEAKERwhat was the justification internally.

1:08:39SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I always kind of assumed

1:08:40SPEAKERthat the whole bedrock thing that they did

1:08:43SPEAKERwhere they unified all of the console

1:08:45SPEAKERand the Windows 10 native, not Java version on one code base

1:08:50SPEAKERwas so that they could capture some of the chaos

1:08:53SPEAKERthat was that forged modding scene

1:08:55SPEAKERin a way that was monetizable and repeatable.

1:08:59SPEAKER- And they monetized server infrastructure

1:09:00SPEAKERwith that version as well.

1:09:02SPEAKER- Yeah, that's true.

1:09:02SPEAKERWell, I think there was Java now too though, as well.

1:09:04SPEAKER- Okay.

1:09:05SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but you can still get Java servers anyway.

1:09:09SPEAKER- Yeah, you don't have to, is the thing.

1:09:13SPEAKER- It's such an interesting place,

1:09:15SPEAKERthat whole morass of copyright.

1:09:17SPEAKER- Well, there's a weird, it is, it's like the chaotic lands

1:09:23SPEAKERwhere some magic is happening inside, anyway.

1:09:26SPEAKER- See, I thought you were gonna ask about the John Carmack,

1:09:29SPEAKERbut not Bethesda, is it?

1:09:30SPEAKERThe Zenimax, lawsuit around the live sale.

1:09:34SPEAKER- Oh, no.

1:09:35SPEAKER- And not the live sale, the Oculus stuff.

1:09:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:09:40SPEAKERWe can do that next time.

1:09:41SPEAKER- It's so interesting.

1:09:42SPEAKER- This is the real scene drama.

1:09:44SPEAKERWe should head you on for the scene drama episode, man.

1:09:46SPEAKER- That sounds like an entire episode unto itself.

1:09:47SPEAKERAlso, I didn't even get to the part

1:09:48SPEAKERwhere he followed that tweet up later

1:09:50SPEAKERby saying he wishes he had licensed Quake under BSD

1:09:52SPEAKERinstead of GPL now.

1:09:54SPEAKER- Well, that's interesting.

1:09:55SPEAKERIf he had really licensed Quake under BSD,

1:09:58SPEAKERmore people would have used Quake.

1:10:00SPEAKER- That's exactly the conclusion he reached.

1:10:03SPEAKER- He would have kicked that platform out forever.

1:10:05SPEAKER- He did end that tweet, though,

1:10:07SPEAKERby saying my partners would never have gone for it.

1:10:09SPEAKER- Well, I mean, the reality is,

1:10:11SPEAKERUnreal would be based on idTech today.

1:10:14SPEAKERFrostbite would be based on idTech.

1:10:16SPEAKERAll these things would be based on idTech,

1:10:18SPEAKERif that was the case.

1:10:19SPEAKERAnd you know what?

1:10:20SPEAKERHe wouldn't have made a dime from it.

1:10:22SPEAKERAnd that's okay,

1:10:23SPEAKER'cause they always made their money from the games.

1:10:25SPEAKERRight?

1:10:25SPEAKERSo.

1:10:26SPEAKER- Will, before we go real fast,

1:10:27SPEAKERI just want to ask Chris

1:10:28SPEAKERwhat his favorite Linux distro or distros are these days.

1:10:33SPEAKER- Slackware.

1:10:34SPEAKERNo, so I'm kind of a,

1:10:39SPEAKERI used to think of myself as a Debian purist,

1:10:41SPEAKERbut I've been mostly using Ubuntu.

1:10:44SPEAKERThe server side of it.

1:10:45SPEAKERI barely use the desktop interfaces anymore.

1:10:48SPEAKERSo, I guess my favorite Linux for daily use is Chrome OS,

1:10:54SPEAKERyou know, 'cause that's the one over there.

1:10:55SPEAKER- Party line, man.

1:10:57SPEAKER- No, I mean, it's the most reliable machine I own.

1:11:00SPEAKER- Are we quite at the point where you can,

1:11:02SPEAKERif somebody asks that question,

1:11:03SPEAKERyou can be cheeky and say Windows at this point?

1:11:05SPEAKERLike, what are we, we're almost there with WSL now?

1:11:08SPEAKER- No, I mean, I think Windows is one of those

1:11:11SPEAKERoperating systems.

1:11:12SPEAKERI don't want to look under the covers.

1:11:14SPEAKERI'd be afraid.

1:11:15SPEAKER- Sure, fair.

1:11:17SPEAKER- I mean, so one of the people working for me

1:11:19SPEAKERis Jeremy Allison.

1:11:20SPEAKERHe's in charge of the Samba project,

1:11:22SPEAKERwhich is the file system server.

1:11:24SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah.

