this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Ok, then call it "plagiarising".
That is definitionally not plagiarising. It follows IP law, which is the opposite of plagiarism.
There's more than a legal definition of plagiarism.
Plagiarism is when you sell the work of others as your own without attribution. There are bucketloads of examples of legal plagiarism.
I'm pretty sure that everything H. Bomberguy discussed in his plagiarism video was legal, for example.
No, actually, plagiarism is a legalistic term. If IP law did not exist, neither would plagiarism.
And if you give someone permission to use your IP, and they go ahead and use that permission, it is not plagiarism neither legally nor by any colloquial understanding of the term. That is what happens when someone uses BSD or MIT code in their proprietary software. It is explicitly allowed, by design, by intention.
BSD/MIT also don't allow you to not attribute the author of the BSD/MIT code, so that doesn't even make sense. You are perhaps thinking of code released public domain, in which case, again, the author specifically chose that over BSD/MIT, and the main practical difference is not needing to give attribution, so that must be what the original author wanted.
I think your legalistic view of the world is quite limiting.
It's not illegal to rephrase what someone wrote in a book and pass it off as your own work. You can't "own" a cultural analysis. It's still plagiarism.
I don't have a legalistic view of the world; I am saying plagiarism is a legalistic concept. For context, I support the abolition of law and of intellectual property. Plagiarism is a particular kind of violation of intellectual property law, and without IP, it makes no sense. You still fail to define a plagiarism outside of the law, and you also fail to define a plagiarism that does not violate MIT/BSD. MIT/BSD both require attribution. You cannot claim MIT/BSD code written by someone else as your own without breaking copyright law.
What are you talking about? I've given you several examples of plagiarism outside of a legal concept, which means that there are non-legalistic definitions.
Here's another one: copying someone's homework is plagiarism. It's not illegal, though.
I'd argue that most acts of plagiarism are actually legal, but can result in getting your title revoked. That's not because of an IP law violation, since you don't have ownership of an argument in an academic text.
Letting a ghostwriter write an academic paper is plagiarism, too, btw. How would that make sense in an IP law context, if the ghost writer not obtaining the IP is the whole point?
Ok, in that case your definition is inclusive of things which are not conventionally considered plagiarism. Ghostwriting is commonly looked down upon, but not considered plagiarism. A large part of a non-legalistic definition of plagiarism includes a lack of consent from the original creator; if you take a job as a ghostwriter, you agree to your writing being published under a different name. If I work as a developer for someone who wants to make their own app, say a YouTuber, and they publish the app I wrote as <YouTuber's> app, most people would consider that perfectly normal and not plagiaristic, since the developer was paid for a service in which it was understood their work would be published under a different person's name.
You are also avoiding the original question about BSD and MIT, and not explaining why that is plagiaristic. Do you still think they are plagiaristic? If so, how? Given that both the licensor explicitly wanted people to be able to re-use their code in proprietary software (i.e. consent/permission exists), and these licences require attribution (i.e. not only are you not taking credit for it, you are actively naming and crediting the original author).
Here's the wikipedia definition
So, I'm afraid that my definition is closer to consensus than yours.
If word gets out that you used a ghostwriter, you're gonna get in trouble for plagiarism. That's the thing they'll accuse you of.
While consent is a part of why plagiarism is shitty, it's not what makes something plagiarism. You can check it the other way around: if I'm legitimately quoting someone, do I need explicit consent, or is it implied (if it's published work)?
About the BSD stuff: yeah, it might not be illegal and consential, but both of these things aren't necessary for plagiarism.
If that's sincerely how you see plagiarism (ie allowing someone to use your work as part of their work without attribution) then all I can say is that I've never seen anyone else use the term plagiarism that way; and unless either of us knows of a survey quantifying how people use the term, that's as far as we'll get on that front.
Anyway, the conversation is still about BSD, and you keep avoiding the fact that BSD requires attribution. If you are using the Wikipedia definition then it does not satisfy
Do you or do you not think that BSD/MIT is plagiarism? You seem to be clearly dodging the question. If you don't think it's plagiarism then there's no major disagreement and we can end this conversation.