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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

I think you bring up good points. I think the only difference between Open Source and Proprietary software is that one you're allowed to plagiarize, and the other you're not. In the end, Open Source wins as it automatically gets way more exposure and users, as anyone can access, copy, modify and freely share it forever.

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Many Open Source licenses require attribution. Here is a summary of some of the popular ones attribution requirements: https://www.nexb.com/blog/oss_attribution_obligations.html

As you can see here, plagiarism is not inherent to Open Source, and often times it is barred by the many of the most popular licenses.

I am sorry, what?

Open source software license does not generally allow such thing.

The GPL variants, for example, require you to allow others to plagiarize your work.

No. As far as I know, it doesn't.

The GPLv3 specifically requires copyright notices to be kept in tact on verbatim copies. Other popular Open Source licenses have more stringent attribution requirements. Plagiarism is definitely not inherent to Open Source, though it may be inherent in some licenses.

I know we won't be able to get an answer to this question unless it actually goes to court (and I haven't seen anything about this any court), but couldn't you take any MIT licensed project, replace the license with your own and it'd be legal? My understanding is the license means you're allowed to freely modify anything related to the project (unless someone has a trademark/copyright of course)

The MIT license actually has one requirement:

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Attribution (In the form of this requirement) is the one thing the MIT license actually requires.

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