[bigiain]

The FAQ strongly hints that they know there'll be some sort of legal blowback:

"Before WhatFreeWords existed, another group had released an open-source implementation of What3Words and published it on GitHub, and GitHub removed the repository after receiving a DMCA takedown notice from the What3Words company. It is likely that similar action would be taken against a WhatFreeWords repository on GitHub."

and:

"We prefer to remain anonymous. The What3Words company has shown that they will attempt to cause problems for people distributing open-source implementations of the What3Words geocoding system, so it is easier if we are anonymous."

[harry-wood]

Turns out that in order to evade DMCA action, they needed to do more than not being on github. As of yesterday I think..

"WhatFreeWords is currently unavailable due to DMCA action from the What3Words company"