Ask HN: Someone removing your MIT LICENSE in their fork? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Someone removing your MIT LICENSE in their fork?

18 pointsNickBusey14 comments

Leaving for posterity. What would you do?

https://github.com/VivumLab/VivumLab/issues/526

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they seem to have your license there https://github.com/VivumLab/VivumLab/blob/dev/LICENSING/Home... ?

Their license is also seems like GPL, which is compatible with MIT afaik.

Yeah, looks OK.

But which license applies to which files?

Yea seems strange. They have copywritten my copywritten files?

IANAL, but check out this law.stackexchange thread. It pertains to the BSD license, but it's very similar

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/4149/can-one-take-bs...

And the 2nd answer seems to say that no, you can't just recopyright something. https://law.stackexchange.com/a/4150

Some answers seem to disagree. I, as a non-lawyer, think as long as the git commits make it clear who authored what, it's a non-issue.

See the Software Freedom Law Center's guide:

https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/gpl-non-gpl-colla...

There are multiple examples of how to recopyright MIT-style source under the GPL.

The whole "conditions" part of the MIT license is this:

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

No requirements for you to keep the licensing constant for unmodified files.

If you fork ViviumLab, you're subject to GPL (plus the sublicenses?, but GPL covers that anyway if you don't remove the licenses from your source code); if you fork HomeLab, you're subject to MIT. They don't need to change anything for you to be subject to GPL.

Yeah - the Github issue seems to take issue with the naming of the file, but the MIT license makes no such requirement. I don't think any license requires the file name, it's just a suggestion.

yeah than it would not be possible to include 2 MIT etc licensed code in a project.

Wait a reasonable delay, like one month.

If they don’t comply, it’s time for a DMCA request to GitHub.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...

If they aren't following the license you released your work under, then they're infringing your copyright, and you could send a DMCA to GitHub to get their repository taken down.

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