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Comment by NeveHanter | Hacker News Reader

Well two things/questions:

1. Can we somehow get Mozilla/Firefox ban/de-list the extension from the extension store so Avast doesn't get the user-base this extension has/had?

2. We should be able to get the author to publish the source code of the latest version licensed under GPLv3, any way to do this, except asking on Twitter/LinkedIn?

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I think Firefox extensions are just archives. So with that license it should be allowed to simply download the extension, unpack it and throw it on Github.

Why should you be able to get source code of someone’s private work?

If it's GPLv3 licensed, then I should be able to request and get the access to the source code:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MustSourceBuildToM...

and

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt section 6, point d

That only applies to redistributors, not to the original author. The way the GPL works, is that the author absconds some of the copyright they hold by default, in exchange for people taking advantage of that committing to publishing even modified source code whenever they redistribute it.

Abscond means to hide or steal away. I think you mean abdicate? That would make more sense in this context. It's still not quite right though, the author of a GPL work fully retains the copyright of their work, and merely give a license to others.

Oh sorry yes, I'm not a native speaker, thanks. And yes, they commit to not exercising some of the rights they have been granted as part of the copyright they do indeed still hold.

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