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First, you wanted people to use your tools and you gave them away for free under the MIT license. Now you’re complaining that people are using your tools. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I'm not going to go looking for them, but the impression I get of the sort of copycatters described is that they really won't care what the licence is, if the source is available they'll be there anyway - the blog post will just be complaining that it's against the terms of the licence (and probably not pursuing legal action) instead. I don't think it really matters. These things will exist, anyone who matters will r…
I get your point, but i guess it’s sadder to see people complying with the license terms in an assholish manner than see people completely breaching the terms of the license.
I.e. if you don't like it the solution is not AGPL or source available but no reuse allowrd or whatever, it's closed source.
I used to to have a little cottage industry that helped me pay the bills of people finding my rewrite generator, not knowing what they're doing, and reaching out for help with their htaccess files. It's been a couple years now since anyone has reached out. On realizing that, I started looking into it.
Part of that decline is clearly Apache becoming less relevant, but the other part (I think anyway) is that I've fallen way down the SEO ranks, frustratingly behind people hosting my own tools.
Like I said, it's a rant. Think of it as such.
Everything is still MIT and by all likelihood going to stay that way.
Correct me if im wrong but the license does not give them the right to name. Author should still be able to request them to change the name?
> they don't credit me as the author or provide any sort of link back But this is simply not true. MIT requires keeping the copyright notice intact, which would be a credit. People that aren’t going to follow this requirement weren’t going to follow the GPL or whatever alternative you pick either, so either sue them or don’t worry about which one you picked exactly.
Agreed. His problem isn't the license. His problem is thinking a text file is going to stop a bad actor.
The author is sharing second thoughts about using the MIT license and yes, bad actors are going to break bad, but the point of licensing is to control re-use within the (enforceable) legal framework of copyright. Reciprocal licenses (thanks Lawrence Rosen[1] for that term less charged than copyleft or viral) cede less control, and provide more footholds for enforcement. Remember that GPL has (sometimes) worked as int…
For example, drivers licenses are often reciprocal between states. I've worked for firms which has reciprocal licensing agreements with some of their manufacturers. Copyleft is neither.
A few days later another coworker emailed me with a screenshot of a Craigslist ad for a car like mine. In fact, it actually was for my car! The first coworker listed it for something like $5,250, and by the time Coworker #2 pinged him, he'd already sold it for that price. Coworker #1 didn't even take a new picture -- he just reposted the one I'd taken!
At first I felt exploited. Here I was, being nice to my coworkers and offering a discounted car. And I later confirmed that the guy who bought it actually did lie about intending it for his mom, which made the whole thing seem even more unsavory. But I calmed down after a few minutes. I remembered that my plan was to sell it to a coworker rather than deal with the scumbags on Craigslist, and I was willing to take a big discount for that. "Being nice to my coworkers" was just the story that I told myself to justify my priorities. I got exactly what I wanted out of the original deal: an easy way to get rid of a car I didn't need anymore. And unlike me, someone else was willing to put in the effort to flip the car and extract that last $1,000 or so of value. My instant emotional reaction was to feel vaguely cheated, or that the guy I sold it to was a sleaze. But he didn't actually hurt me. I got what I wanted, and so did he.
In the case of this software tool, I'd ask the article author whether, in retrospect, he wishes that he'd kept the tool rights and gone down the SEO rabbit hole to monetize it for himself. Let's say further than he was successful, obtaining $X/month in ad revenue. Would he feel better in that case? I'd guess not; for most values of $X, he'd conclude it wasn't worth his time. But what happens once he concedes that he's not going to put in the effort? Does he still not open-source it solely to prevent anyone from monetizing it? That's the key question. Would he feel better knowing that he prevented someone else from benefiting?
When we give gifts, we hope the recipient will use it in the way we would have. Use the tool to create awesome ovals. Drive your family around in the car. It's hard when the recipient instead uses it "the wrong way." SEO the tool. Flip the car. But that's always a risk when truly giving a gift with no strings attached.
> In some cases, they are even beating me in search results for my own tools. Correct me if im wrong but the license does not give them the right to name. Author should still be able to request them to change the name?
But I just realized that the MIT license is worded in such a way that one could draw that inference, and it might stand up in court.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, 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 probably make a compelling argument that "you have the right to deal in this Software without restriction" and "you have the right to sell this software" as including the right to sell it under the same name.
If one is going to use the MIT license (or anything else that doesn't call out the copyright/trademark distinction) it would probably be good to include a supplemental notice that reads something like "The MIT license here does not confer any rights to use the name 'Project Foobar'. You must distribute any copies or derivative works under a different name or we will sue you into oblivion for trademark infringement" (or something roughly along those lines).