Making developers afraid to work on youtube-dl is a much more powerful move than taking down a few songs that were already available for free on YouTube.
Yuuup. I haven’t used youtube-dl since I was a teacher and needed it to bring educational videos into the classroom that lacked Internet.
But now I have a copy of the source, and have been thinking about how I might contribute and/or repackage it as a “browser” (with the option to run it in “headless mode”, of course).
If developers are afraid, they will be tempted to program a solution for censorship-resistant hosting of open source software that additionally allows to contribute anonymously (not just pseudonymously).
the problem is lot of the incentive to contribute for free is the name recognition.
Lot of dev see it as a way to show what they can do (portfolio) because that can’t share the code they produce at work
Yep, plenty of tools in the infosec world on github and elsewhere are published by anonymous developers.
Plus when you use an anonymous name and get a popular project out of it, you still get recognition. Even if it's not publicly in your name. You'll still feel good about contributing to the world.
All GitHub got was a take down request (which they were required to act on), not proof of anything being illegal (which requires a court case to prove)
As per the post you are replying to, choice of programming project is, unlike race and religion, not a protected class. It is perfectly legal in the US for a company to discriminate based on it.
A company could also freely and legally discriminate based on whether or not you prefer whole-wheat bread. That's not a protected class. It doesn't matter that whole-wheat bread is legal.
I think you guys are conflating this with what the poster is getting at, which based on what was said ("implying criminality"), is more akin to defamation (though admittedly the choice of earlier examples is poor).
If, as an employer, I decide that because you chose a specific project (or political party, or brand of motor bike, etc. anything whose association has potential 'dubious legal status') that you're part of a criminal organization (and hence a criminal, or any other description that might be undesirable/harmful) because of that and don't hire you, that may put me at risk.
Obviously there would be a legal bar to meet from that, not the least of which would be proving that it was intentional to defame the person, and resulted in actual damages to that person (i.e. proper standing - would not getting the job be enough?)
IDK IANAL, but I sure AF wouldn't want to be the trailblazer for finding out (like IBM is right now).
I didn't imply YTDL was illegal. My response was directly to your implication that "committed code to a repo" (or however you want to phrase it) is a protected class like race or sex.
> "Oh, you committed code to a repo I consider dubious though nothing proven... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
> "Oh, you shop at a store run by a non-white person.... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
> "Oh, you follow a religion, but I'm atheist... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
There are zero laws on the books to stop a company from firing you for committing code to an open source project.
Unless you can find me a law that actually says "Companies can't terminate employment or otherwise discriminate based on a code repo commit".
There ARE actual laws that say "You can't discriminate based on Race/Religion/Sex/ethnicity/etc".
Whether or not YTDL is illegal (I doubt it is) is irrelevant to this thread. Just like a company firing you because of a post on facebook or twitter is generally allowed (local laws and state statutes may grant more protections).
Please... prove me wrong and provide laws - local or otherwise - and possible a case where someone successfully sued for wrongful discrimination based on code they wrote.
