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

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931 points sohzm | 4 comments | 04 Jul 25 02:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.981s | source
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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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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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1. 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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2. 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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3. rwmj ◴[04 Jul 25 06:37 UTC] No.44461724[source]▶
Can you cite some actual cases?
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4. seanhunter ◴[04 Jul 25 07:05 UTC] No.44461866{3}[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