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by tareqak 353 days ago
From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum (based on what I remember from past discussions of this sort of activity involving different participants).

If someone else has a better idea of what “forking GPL 3 source code and using a different licence” would be, then please let me and others know.
4 comments
rwmj 353 days ago
If you don't follow the license, then you don't have a license to use, distribute or modify the code. So then you get into copyright violation territory, up to $150,000 per infringement in the US if it's intentional.
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anilakar 353 days ago
Sadly in my experience various courts have taken a stance that violating GPL does not cause monetary damages, because the software in question is free.
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rwmj 353 days ago
Can you cite some actual cases?
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seanhunter 353 days ago
I somewhat doubt they can since in the US the BusyBox lawsuits pretty much all ended with the infringers settling and paying out, and those that didn’t settle, busybox won[1]. I would think that, and the original artistic license lawsuits (which were decided on by the US court of appeals) established that infringing open source softwaree licenses is a copyright infringement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

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perihelions 352 days ago
You can read the text of the GPLv3 license itself; it has a specific provision for this case.

> "Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice."

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

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jrflowers 353 days ago
Realistically this will probably just have a reputational cost for Daniel Park/Pickle. Whether he intended to or not, some amount of people will associate “pretends to make things that he did not make” with him because of this entirely unforced error.
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Arainach 353 days ago
>From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum

Isn't that the minimum bar for a "business model" capable of attracting VC interest these days?

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