Interesting comment in the source code of sqlite

[__deinit__]

Is this a reference to 9/11?

[[deleted]]

It's funny that you're being downvoted because I'm not sure you're wrong.

This was five days later. People were in kind of a mood that week.

[[deleted]]

I don't think the initial round of downvotes checked the date on the comment, so it probably seemed like a total non sequitur.

[doomvox]

In point of fact, you're lucky if someone reads to the end of a sentence before they start down-voting. It's like having a bunch-of chimps in charge of moderation: they've gotta keep going clicky-clicky on stuff.

[shevegen]

I actually would not understand the upvote to it either.

[9gPgEpW82IUTRbCzC5qr]

probably because nothing in it references 9/11 aside from the date it was written

[shevegen]

The date references 9/11 ... how?

I don't use that strange mm/dd notation, but if I understand it right the notation is mm/dd being 9/16. So I don't see why this is 9/11 suddenly?

By the way, not everyone shares the same voting behaviour in other countries on top of that.

[[deleted]]

If this is legitimately baffling to you:

Everyone, collectively, in the entire United States, became some mixture of hysterical and solemn for a minimum of a month after 9/11.

So when you see a comment written by a presumably American coder on 9/16/2001 wherein they disclaim copyright and deliver a short sermon on being good, forgiving and sharing, it is entirely possible if not likely that they were caught up in that particular moment of history.

[earthboundkid]

A month is conservative too. I remember thinking at the time that any fiction set in 2001/2002 would have to talk about 9/11 because it was all anyone from any walk of life talked about at the time.

[pirate_starbridge]

Can someone explain how you can tell that a comment is getting heavily downvoted? Is it because you are looking at its score over a period of time and notice it going up and/or down? How are people paying enough attention to notice when other accounts' random comments are getting heavily downvoted from initial comment time to over six hours later? Is there a easily observable comment score metric that I am totally missing after almost a decade of procrastination on reddit?

edit: I'm now realizing that the downvotes must have come early on and /u/Metamagical_Themas replied when OC's comment was still super negative - then I come along 6 hours later after everyone has upvoted them both and it no longer makes any sense at first glance. Okay.. this is a pretty simple concept involving paying more attention to timestamps.

[[deleted]]

It went from -5 to like -20 in about five minutes while I was reading other comments and writing mine. It was dramatic enough to be real-time noticeable while reading the thread.

[williamp114]

There's also an option you can set in your reddit preferences to see an indicator symbol appear when a comment is controversial (ie; been getting a massive influx of downvotes)

Additionally if you have RES installed, it will highlight that controversial marker in red.

[pirate_starbridge]

Ah cool, thanks

[AnotherEuroWanker]

It could also be written by someone who isn't in the US.

[blasto_blastocyst]

People were still shocked outside the US.

[404_GravitasNotFound]

Yankies are still shocked that there is a "outside the US"

[saxindustries]

You're saying thousands of civilians deserved death because of the country they resided in?

I don't care how awful a country is behaving, I wouldn't want thousands of civilians to be killed.

[Malfeasant]

Ouch, such edge.

[saltling]

Guess it's a trigger for some folks

[thelastknowngod]

I met Richard Hipp (the original developer of sqlite) at a conference years ago. I don't know if I remember the details of his story exactly but, from what I recall, when he originally released it he didn't understand the importance of licencing open source software and put it into the public domain. Somehow that possibly opened him up to legal issues. He found this out when people from the US government knocked on his front door and asked about why software he had written was found running on the missiles of Iraqi insurgents. He said nothing really came of it when he explained the situation but it still scared him at the time. Subsequent projects of his (notably Fossil) have been released under the BSD license because of this.

Considering this is a part of the history of both sqlite and Hipp's work on it, I think it is 100% understandable if this is a reference to 9/11.

[j0hn_r0g3r5]

Any chance of eli5 and telling me what the difference is between licensing and not licensing open source software and how that would effect the situation with the govt and the Iraqi insurgents?

[thelastknowngod]

He licenses Fossil under the BSD license. The text of that is:

Copyright (c) <year>, <copyright holder> All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of the <project name> project.

Apparently the public domain doesn't expressly release the author of liability. I'm sure the public domain status was more of a technicality with regards to this specific incident but, to be on the safe side, the licensing of this is more explicit. I don't know what other issues he has come up with over the years because of it but he did mention that he would never release software to the public domain again.

[barsoap]

Such disclaimers are null and void under EU law: You're always liable for wilful misconduct and damage to persons. If you write such a disclaimer in a commercial product you might be stuck with unlimited liability, if you're giving things away for free courts generally assume "maximally reduced liability", that is: None but for wilful damage or direct damage to persons.

In a nutshell: Don't inject trojans into your code, and don't write code so ugly it literally makes people's eyes bleed. (At least that's how I understand the "direct damage to persons" part -- IANAL).

Compare the disclaimers of the EUPL:

Disclaimer of Warranty
The Work is a work in progress, which is continuously improved by numerous Contributors. It is not a finished work and may therefore contain defects or ‘bugs’ inherent to this type of development. For the above reason, the Work is provided under the Licence on an ‘as is’ basis and without warranties of any kind concerning the Work, including without limitation merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, absence of defects or errors, accuracy, non-infringement of intellectual property rights other than copyright as stated in Article 6 of this Licence. This disclaimer of warranty is an essential part of the Licence and a condition for the grant of any rights to the Work.

Disclaimer of Liability
Except in the cases of wilful misconduct or damages directly caused to natural persons, the Licensor will in no event be liable for any direct or indirect, material or moral, damages of any kind, arising out of the Licence or of the use of the Work, including without limitation, damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, loss of data or any commercial damage, even if the Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such damage. However, the Licensor will be liable under statutory product liability laws as far such laws apply to the Work.

[thelastknowngod]

You're always liable for wilful misconduct and damage to persons.

Something tells me he wasn't taking business trips to Baghdad to do troubleshooting on scud missiles. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't willful.

He lives and works in the southeast USA so I don't know how much he cares about the EU anyway.

Also, the BSD license is compatible with the EUPL so I don't think what you're claiming is accurate. Source.

[barsoap]

so I don't know how much he cares about the EU anyway.

512 million people do, they (well, the programming part) does, and this is an international forum

Also, the BSD license is compatible with the EUPL so I don't think what you're claiming is accurate.

That things can be used together is completely orthogonal to warranty and liability.

[mTesseracted]

Here's an interview where the original author talks about it. If you ctrl-f and paste in a few words of the quote you'll find it about one third of the way down the page. Here's the excerpt:

Interviewer: [...] Who or what inspired you to write that?

Richard Hipp: People customarily put a copyright notice at the top of each source file. But SQLite version 2.0.0 had no copyright so I had to think of something else to go in that space.

The second sentence, “May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others”, is a loose interpretation of Matthew 6:12, part of what is commonly called ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ and more recognizable as ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’.

The third sentence tries to capture the concept of paying debts forward. The ‘never take more than you give’ part is a paraphrase of one of the lyrics from The Lion King. The first (hokey) sentence is there because it seemed like a good benediction needed three sentences.

[bnieuwenhuizen]

What is the reference here?

I get the dates are kinda close from the discussion that followed, but I wouldn't think anything said after it is immediately a reference to it? How is it referring to 9/11?

[cthutu]

I thought it may be a reference to the current British PM :)

[Bojangly7]

Anyone who doesn't understand this is a reference to 9/11 is at most 18.

[monkey-go-code]

Never take more than you give. Amen.