Ask HN: Parrot language copycat my Gravity source code. What can I do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Parrot language copycat my Gravity source code. What can I do?

6 pointsmarcobambini13 comments

I found out that the Parrot programming language (https://github.com/parrot-language/parrot) did copycat line by line my Gravity programming language (https://github.com/marcobambini/gravity).

I know that I used a very permissive license and that the project can be forked and modified by anyone but this is a theft more than a fork.

What can I do in this situation?

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to be fair, he started the language days ago and by the time, he already made some "big" improvments to the original programming language. I have seen he have added/cahanged the MIT License with copyright notice. Since he has already added a notice, what I suggest is to just see how he is going and maybe give him some help.

Don't jump the gun and open up a conversation on how this happened first.

After that mention that the attribution as required by the MIT License is missing

It's not theft. The MIT license, which your project is released under, allows exactly what they did.

The MIT license does require attribution, but doesn't dictate where that attribution appears. Have you checked their repo for attribution?

(Edit: It's humorous that the other project is named Parrot, since Parrots are known for copying sounds, and in fact the verb "parrot" means "to imitate.")

I can't see any attribution, first checkin message is " created a basic language!" with 409 new files in the repository. The author also changed the license to GPL which I think a MIT license doesn't allow.

If there's no attribution, the only thing you can do is ask them nicely for it. (Unless you have money to litigate the license violation. But since the chance of you proving damages is non-existent, the best outcome you could hope for is the other project adding an attribution.)

The author also changed the license to GPL which I think a MIT license doesn't allow.

The MIT license allows that. In fact, the MIT license lets the code be used in entirely closed-source, commercial products that sell for millions of dollars. All that's required of users of the code is the attribution.

The license is short and readable. https://github.com/marcobambini/gravity/blob/master/LICENSE

(I'm not the affected author)

You're right, the github license page contains the explanation "Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms" so changing the license is possible. So what remains is attribution. The Parrot author could add a single sentence "based on X" somewhere. One could question the ethical aspects but it would probably fulfill the attribution requirement.

The Parrot author could add a single sentence "based on X" somewhere.

Not quite sufficient, but close. From the license:

"...subject to the following conditions:

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

One could question the ethical aspects

Something like taking an MIT-based project and just rebranding it - or basically just rebranding it - sure. It does put a bad taste in one's mouth. And that does seem to be what the other project did. (...So far. Maybe they intend to go a different way with the language, and we just happen to see it at this primordial state because it's being developed in public. Who knows.)

Looks like they have been implementing several long time open issues on OP's project. This is one of the reasons OSS is great.

They had named it density before renaming it parrot

> I know that I used a very permissive license and that the project can be forked and modified by anyone but this is a theft more than a fork.

You used probably the most permissive license available (MIT). However, it does look like Parrot is not attributing Gravity anywhere in their repo (which is the only requirement of MIT).

If I was in your situation, I'd open a pull request with an attribution in the README.

Congratulations! This is the highest compliment that could be paid to you and your project, I'm quite jealous. In all likelihood, this Parrot language will go nowhere. That's not saying anything about Parrot, but a fact of life for most languages out there (including Gravity tbf, sorry). My suggestion is to not pay this a second thought and just keep working on your language. Every second you spend on this non-issue is a second you're not spending making Gravity language better.

Send them an email saying that you support them using your code and you’re glad they were inspired by your project, but please make sure to include attribution as specified by the MIT license.

MIT license... You can't do anything except ask for attribution.

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