https://github.com/contact/dmca
Thanks for the URL!
Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#12I found the supposed plagiarism and I'm not seeing it. From what I can see, it's all original code and while what you made is thoroughly useful and certainly took a lot of work, it's not exactly uncommon. You've created a very comprehensive, plugin-ready, Mac-specific bash config. Yours handles numerous cases, this person wrote their own handling a smaller set of cases that works better for them. Traceur[0] was one o…
Thanks for your comment. My concern is that all the changes introduced by the other project could have been done through pull requests. Also, the other project wouldn't exist if my project wasn't there. One thing is being inspired, another one is creating a separate project that is dividing the community effort in two, instead of focusing in one project.
They could have but would removing those 3rd party libraries be in the best interest of your project? It appears that the other developer merely wanted a trimmed down version of what you have.
As for possibly dividing the community: first, there's always competition. This is especially true in software where anyone with a keyboard and know-how can create a competitor. Second, if you're really concerned about community division, consider what happened with Node.js[0] and io.js[1]. Initially, io.js provided a slimmer and more frequently updated version of the same framework. Then they got together to discuss how they were dividing the community and decided to bring their projects together. Perhaps you should discuss such a merge with the author of the other project.
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#13You published this under an open source license that allows anyone to fork and modify it as they see fit, as long as they include the license with their fork[0]. If they did so, then all you can (and should) do is stop complaining about other people doing what you gave them explicit permission to do. The entire point of open source is that the code you write doesn't belong to you, it belongs equally to anyone who wan…
Thanks for your comment. Taking that license into account, should be there a reference to my project on the other project?
I'm not a lawyer, but it does look like they need to include the original copyright notice with your credit.
Of course, if they do, then there's not much you can do.
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#14Two answers: 1) You could potentially use a DMCA claim to take down the repo, if there has been a license violation. But: 2) This is not plagiarism. You put the code under a license that says almost-literally "do anything you want with this code", and they did. There is no legal obligation to use pull requests instead of forks. > What would you do if this happens with your project? Probably ignore it. If your version…
His license requires that his credit be retained. If the new project didn't do that (which I'm assuming it didn't), it's both plagiarism and a copyright violation (which aren't the same thing). If the new project did retain his credit, then, yeah, he's got no legal recourse.
Hi Turing_Machine,
How should the other project retain the original project credit? How should be my project referenced?
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#15Hanlon's razor. [0] Assume that the person doesn't know how to correctly contribute code to an existing project. Reach out to them and gently let them know that they are welcome to contribute via Pull Requests. Also, be flattered that someone found value in your work. Assume that the other person simply doesn't know any better. If no response, or no change in a small period of time, then DMCA as mentioned in the othe…
Hi jonkiddy, Thanks for your comment. Do you think that I can do something by changing the license on my open source project?
INAL. I'm not sure if there is much you can do. If you open sourced the project in such a way as another party can do what they want, we'll expect them to do whatever they want.
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for your comment. My concern is that all the changes introduced by the other project could have been done through pull requests. Also, the other project wouldn't exist if my project wasn't there. One thing is being inspired, another one is creating a separate project that is dividing the community effort in two, instead of focusing in one project.
They could have but would removing those 3rd party libraries be in the best interest of your project? It appears that the other developer merely wanted a trimmed down version of what you have. As for possibly dividing the community: first, there's always competition. This is especially true in software where anyone with a keyboard and know-how can create a competitor. Second, if you're really concerned about communit…
Thanks for your suggestion! Specially for providing the example. I will take a look at that.
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi jonkiddy, Thanks for your comment. Do you think that I can do something by changing the license on my open source project?
INAL. I'm not sure if there is much you can do. If you open sourced the project in such a way as another party can do what they want, we'll expect them to do whatever they want.
I understand. Thanks for your comment!
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#18If you're referring to the project which cites yours as "a great source of inspiration", they are materially different. The idea of a shell-script collection for common admin tasks is not unique.
A quick look between the two (if my suspicion is correct) shows the new one being pared down to tasks which are universal to OS X management, whereas yours has things which appear to be useful primarily to you (magento configuration?)
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#19If you're referring to the project which cites yours as "a great source of inspiration", they are materially different. The idea of a shell-script collection for common admin tasks is not unique. A quick look between the two (if my suspicion is correct) shows the new one being pared down to tasks which are universal to OS X management, whereas yours has things which appear to be useful primarily to you (magento confi…
The OP has even opened an issue on that other project's github and discussed it with the author of that other tool. The other author was very polite and explained clearly that it is not plagiarized or ripped from Mac-CLI.
Re: Ask HN: Plagiarism on GitHub – What to do?
#20Hanlon's razor. [0] Assume that the person doesn't know how to correctly contribute code to an existing project. Reach out to them and gently let them know that they are welcome to contribute via Pull Requests. Also, be flattered that someone found value in your work. Assume that the other person simply doesn't know any better. If no response, or no change in a small period of time, then DMCA as mentioned in the othe…
Hi jonkiddy, Thanks for your comment. Do you think that I can do something by changing the license on my open source project?
>> Do you think that I can do something by changing the license on my open source project?
You can do something about future forks by changing the license on your project. The existing fork was created under the current license on your project and you can not retroactively change that.