Comment by gopiandcode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gopiandcode | Hacker News Reader

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I think it's likely indicative of the fact that the JS ecosystem doesn't really understand the meaning of open source (or the distinction between "open source" and free/libre software).

The author's comments are quite enlightening of their incomplete understanding of the licenses they use:

> nanocolors implementation and API are the same as

> Colorette. You essentially pirated my work.

After using a license that explicitly allows others to take their work, it's suprising the author thinks that someone "pirated" their work.

Hopefully this signals the start of an awakening within the JS ecosystem, with more and more developers switching to licenses like the GPL that actually respect the developers.

> After using a license that explicitly allows others to take their work, it's suprising the author thinks that someone "pirated" their work.

He stripped the license when he created his fork. (Only adding it after the thread on Twitter became actively noticed).

How is that _not_ pirating?

For libraries it is very difficult to chose a permissive license. Most companies have a whitelist for licenses for libraries they are allowed to use. And for a good reason. This is mostly MIT, BSD and Apache.

If you use a gpl licensed library in your project, it essentially becomes gpl licensed too. If you ever want to sell your software, this is probably a big no-no. It will become quite challenging, and could end up in a legal desaster.

So to create a successful library, other people are willing to use, you essentially have to release it without restrictions.

What about LGPL which is quite explicitly designed for libraries?

This could work, but it's just annoying. You'd have to modify your build process to serve this library separately instead of including it in your main bundle and then doing some code splitting.

the work being pirated is not the code but its place in the library marketplace, the license played a minimal role here (as it was infringed anyway)

What exactly would be different here if the project was under GPL?

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