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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: 0.714s | source
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danielpkl ◴[04 Jul 25 05:06 UTC] No.44461271[source]▶
Hi everyone, this is Daniel from the Pickle team. Glass is a new open source project from us that we plan to build on and improve. We built several original features for it like live summaries, real-time STT Transcript and one-click "Ask" from summary that we're very excited about. However in initially building it we included code from a GPL-licensed project that we incorrectly attributed as Apache. This was incorrect and sloppy work on our end. We made a quick fix and are working right now to do a proper fix that addresses the issues fully and cleanly. We are sorry to the original author of the project, Soham (CheatingDaddy), and thank him for pointing this out. We are also sorry to the open source community for messing up here. Thanks everyone for caring about this.
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oefrha ◴[04 Jul 25 06:24 UTC] No.44461660[source]▶
Hiding the entire history of this incident[1] behind a force push[2] to make it seem as if credit was given and proper license was chosen from the start really displays a lack of integrity, and tells me it’s definitely malicious (which should be quite clear from zero mention of the original project to begin with, but this act reinforces that) rather an inadvertent screwup.

[1] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commits/5c462179acface88...

[2] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/4c51d5133c4987fa1...

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sakjur ◴[04 Jul 25 06:50 UTC] No.44461794[source]▶
I don’t think the rebase is malicious. Would they even be allowed to continue distributing the older commits (where they claim an Apache license) or would that be to perpetuate the license violation?
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1. michaelmrose ◴[04 Jul 25 07:26 UTC] No.44462023[source]▶
I think the assumption that the license.txt in a given revision is accurate an applicable is erroneous. One is expected to follow the license.txt in the main repo regardless of revision.
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2. jcelerier ◴[04 Jul 25 11:55 UTC] No.44463741[source]▶
Absolutely not, if a project relicensed and someone on earth did a git clone with a previous license that gave some specific rights, the previous commits keep their license (or if the license was incorrect you can go to court)
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3. michaelmrose ◴[05 Jul 25 20:14 UTC] No.44475203[source]▶
I don't think a court is going to understand git revisions. I also don't think a person reverting to timepoint 1 with license A changes the fact that they received it at time point 2 offered under license B.

At best the license.txt that accompanies a particular revision can serve as a sign post of what license applies it is not dispositive and if the sign post is wrong it was your bad for failing to understand what license applied before distributing.