Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker', breaking thousands of apps

Re:Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker', breaking thou... by Liquid_Fire on Monday January 10, 2022 @07:59AM (#29874094)

Those sound like two distinct things to me:

- Copying an interface for the purpose of providing a compatible implementation (what Google allegedly did - although of course part of the debate is whether they also copied any of the implementation)

- Copying parts of the implementation, not for the purpose of compatibility (what faker.js did - in this case, copying constants)

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Re:Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker', breaking thou... by hnfong on Monday January 10, 2022 @01:12PM (#29878951)

IIRC US copyright law gives very little protection to compilation of non-copyrightable data (look up copyright status of telephone directories). The argument is that it's just public domain factual information bundled together.

The faker libraries are all that -- compilations of mostly non-copyrightable facts.

I'm not saying faker.js did no wrong, just saying if hypothetically a purported copyright owner sued him, they would have a really hard time proving substantial infringement happened given the available precedents.

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