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Not true

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66 pointschoult31 comments

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The line of defense here is really strange, in order the author runs a whole gamut

1. No this code is original, it's not copied

2. Yes it's copied but it's MIT so it's okay

3. No actually they copied me and being MIT means you can't sue me

4. You are a "junior" developer and actually you're jealous of my achievements which is why you made this issue

5. "Loser"

6. Author locks the PR

7. Author renames the PR to hide it

8. Author archives the whole project, but takes some time first to write his rebuttal in the PR where no one can reply

Really bizarre response

No rationality here, he knows he "got caught" and from there his clearly out-sized ego took the wheel.

This reaction looks like he's more guilty in this situation and his infant-like behaviour is shown here.

While it's MIT and allows him to modify, improve, etc he didn't read this last sentence in the archriss/react-native-image-gallery library:

  ...provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

No credit was given despite having a 98% derived copy of the source.

After (3), the 'argument' descends into personal attacks. He definitely knows he's in the wrong and is smoke-screening the discussion by locking, archiving and hiding the PR, like a 'professional lead senior developer'.

A very similar thing happened to me a few months ago. A couple of years ago I had written a certain small piece of web software (about 1.2k lines long) and put it on GitHub. On Wikipedia, I saw that there was some software which did the same thing, which I'd never heard of before. Interested to see how it was implemented, I browsed the files in their GitHub repo and saw my exact code in there, with a few tweaks and improvements made by someone else. I didn't appear to be credited.

This was all complicated by the fact I released the code initially under a public domain license. However, I forgot that I used a small snippet of some GPL code, and re-licensed to GPL a few days later. Unfortunately, I hadn't made any concrete change to the code after relicensing, so I couldn't tell if the public domain version or the GPL version of my code was 'stolen' (for lack of a better word).

When I alerted the project owner about this matter on their Discord server, with all the good will I could manage (the only way I could find to contact them), a sizable project of ~20 people, my message was deleted and I was banned. In the end, they added credit to me for the code (and my code was their entire project, plus some bugfixes), but I don't think they relicensed to GPLv3. I doubt the author of the GPL'd snippet would bother to pursue it.

In all fairness, if they derived from the public domain version then they have no reason to relicense to GPLv3. The rest of it is at best impolite, though.

The point was that I mistakenly used a snippet of GPLv3 licensed code (which was explicitly licensed in the snippet), and then mistakenly licensed the whole thing as public domain. I think it may have been illegal for me to say that it's public domain if I used that snippet. That's why I quickly relicensed. However, git commit history is forever, and one git commit contains the GPL snippet + my public domain declaration.

Ah, I misunderstood; yeah, a combination of PD+GPLv3 would have to be GPLv3

I get the feeling that the owner didn't quite understand the request and promptly freaked out.

Luckily I handled it better (I think) when it happened to me in 2015. I forked a MIT licensed project and improved it because it was a mess but useful. Turned out that project was copied from another project that was LGPLv3 licensed but all license/copyright info was removed.

He was a bit aggressive about it, what I understand if someone steals your code without mentioning you.

The violation notice: https://github.com/picqer/php-barcode-generator/issues/3

That is the reason why I let issues that sound bad, uncommented for at least one day. When you read it later again, you have a completely different mind about it, often a better one.

Our "industry" is in a perpetual state of juvenile teenage behavior and right now the frontend-dev sector takes the cake.

I think it's unfair to say that based on this one maintainer; these things make "the news" because they are abnormal, or at least unexpected. I think the perception therefore is "florida man" syndrome, where better reporting confounds straight comparisons.

Well, he handled that well :-)

Seriously. The repeated juvenile comments attacking the person who asked for attribution left a sour taste in my mouth.

He's also teaching a course on Ethical Hacking which just makes this even more bizarre.

Maybe that's a typo and it's actually Ethics Hacking? :)

In the comments:

"MIT doesn't explicitly require any sort of attribution."

I haven't verified that, but if that is right, the forker isn't wrong.

In that situation it is both childish and annoying to insist on attribution.

Of course, you legally aren't obligated to attribute. There may even be valid ethical reasons for not wanting to attribute.

It's not a good reflection of character to make immature jabs and denigrate the person asking as a 'junior developer', as if that's a personality flaw.

All you need to say is: Thanks for bringing this up, but I am not obligated nor feel that I should attribute. Thank you.

MIT contains:

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

That sounds like requiring attribution?

EDIT: But yeah, only attribution in the actual code (and maybe binaries? IANAL...); I wouldn't read that as requiring attribution in the readme.

Especially for someone who titles themselves as a "Chief Marketing Officer".

I'd be more concerned that someone working in software uses "junior developer" as an insult.

Oh my. He has fitting quotes on his web page:

"How you handle criticism will define you."

"If you have character, that statement will change your life. If you have no character, you'll remain an average complaining hater like most other people."

"A man's character is not judge by how he celebrates a victory, but by what he does when his back is against the wall." - John Cena

Careful on that site, seems to be making calls to PayPal and Stripe.

Interestingly. Neither https://github.com/archriss/react-native-image-gallery nor https://github.com/ldn0x7dc/react-native-gallery , which it attributes as the original, have a license anywhere that I can find. So isn't the default to assume all rights reserved? https://docs.github.com/en/github/creating-cloning-and-archi...

I’ve thought about this quite a bit lately, and if you want attribution in copies of your code, make it part of your license.

This guy mucked up the communication, but in the end all he really had to say was “no”, and nobody has a right (moral or legal) to say otherwise, because the original writers had the opportunity to require attribution and explicitly chose not to.

It just seems barbaric and insensitive that people can be okay with not attributing someone because they forgot a line to say or do so. At least ask unless the person has something that explicitly says, feel free to copy my work as your own!

This is the essence of ethics right?

This whole thing is utterly mental. I think that given that for many FOSS development is just a non-paid hobby, a bit of self promotion can be tolerated, but straight copying without not even a single mention of the original creator is immoral, permissive licence or not.

That was hard to read.

Would be interested in knowing why this was flagged.

Is this real?

Certainly seems so, unfortunately.

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