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

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931 points sohzm | 3 comments | 04 Jul 25 02:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.626s | source
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tombert ◴[04 Jul 25 03:25 UTC] No.44460923[source]▶
Things like this are why I have become disillusioned with Open Source, and why latest projects have been closed source. The GPL is a good enough idea but it is basically impossible for anyone to realistically enforce. If a corporation is selling an optimized binary, then it can be almost impossible to prove that there was any violation of the GPL without viewing the source.
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1. qwertyuiop12 ◴[04 Jul 25 04:44 UTC] No.44461183[source]▶
In general, I try to add a fingerprint into the output.

For example, in a project which generates images I usually set a specific set of pixels.

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2. tombert ◴[04 Jul 25 04:46 UTC] No.44461195[source]▶
Sure, but if they have access to your code then a company could pay a junior engineer to look for any kinds of explicit fingerprints and remove it.
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3. ValentineC ◴[04 Jul 25 06:02 UTC] No.44461556[source]▶
Some companies that steal open source code are likely to cheap out on even this.