1:11:25SPEAKER- It's compatible with Windows.

1:11:27SPEAKERAnd that code base goes back 30 years now.

1:11:29SPEAKER- Oh, I am acquainted with configuring it, I know.

1:11:34SPEAKER- The thing you don't realize is,

1:11:35SPEAKERif you look in the code of Samba,

1:11:38SPEAKERyou see all the weird cases for Excel,

1:11:44SPEAKERfor Word, for Land Manager, IBM Land Manager.

1:11:48SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, I love Land Manager.

1:11:50SPEAKER- You know, going back, I'm not kidding, 30 years.

1:11:55SPEAKERAnd so, like, Jeremy will go to conferences

1:11:58SPEAKERaround the Samba file system, CIFS, I guess they call it.

1:12:03SPEAKER- Yes, protocol.

1:12:05SPEAKER- And commonly, he knows more

1:12:10SPEAKERabout the underlying file systems

1:12:12SPEAKERthan anyone from Microsoft.

1:12:13SPEAKEREveryone's retired or left.

1:12:16SPEAKERAnd so they're like, "So, Jeremy."

1:12:18SPEAKER(laughing)

1:12:20SPEAKERIt's like his reverse engineering

1:12:23SPEAKERhas become the primary engineering form

1:12:25SPEAKERof that file system.

1:12:28SPEAKERIt's wacky.

1:12:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I've run into numerous situations

1:12:31SPEAKERwhere you have to explicitly disallow older versions of SMB.

1:12:34SPEAKERLike, don't use older than version three,

1:12:36SPEAKERdo all kinds of security holes and stuff like that.

1:12:38SPEAKER- Well, one of the things I also wanna get in here

1:12:40SPEAKERis a plug for the game.

1:12:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, let's talk about your game.

1:12:42SPEAKER- Since we brought up the game.

1:12:44SPEAKERSo, it's called Fractured Veil.

1:12:45SPEAKERWe're gonna be hitting Kickstarter on the 7th of September.

1:12:51SPEAKERSo, and then it'll probably be for sale

1:12:53SPEAKERon Steam next year, you know?

1:12:56SPEAKERBut yeah, it's going really good.

1:12:58SPEAKERWe're streaming like crazy.

1:12:59SPEAKER- What's the game, Chris?

1:13:01SPEAKER- It's set 100 years in the future on Maui.

1:13:03SPEAKERIt's the future of survival MMO with elements of horror.

1:13:08SPEAKERAnd honestly, we're so proud of the crafting

1:13:12SPEAKERand building system.

1:13:13SPEAKERWell, the crafting's still a little rough,

1:13:14SPEAKERbut the building system's incredible.

1:13:16SPEAKERYou can make the coolest, you know, structures

1:13:19SPEAKERin the game now.

1:13:20SPEAKER- I've seen the forts people build in the...

1:13:22SPEAKERI mean, they build them at night.

1:13:24SPEAKERWe're not gonna talk about that,

1:13:25SPEAKERbut like the construction stuff looks awesome.

1:13:28SPEAKERI can't wait to play it.

1:13:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it's super fun.

1:13:30SPEAKERAnd, you know, we've managed to get testing

1:13:33SPEAKERup to about 250 people per Unreal server backend world,

1:13:38SPEAKERwhich is hard.

1:13:40SPEAKERWe're really trying.

1:13:41SPEAKERSo what we're trying for is full-on 500 people

1:13:43SPEAKERper world instance,

1:13:46SPEAKERwhich is, 'cause we have like these instance dungeons

1:13:49SPEAKERand other areas for separating the workloads,

1:13:52SPEAKERbut it's fun.

1:13:54SPEAKERAnd we have a crazy lore.

1:13:55SPEAKERWe've written like 400,000 words of lore.

1:13:58SPEAKERThat's all I know.

1:13:59SPEAKER- It's too much lore, Chris.

1:14:00SPEAKERWay too much lore.

1:14:01SPEAKER- I needed to be creative, you know?

1:14:04SPEAKERAnd through this science fiction-y, fun, cool story,

1:14:08SPEAKERwe're able to do that.

1:14:09SPEAKER- That sounds awesome.

1:14:10SPEAKERWhere can people,

1:14:11SPEAKERso people can find Fractured Veil on Steam.

1:14:13SPEAKERThey can find you at C De Bona on Twitter.

1:14:16SPEAKER- Yeah, and everything, yeah, C De Bona.

1:14:17SPEAKER- Okay, very good.

1:14:19SPEAKER- Yeah, Fractured Veil's the game, and it's super fun.

1:14:21SPEAKERBut Google is, you know, that's where I work.

1:14:23SPEAKER- Chris, thank you so much.

1:14:24SPEAKERIt's a pleasure to have you.

