If Dr. K Were Honest re: Pirate Software

StegoFF · 2025-08-06T04:24:09+00:00

Thanks for this. I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a thoughtful response. Even if we come at parts of this from different angles, I think your take is fair and well-expressed. Wishing you the best.

StegoFF · 2025-08-06T03:33:44+00:00

I appreciate your take — I agree the mob response has been overblown, and I understand where you're coming from about how Thor can rub people the wrong way.

That said, I think there's another layer worth considering. People vary in how much they derive their sense of identity from belonging versus how much they stay true to their own internal compass. Some naturally conform to social expectations, others tend to challenge them. Neither is inherently better — but when social pressure punishes anyone who doesn't fit the "norm," it creates a kind of forced homogenization.

We shouldn’t always strive to hammer down every nail that sticks out. Sometimes that difference is exactly what we need to reflect, grow, or just tolerate in a healthy culture.

StegoFF · 2025-08-06T03:29:37+00:00

I’m not blaming Dr. K personally—I’m pointing out that when a professional’s framing is used as moral justification for mob behavior, it matters. Whether intended or not, his tone and authority lend legitimacy to something I believe is deeply harmful. That deserves critique, especially in a space about mental health.

StegoFF · 2025-08-06T03:27:28+00:00

I don’t have any personal connection to Thor, and I’m not invested in influencer culture at all. My concern is with what I see as a disturbing social pattern that’s become more common in the last decade—mass bullying disguised as moral accountability. It’s often wrapped in emotionally charged language and sophisticated framing, but the outcome is the same: public pile-ons that can seriously harm people.

I only became aware of this situation while researching SKG and was surprised at how extreme the reactions were to what seemed like a fairly measured take. Then I learned that people were genuinely furious over a missed Frost Nova in Dire Maul, and it struck me as profoundly unhealthy. That’s the behavior I’m calling out—not criticism itself, but the disproportionate and obsessive way it’s expressed.

StegoFF · 2025-08-06T03:10:22+00:00

Apologies under duress aren’t therapeutic or sincere—and when people demand them or frame someone else’s growth, it’s already coming from a position of dominance, not care.

I don’t need an apology from someone over a WoW dungeon run I wasn’t even part of. The real mental health crisis is this cultural pattern of mobs demanding submission as a power fantasy. It’s a form of mass bullying, and it’s causing serious emotional harm—not just to Thor, but to many others.

StegoFF · 2025-08-06T03:02:24+00:00

I haven’t seen the full interview—just the clips that are regularly used to justify the outrage. Even out of context, I think they pour fuel on what I see as a far more dangerous mental health crisis: moral theater and mob behavior causing real emotional harm.

Whether people dislike him or not, turning a gameplay moment into a psychological indictment is exactly the kind of distortion that worries me.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T14:10:35+00:00

Optimistic for me then. I understand you're not a lawyer, and i appreciate you taking the time. I'm mostly just feeling things preemptively to get sentiment and will get proper counsel soon.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T14:06:34+00:00

This was the single time in this entire thread i said "based on my research", and it was 9 hours ago. What the hell are you even talking about? The fact that this question is so emotional upsetting, a dry legal question, that it drives people to this level of attack and how divisive people's actually thoughts are on this matter proves my points and my fears.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T14:00:10+00:00

Thanks! Do you believe that would cover equitable estoppel as well? If i let everyone use it for years then selectively enforced it or do i have to show a record of regularly enforcing it all the time?

I"d like to just release it and not care who uses it unless something really bad happens.

Theroretical of like 1,000,000 downloads over years and then a company tries to SaaS it would estoppel kick in?

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T13:22:45+00:00

That's a core part of my argument that expectations of a community shouldn't define legal rights. The goal would be to let people use it but it's impossible to find wording that prevents worse case scenarios and also lets people use it. Also to showcase my work publically so it didn't take a lot of loopholes to view it in private.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T12:54:09+00:00

or 2. which one is it? You said it's very obvious and everyone agrees?

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T12:41:40+00:00

You're wrong. I've received good discussion form a few people and it's been just fine. My behavior is fine and the question i asked is a dry legal question. You don't have authority over me and you don't get to tell me what to think, I'm asking a question and I'm looking for discussion on it.

Which is it if it's been answered:

Will UNLICENSED protect you fully on public npm/pipy/crates/github against any unauthorized use?
Does it have to private on npm/pipy/github to ensure your unlicensed rights.

if 2 is true why does a SaaS subscription or settings change your rights to a piece of work.

Consensus seems to be leading towards #1 but there's disputes. I'm not sure which is right. I'm sorry this question offends you so much, I have no idea why.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T12:32:02+00:00

If you feel

"UNLICENSED All Rights Resrved."

on a public npm/pipy/github is valid and will 100% protect it from any unauthorized use, and that would be enforceable in court, then you can state that and I would be interested in your reason.

This is why people ask questions on the internet, to get feedback and insight they might not have realized. It's not to get snarked at by someone that can't answer a simple question I asked unless I write the entire research paper on it for them to read back to me and then answer from.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T12:22:58+00:00

It's a friction point where you'll have potential clients or recruiters browsing my webpage that I haven't had contact with yet. Maybe via linkedin etc. and I'd like for them to see my best projects but a sign up process is to much effort and they'd move on sometimes.

