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Comment by mhdhejazi | Hacker News Reader

I published the app under the GPL-3 license, and with a clear statement that says "It's not allowed to publish, distribute the app, or use it in a commercial way". They neither respected the license nor the other conditions.

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The GPL3 license allows people to "publish, distribute the app, or use it in a commercial way" (provided that they comply with the other GPL3 conditions, of course). So, when you say it is under GPL3, then say people can't do something which GPL3 allows, you are contradicting yourself.

If you release something under self-contradictory licensing terms, and then people use it in a way you didn't expect – maybe the problem was with your self-contradictory licensing?

If I understand GPL3 correctly, they still have to make the modified source available and state the changes they made. The header on GH that parses the license also seems to agree with me: https://github.com/mhdhejazi/CoronaTracker/blob/master/LICEN...

I see your point here. Maybe I should have modified the license itself and stated that's it's a custom license. But they are still not complying with any of the GPL-3 conditions.

You can't quite do that. The LICENSE file you put on Git is GPL-3. It's not compatible with the restrictions you are asking for.

And it's not clear that the copy is used in a commercial way. If the app is free, maybe they follow your full conditions?

You can charge money for a GPLv3 app. But you have to provide source code and the tools to build and run your own version of the app to anyone who buys it.

Somebody else said it already. Your "no commercial use" comment is silly and void by making it GPLv3. You cannot have it both ways. You have your point about tivoisation or appstore incompatibility, remove that silly comment from the readme.

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