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My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

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931 points sohzm | 8 comments | 04 Jul 25 02:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source | bottom
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fargle ◴[04 Jul 25 03:09 UTC] No.44460848[source]▶
looks like they fixed it: https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889...

let's not freak out - you can't "steal" open-source code, they used an incompatible license. that was accidentally too free.

people monetizing something you open-source isn't stealing.

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1. tareqak ◴[04 Jul 25 03:19 UTC] No.44460896[source]▶
From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum (based on what I remember from past discussions of this sort of activity involving different participants).

If someone else has a better idea of what “forking GPL 3 source code and using a different licence” would be, then please let me and others know.

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2. jrflowers ◴[04 Jul 25 03:42 UTC] No.44460974[source]▶
Realistically this will probably just have a reputational cost for Daniel Park/Pickle. Whether he intended to or not, some amount of people will associate “pretends to make things that he did not make” with him because of this entirely unforced error.
3. Arainach ◴[04 Jul 25 06:04 UTC] No.44461565[source]▶
>From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum

Isn't that the minimum bar for a "business model" capable of attracting VC interest these days?

4. rwmj ◴[04 Jul 25 06:20 UTC] No.44461642[source]▶
If you don't follow the license, then you don't have a license to use, distribute or modify the code. So then you get into copyright violation territory, up to $150,000 per infringement in the US if it's intentional.
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5. anilakar ◴[04 Jul 25 06:27 UTC] No.44461672[source]▶
Sadly in my experience various courts have taken a stance that violating GPL does not cause monetary damages, because the software in question is free.
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6. rwmj ◴[04 Jul 25 06:37 UTC] No.44461724{3}[source]▶
Can you cite some actual cases?
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7. seanhunter ◴[04 Jul 25 07:05 UTC] No.44461866{4}[source]▶
I somewhat doubt they can since in the US the BusyBox lawsuits pretty much all ended with the infringers settling and paying out, and those that didn’t settle, busybox won[1]. I would think that, and the original artistic license lawsuits (which were decided on by the US court of appeals) established that infringing open source softwaree licenses is a copyright infringement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

8. perihelions ◴[04 Jul 25 07:35 UTC] No.44462085[source]▶
You can read the text of the GPLv3 license itself; it has a specific provision for this case.

> "Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice."

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html