alt Hacker NewsA similar thing is happening to me. I worked on something for 3 years which I give away for free to help people and a thief took my software, ran it through ai to rebrand everything and relaunched as their own app. Unfortunately the ai missed a few Easter eggs I had hidden so the theft is undeniable. Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. They refuse to look at or arbitrate. So now I'm on to fighting this in court on principal which is going to be expensive.
Theft is only going to become worse. It's already so easy and it's going to become even easier. We aren't prepared for what's ahead.
Replies
If you released it under a free software license, then all they seem to have not done properly is putting an attribution text in their software. But you did not specify what license you used which already makes me doubt if you have the correct mental model around free software and it's ethos. Who makes money on what is not the main concern in free software ideology. It's a side question. It's the four freedoms that are the main points. Then there is the question of copyleft but you didn't specify your license so I won't elaborate on that. But even that doesn't block a rebranded release for sale.
> Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order.
They deserve to also be sued too for the infringement. I don't think safe-harbor applies if they don't act on a valid notice.
Crazy shit. You should absolutely write about it, though. Stories like these need publicity to actually have people realize all type of IP will get affected.
Name and shame. I'd be furious if I were one of the thief's tricked customers.
[dead]
You can't steal something which is free. This is what you should expect if you give away stuff for free to anybody who happens on it. To me it seems that FOSS people take perverse pleasure in these kind of things.
It's easy to prepare for what is ahead: Get yourself out of the filthy FOSS swamp and start charging a fair price for your work from real customers. That is something everybody benefits from and it is also dignified for everybody involved.
> Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order.
This is especially egregious in Google's case given how trigger happy they are with pulling YouTube videos with a simple claim that something is infringing. I guess unless you can lobby them at the level of the music industry, their default policy is to do nothing.