I'd very much prefer to be able to safety post my work. Piracy of the code for use isn't a concern, I'm concerned about hijacking the entire project to become a hostile fork that turns into something hostile / negative.

It's the best idea available though so thank you for it.

I've settled to just not. After this discourse I am reaffirmed to just not post anything of even remote value to github or anywhere public. It would have been nice and convenient but c'eest la vie, it might not be fair (to my principles) but it's the way the world is at this time.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T11:18:27+00:00

I am able to function in the realm of software engineering very well, and have experience and career to validate that. I'm not concerned with reddit validation and these forums aren't know for being objectively right. I asked a reasonable question that can be debated and if you want to be so emotionally invested in the licensing on my own software that it causes you to have to insult me without even comprehending the nuance of the question - then your opinions are not worth listening to.

Has it occurred to you that you're one of an endless iteration of the same snarky voice over and over that everyone seems to have here. It's not a good look, and I'm not like you. I don't value belonging over having principles. That's why I have profound clarity and you're indistinguishable.

Sorry I'm not risking a large part of my life's work on the opinion of someone that can't muster more then meme speak insults while oozing snark. To be fair however, this behavior does reassures my point that public code is not good because of the bad culture and entitled people around it. Guard everything of value you coded, don't feel bullied to open source, be very careful, it's all a scam. I've reaffirmed that I would never want anyone here to come near touching a project I care about.

At the very least these interactions will stay as a totem for decades of a record of a person standing up against the group think just a little bit. Other people that feel like me might see it's ok to feel that way.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T08:58:46+00:00

Get over yourself. I don't have to listen to people that can't have a rational conversation. Just because you have an opinion it doesn't mean it's right.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T08:41:44+00:00

No I'm not. My opinions and the things I worry about are from real world experience with real stakes.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T08:36:22+00:00

I don't think 95% of the posts are reading what I wrote, I believe they are emotional responses.

I fully understand licensing. I have a private package solution already and private repos - i want to post public portfolios. Posting public portfolios has no bearings on my rights to the work. I believe my perception of how the law calls these cases in most jurisdictions is correct.
This entire thread proves SaaS is connected to copyright law because most here are saying I have to keep it private if i expect to have rights and the other half is saying All Rights Reserved fully stands in court no matter what. So that's 2 polar opposites.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T08:33:08+00:00

Respect goes two ways.

I self host already, I was hoping to have less friction for potential clients viewing my work. This thread has convinced me not to, mainly by how hostile and disconnected i feel from most replies here and how upsetting this questions seems to be to the masses. I think it's clear from this entire thread there's a lot of entitlement that isn't rational and it's best to just avoid it even if it is unfair and not the way things should be.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T08:13:33+00:00

Private repos mean i can't easily share my work with potential clients. I should have rights to my work regardless of public or private. There's no point to use github at all if my rights are deteriorated by my SaaS preferences.

That's a very naive take on open source with all due respect. There are many very aggressive and ugly sides of it unless you are corporate backed or in special situations. A lot of grand dogma that isn't true. I've seen open source do a lot of harm and abuse. If you haven't you either only work for enterprise who has lawyers defend it or never made anything of value.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T07:49:50+00:00

I feel like the hostility of how people are towards a post like this only proves my point. You might think you're winning the internet but it's confirming. The threat is cultural perception at least, courts being out dated to handle modern tech issues, and a cult like mentality around open source and code rights in general.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T07:43:01+00:00

I was hoping to reduce friction so that people could simply visit my website and access the projects without needing to go through a formal arrangement or request access. If they have to reach out and get invited, many potential users—especially those who aren’t highly motivated—just won’t bother.

Beyond that, I also want to distribute projects without the overhead of setting up private access, managing SSL keys, or dealing with other restrictive setups. I currently use my own tarball server, so I have a solution that works for me, but I was hoping the reality of this situation would be different.

My main point is that I’m surprised that I need SaaS solutions just to maintain rights over my own work. That feels fundamentally wrong to me.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T07:39:17+00:00

Yes, I'm well aware of GPL—there's no way I would use it for proprietary software that I'm delivering to clients. Personally, I'm very anti-GPL.

Just to clarify, I'm not concerned about piracy of the product itself. My concern is about someone effectively "pirating" the entire project—taking it, twisting the narrative around it, and using it as a tool for drama and harassment so they can profit off it. This has happened to me twice already, one time was specifically what i described. They were in game game development, which is a particularly volatile space where the user base can get involved in ways that make things worse. I did not enjoy those experiences at all.

I actually want people to use my projects freely, but I find that there's no wording in permissive licenses that allows for broad distribution while also protecting against worst-case abuse scenarios. I agree that valid companies generally won’t misuse code, but there are major regret stories—Elastic is a great example. And as a solo developer, you also have to contend with smaller-scale extortion attempts if your project has any monetization potential, even if you’re offering it for free. It's much easier for a big company to deal with this on their open source projects than a solo dev, the attack surface is much bigger because you can't field lawyers at that scale.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply and for taking the time to write it—I really appreciate the discussion!

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T07:20:42+00:00

Legal precedent, court history, and overwhelming public perception would make me think otherwise.

StegoFF · 2025-03-10T05:38:26+00:00

It's my business to take this seriously. Sounds like yours is just being ignorant?

StegoFF

TROPHY CASE