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

And it has the same fake excuse as usual "Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’t realize at first."

He sure discovered this new open source thing and it's very confusing. It's not like it's almost 40 years old at that point. I'll never understand people who lie like toddlers.

I do not know what is wrong with software engineers. This is theft (or whatever the lawyers says in the IP law) and now stating: Ooops we did not know, our bad, we keep it till we have found a replacement. Mistakes happen also in real life, but libraries is a common thing, like cars standing on a street. You do not accidently steal a car.

Software Engineering is more than coding. Basic license management incl. library vetting is part of it. If you decide to ignore that, you do not run a business enterprise, you run a criminal enterprise.

> Basic license management incl. library vetting is part of it.

This depends on whether you consider Compliance to be part of software engineering or a separate discipline. At least in most companies the compliance department is different from the software development/IT department, because the necessary skills are very different and barely transfer.

I mean it's basic human ethics, but I guess we are in an era where taking everything is fair game.

Welcome to human nature. We are a species that pathologically wants what we do not have, and often neglects to practice the golden rule.