Posted: August 11th, 2022

Copyright and Intellectual Property / Github

Case Study 1: GitHub Takes Aim at Open Source Software Vulnerabilities (Links to an external site.) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RDSc8ROyiJxk1VC61NYCAqrfHLhivnCx/view

Caste Study 2: GitHub: New copyright rules could strangle software development (Links to an external site.)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-new-copyright-rules-could-strangle-software-development/

Based on using the cases shared above, answer the following questions.

Q1. Assignment help – Discuss how open-source projects on GitHub benefit from not being proprietary and the nature of peer production that is conducted amongst the community using the platform.

Q2. Propose and discuss a criticism of open-source projects on GitHub.

Q3. Assignment help – Discuss how ideas of copyright and fair use might apply to or impact GitHub’s content.

Q4. Assignment help – Discuss stakeholders in open-source projects on GitHub and provide a rights-based and a utilitarian analysis of its ethical legitimacy.

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Copyright and Intellectual Property / Github
Question 1.
The open-source projects on GitHub tend to acquire a lot of benefits compared to proprietary projects. GitHub enables any person to access the open-source projects, which creates the opportunity for increasing its security since the more people vet it, the most likely bugs and flaws can be spotted and corrected. GitHub also has provided Advanced Security suite tools that can be utilized to benefit the open-source projects in determining and rooting out vulnerabilities (Newman, 2020). Open-source projects also benefit from the nature of peer production conducted amongst the community using the GitHub platform in various ways. For instance, the GitHub community utilizes scanning tools such as Semmle to automatically catch common security flaws in open-source projects. Other benefits provided by Advanced Security availed by GitHub to the open-source projects are strengthening the codes that area vulnerable by identifying why and how they might be exploitable.
Question 2.
Opens-source projects on GitHub are generally ad hoc due to lack of expertise to look at the projects to ensure they attain the entire standard required. Making the open-source projects accessible to many people for vetting and reviewing GitHub does not mean that those vetting or reviewing the project have enough expertise in the projects. Lack of vetting of the experts themselves creates a big doubt on what they considered to be reviewed or corrected on the projects. Proprietary code, which can only be accessed directly by its developers, ensures that the expertise used for vetting it is highly recommended and verified, which makes their analysis significant enough than in open-source projects (Newman, 2020). Another critic of the open-source projects on GitHub is that there are no clear processes of submitting vulnerabilities, and the resources are not available for someone who identifies the vulnerabilities to use for patching them. Being open means that it is difficult to know who is using the open-source code and who might have identified vulnerabilities and requires a patch making the process of development in the open-source projects slow and might be easily utilized by attackers.
Question 3.
The ideas of copyright and fair use, though aimed at media content shared online by service providers such as videos and music, might significantly impact the open-source projects on GitHub. According to the plan that stops copyright infringements online, there are concerns that the plan might extend through its rules, which are considered wide to hit software development (Ranger, 2018). Implementation of the European Commission’s copyright directives will mean that the codes developed for open-source projects must be filtered. In this case, filtering the code of software that is developed by many developers using different layers, and probably different components might see the code altered or affected as various components might be considered copyrighted by the scanning tools. Therefore, copyright and fair use ideas might undermine the efforts and gains related to free and open-source software building.
Question 4.
Stakeholders in open-source projects on GitHub believe in sharing of information towards the creation of more secured software. When considering their approach based on ethical legitimacy, two ethical perspectives can be considered. First, the stakeholders’ approach is based on the rights-based ethical concept based on corrective duties on the parts of others. According to stakeholders, these duties include the right to sharing of information in written medium and express ideas. When considering the utilitarian ethical concept, the stakeholders consider producing the greatest goods for the greatest number by expressing and sharing ideas and information regarding software development freely.
References
Newman, L. (2020). GitHub Takes Aim at Open Source SoftwareVulnerabilities. WIRED. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RDSc8ROyiJxk1VC61NYCAqrfHLhivnCx/view
Ranger, S. (2018). GitHub: New copyright rules could strangle software development. ZD Net. Retrieved from https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-new-copyright-rules-could-strangle-software-development/

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Tags: Copyright and Intellectual Property / Github