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/dev/lawyer
Personal blog · writing.kemitchell.comprogrammingwriting
/dev/lawyer is a personal blog at writing.kemitchell.com about programming and writing. Since 2014, 134 different Hacker News readers have linked it 419 times, most often “The MIT License, Line by Line”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Kyle Mitchell's blog, a lawyer who also programs, for explanations of open source licenses, copyleft, AGPL and SSPL, plus copyright law and his own proposed licenses.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The MIT License, Line by Line13 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2016-09-21
- Reading the AGPL6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-01-24
- Deprecation Notice: MIT and BSD licenses5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-03-09
- /2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-09-05
- Feedback on the default contributor license in GitHub's draft terms of service5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-02-16
- SSPL Was Not Commons Clause5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-06-16
- Righteous, Expedient, Wrong5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-20
- The License Zero Manifesto5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-09-13
- Devs Use Closed Software4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-02-13
- Two Kinds of "Relicensing" (2023)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-09-24
What Hacker News says?
I'm always grateful for open source code, but on AGPL I can only quote the lawyer Kyle Mitchell: "Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke..." "It’s not just hard for lawyers, who have the legal picture and can parse the whole license very carefully without passing out...It’s also hard for hackers, even those familiar with free software lore, who lack the legal side…
Comment linking /2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL
on “Redis is open source again”Submitted The MIT License, Line by Line as a story · 531 points
HN discussionIt already exists: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/small-business/1.0.0/ https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/01/26/Big-Time-2.0.0
Comment linking /2022/01/26/Big-Time-2.0.0
on “Getting forked by Microsoft”Submitted Russia to legalize software piracy as a story · 527 points
HN discussionI'd argue this is pretty much what SSPL was supposed to be: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/06/13/SSPL-Not-Commons-C... It's no secret AGPL was written to solve "the Google problem". SSPL tried to solve "the AWS problem" with copyleft, rather than just banning the use case, which is what Commons Clause did.
Comment linking /2019/06/13/SSPL-Not-Commons-Clause.html
on “Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing”Submitted The MIT License, Line by Line as a story · 371 points
HN discussionWikipedia is not the best source of information. There is a difference between "strong" copyleft and "weak" copyleft. An example of "weak" (non-viral) copyleft is the CDDL. In fact, the CDDL's Wikipedia page talks about strong and weak copyleft. You can read [1] for a breakdown of copyleft by an actual lawyer. Suffice it to say that Wikipedia's Copyleft page is woefully inadequate. [1]: https://writing.kemitchell.co…
Comment linking /2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyleft.html
on “Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]”Submitted Open Source License Business Perception Report as a story · 348 points
HN discussion> However, I'd argue that it is good that it was decided that this is a copyright law matter, because this gives authors _much_ more protection than contract law Copyright law may give the authors more power; but unfortunately, experience teaches us that there's usually not much incentive for the authors to enforce their rights. (The case in TFA is an exception, since the author profits directly from dual-licensing.…
Comment linking /2021/10/19/SFC-v-Vizio-Complaint
on “French court issues damages award for violation of GPL”Submitted The License Zero Manifesto as a story · 190 points
HN discussionI stopped writing on Medium because I don't want claps and statistics and incentives to add stock photos and so on. I don't want my writing gameified. Other than that, it's pretty nice. More here: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/01/04/The-Well-Appointed...
Comment linking /2018/01/04/The-Well-Appointed-Skinner-Box.html
on “Medium is a poor choice for blogging”Submitted Scapegoating free software’s failures as a story · 150 points
HN discussionYou forgot a point in your numbered list: 4) You're using it. ---- > access information in someone else's computer that you have nothing to do with. 1. "nothing to do with" is an absolute claim. Your line of argumentation has been heavily reliant on absolute statements, refusing to understand nuance. 2. If the user truly had "nothing to do with" some information on some computer, the AGPL places no requirement for t…
Comment linking /2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL.html
on “Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3”Submitted The Open Source Initiative Did Not Win Neo4j vs. PureThink as a story · 149 points
HN discussion> There’s a clear answer to Babel’s funding woes: sell the new version of Babel, Babel 8. At least until Babel 9 comes out. Then sell Babel 9. https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/05/11/Sell-Babel-8.html
Comment linking /2021/05/11/Sell-Babel-8.html
on “Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?”Submitted Templating for Lawyers as a story · 148 points
HN discussion> https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl ... If you have some background knowledge of Google's architecture, this explains exactly why the AGPL is banned there: all code is built from one monorepo where everything is linked together. > https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL This completely agrees with what I said. At it's core, the A part of the AGPL only kicks in if: > “you mod…
Comment linking /2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL
on “For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default”Submitted Big Time Public License as a story · 143 points
HN discussion> I think the English is perfectly clear and understandable. Because you are not a lawyer. The points I’ve made have been cited by actual lawyers. Your opinion as a technologist blinds you to the degree of legal ambiguity. https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl... https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL Also, the very fact that these opinions exist shows this license is not safe.…
Comment linking /2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL
on “For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default”Submitted The MIT License, Line by Line (2016) as a story · 143 points
HN discussionThat’s different from relicensing the code https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-b...
Comment linking /2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by-Line.html
on “Fuchsia OS Introduction”Submitted Reading the AGPL as a story · 119 points
HN discussionThere are at least four Russian Linux distros and I've heard that one of them is used by the Russian military. Apparently the Russian government are talking about creating their own GitHub replacement, as China did with gitee.com. https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/03/07/You-And-Whose-GitH... So the Russian government are probably already in the process of transitioning to FLOSS.
Comment linking /2022/03/07/You-And-Whose-GitHub.html
on “Russia to legalize software piracy”Submitted The Work, the Tech, and the Crime as a story · 82 points
HN discussionIn terms of "antithetical values", the machine learning project ml5js.org actually did something about this. They bound their open-source license to a Code of Conduct¹, which forbids the use of their ML software for (1) discriminating against marginalized communities, (2) building tools that disingenuously manipulate public opinion, (3) building tools of mass surveillance and prediction to repress the rights of peop…
Comment linking /2021/01/12/ml5js-Takes-a-Stand.html
on “Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code”Submitted The Copyleft Bust Up as a story · 78 points
HN discussionI recently published my first, draft attempt at an SSPL-style license, too: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/01/12/Shared-Component-L...
Comment linking /2019/01/12/Shared-Component-License.html
on “AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source”Submitted Deprecation Notice: MIT and BSD licenses as a story · 76 points
HN discussionhttps://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/03/17/OSI-Neo4j-PureThin...
Comment linking /2022/03/17/OSI-Neo4j-PureThink.html
on “Court finds calling stuff open source when it's not is false advertising”Submitted Contract by Email as a story · 70 points
HN discussion
