And on Free Balloon Day too, the absolute monsters.
How many times are people going to join the software hippie commune that believes as its fundamental principle that software shouldn't be bound by IP restrictions, and who wrote a bunch of licenses to realize that belief within a strong-ip system, then get confused when they can't enforce IP restrictions.
OpenTofu, Valkey, OpenSearch, NextCloud, OpenSSH, VeraCrypt, OpenBao, OPNsense are all apparently stolen software.
All the people saying "actually there is no moral argument because this was completely legal under the license" are driving me crazy. The whole point is that something like this can be legally defensible but still be a dick move.
Not saying this is or isn't. But "legality and morality are the same thing" is a pretty scary mindset to have.
What is a dick move is releasing an open source project and then getting mad at people cloning it and then go on a PR blitz to try to destroy said fork. You are basically saying "please take my $100" and then 1 week later accuse them of stealing.
When you make your project open source you are basically inviting people to clone and modify them. If you actually read the terms of MIT and GPL licenses you will realize that they aren't just legal documents but also a social contract telling people it is ok to do so. Otherwise why the F would you make it open source to begin with…?
This matters on a concrete level too. Contributors are much more likely to contribute to open source, so you immediately gain clout and contributors by doing so. So to use such a license and then renegade on the implicit promise is a dick move on the OpenFront's creator's part. Also, note how he keeps referring this to be his game and how it's his copyright? No it isn't. Legally the copyright belongs to each contributor for every bit of code each contributor wrote.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 23.3 ms ] threadHow many times are people going to join the software hippie commune that believes as its fundamental principle that software shouldn't be bound by IP restrictions, and who wrote a bunch of licenses to realize that belief within a strong-ip system, then get confused when they can't enforce IP restrictions.
OpenTofu, Valkey, OpenSearch, NextCloud, OpenSSH, VeraCrypt, OpenBao, OPNsense are all apparently stolen software.
Not saying this is or isn't. But "legality and morality are the same thing" is a pretty scary mindset to have.
When you make your project open source you are basically inviting people to clone and modify them. If you actually read the terms of MIT and GPL licenses you will realize that they aren't just legal documents but also a social contract telling people it is ok to do so. Otherwise why the F would you make it open source to begin with…?
This matters on a concrete level too. Contributors are much more likely to contribute to open source, so you immediately gain clout and contributors by doing so. So to use such a license and then renegade on the implicit promise is a dick move on the OpenFront's creator's part. Also, note how he keeps referring this to be his game and how it's his copyright? No it isn't. Legally the copyright belongs to each contributor for every bit of code each contributor wrote.