1:14:26SPEAKERWe have now reached the portion of the show

1:14:29SPEAKERwhere we thank the patrons, Brad.

1:14:32SPEAKER- Thank you, patrons.

1:14:34SPEAKER- Thank you, patrons.

1:14:35SPEAKER- Thank you.

1:14:36SPEAKER- If you, as always, Brad and Will Made A Tech Pod

1:14:39SPEAKERis 100% listener-supported.

1:14:42SPEAKERSo if you would like to support the show

1:14:43SPEAKERand help us continue making the tech pod,

1:14:45SPEAKERyou can by going to patreon.com/techpod

1:14:48SPEAKERfor as little as $2 a month.

1:14:50SPEAKER- That's right.

1:14:51SPEAKER- $2.

1:14:52SPEAKER- $2.

1:14:52SPEAKER- I can't even get a cup of coffee for $2, Brad.

1:14:54SPEAKER- $2, that's like a $1 bill, except, I mean,

1:14:56SPEAKERit says two on it, but that's, you can-

1:14:58SPEAKER- Do you know what's on the back of the $2 bill?

1:15:01SPEAKERI think it's the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

1:15:03SPEAKER- Is it really?

1:15:04SPEAKER- But I suddenly question myself.

1:15:05SPEAKER- Okay.

1:15:06SPEAKER- So let us know if we're wrong.

1:15:08SPEAKERIf you are a patron, you can let us know we're wrong

1:15:11SPEAKERin this week's episode channel on the Discord.

1:15:14SPEAKERBut for as little as $2 a month,

1:15:16SPEAKERyou get access to the fabulous Tech Pod Discord,

1:15:18SPEAKERwhere you can talk to Brad, me,

1:15:19SPEAKERmany of our illustrious show guests,

1:15:22SPEAKERand 2,700 and change other wonderful people

1:15:27SPEAKERabout topics of interest, including such things as-

1:15:30SPEAKER- Nuclear engineering, I saw there was a nuclear engineer

1:15:33SPEAKERweighing in on an episode last night.

1:15:35SPEAKER- Yeah, also there's a slight correction,

1:15:37SPEAKERthe Three Mile Island accident was not, in fact,

1:15:41SPEAKERcaused by some of the things that we said.

1:15:43SPEAKERAnyway, you have to look in the Discord for the correction.

1:15:44SPEAKERI don't remember the specifics,

1:15:46SPEAKERso I don't want to mess it up again.

1:15:48SPEAKER- Tons of interesting people, point being.

1:15:50SPEAKER- Yeah, we even talked about threads last night.

1:15:53SPEAKER- That's right, yes, we have threads now.

1:15:55SPEAKER- Yes, threads.

1:15:57SPEAKER- Turns out if you hit the big, fat enable threads button,

1:15:59SPEAKERit might not respect the permissions you thought you set

1:16:02SPEAKERto stop for people from being able to create threads.

1:16:04SPEAKER- Look, it took people a really,

1:16:05SPEAKERmultiple hours to realize the threads were enabled.

1:16:09SPEAKERThat's all I'll say.

1:16:11SPEAKERSo anyway, thank you all for supporting the show,

1:16:13SPEAKERbut extra special thanks to our executive producer,

1:16:16SPEAKERdear patrons, including Andrew Slosky, The Bunny Fiend,

1:16:20SPEAKERJacob Chappell, Joel Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie,

1:16:22SPEAKERDavid Allen, and James Kamik.

1:16:24SPEAKERAnd an apology to Andrew Slosky

1:16:26SPEAKERfor mispronouncing his name for, I think,

1:16:30SPEAKERsix of the seven months

1:16:31SPEAKERthat he's been an executive producer patron, so.

1:16:33SPEAKER- You fiend.

1:16:34SPEAKER- Look, we all,

1:16:36SPEAKERit turns out pronunciating things is difficult.

1:16:38SPEAKER- It's true.

1:16:39SPEAKER- But that'll do it for us this week.

1:16:40SPEAKERIf you have questions about software licensing,

1:16:43SPEAKERor how soft, I feel like I know a lot more

1:16:47SPEAKERabout how software licensing works in Google now,

1:16:50SPEAKERwhich is kind of interesting,

1:16:50SPEAKER'cause I had never really considered

1:16:52SPEAKERthat they had to have multiple layers of process

1:16:55SPEAKERand ultimately some sort of emperor of open source code

1:16:59SPEAKERto figure that stuff out.

1:17:00SPEAKER- Yes, yes, the licensing czar.

1:17:02SPEAKER- Yes, but yeah, we will be back next week

1:17:06SPEAKERwith another episode of the TechPod.

1:17:09SPEAKERWe will see you all then.

1:17:11SPEAKERThanks for listening, everybody.