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What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

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Re: What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

#21

Post by Buttons840 »

It's Apache licensed. Clause 4 does say some things about accreditation, etc.

IANAL, but simplifying the [what-I-call] legal enumeration, it says: "You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright notices from the Source form of the Work".

Did you put any copyright notices in your work? If not, it may be too late, because they can continue to distribute the old version that did not have copyright notices.

There's also some requirements that they clearly identify anything they have changed, but I'm guessing they haven't changed much. Maybe their sneaky way of changing the branding would violate this? I don't know, IANAL.

If you believe they have not complied with this part of the license, then what they are doing is no different than hosting your copyrighted movie or book on GitHub and you can send a takedown request, sue for damages, etc. It may not be worth the cost though.

Re: What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

#23

Post by kareiva »

It looks like the person doing the copying didn't even bother to change the pictures properly (the background does not match). So I think if your great project lives on, this copy work is going to be just a bad and unsuccessful fork, maybe even one of few. Don't spend too much effort on this and just try to focus on your own project.

Re: What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

#24

Post by 0xmarcin »

You may always put an "innocent" looking file into the output binary that states who is the actual authors. Say you may create AUTHORS file in your repo, but store a SHA512 of that file in some obscure file in resources e.g. META-INF/ArtifactSignId, don't automate this step in any way, do it manually. A lot of people that are mindlessly copy'ing your work will not bother doing anything more than remove some stuff & search'n'replace author name. Then you will have a proof in case this other fork gained popularity (not very probable) that it was stolen.

I would not stress over it until that other person sets up a project webside and starts a marketing campaign. Most probably it is only about making a good looking GitHub profile.

Re: What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

#26

Post by jowdones »

>> In every licensed file, original copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices must be preserved

Well, Edwinkys, it's your fault for not adding a copyright notice to each file. I recommend add one now at least, so future forks will have your name it it.

Something like this: https://github.com/aquarians/Public/blob/main/Aquarians/Back...

Re: What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

#29

Post by zo1 »

electronW1zard wrote: post #17

I think the developer doing this is: https://github.com/obaraelijah And it looks like he's done the exact same with a pen-testing project called Kraken: https://github.com/myOmikron/kraken-project Probably trying to pad out his Github for freelancing.

Looks like he's also made everything non-public. Way too much bad publicity, so he'll probably do it again under a different organization. Cause now when someone searches for this "Sahomey Technologies" they find out he's blatantly copying github repos to pad his business.

On a side note, this person has 132 repos on his profile. They're probably trying to game the whole thing to make it seem like they have an active Github profile.

Re: What should I do when someone blatantly copy my open-source project on GitHub?

#30

Post by sbank »

zo1 wrote: post #29
electronW1zard wrote: post #17

I think the developer doing this is: https://github.com/obaraelijah And it looks like he's done the exact same with a pen-testing project called Kraken: https://github.com/myOmikron/kraken-project Probably trying to pad out his Github for freelancing.

Looks like he's also made everything non-public. Way too much bad publicity, so he'll probably do it again under a different organization. Cause now when someone searches for this "Sahomey Technologies" they find out he's blatantly copying github repos to pad his business. On a side note, this person has 132 repos on his profile. They're probably trying to game the whole thing to make it seem like they have an active…

Let's hope Elijah Samson, AKA obaraelijah, AKA elly sam, AKA Sahomey Technologies, AKA Sahomey-Technologies will learn from this.
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