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I would say almost impossible. First, you have to have standing meaning the only people who have any claim or could take action would be the "other contributor

I would say almost impossible. First, you have to have standing meaning the only people who have any claim or could take action would be the "other contributors". At that point, the best likely path forward would be a claim of partial ownership resulting in a DCMA takedown request. However, the vast majority of contributions to this repo are insignificant one liner commits. While a nuisance for the repo owner, those commits could likely be undone and re-implemented. That leaves it up to a handful of more active participants to take any action (likely DCMA related). I would be shocked if anyone (other than with support from the FSF) takes actual legal action other than a cease and desist letter. Even then, finding an interested prosecutor/attorney is going to be a challenge. By some estimates only 1 in 100k software crimes are ever prosecuted and some guy who stole 100 commits by changing an open source license is not one of them.

user5994461 6y ago
Speaking from an European perspective here. I believe any user should be able to raise a claim, the software is deceitful and violating its license which raise a number of problems. One problem though is that the software doesn't indicate a license at all. I can think of multiple angles of attack if they were reselling it or distributing it under another license (MIT/BSD/GPL/other), that'd instantly give you the right to sue them, but because it doesn't have any license and doesn't claim anything, I don't know. It could probably be considered to be defacto AGPL since the AGPL is contagious so there's nothing to complain about. It's tricky ^^ edit: The other thing is what's the purpose of attacking? You attack for a purpose, usually damages and/or shutting down the project. There's nothing to gain here. For reference the last GPL cases I've seen were self-defeating for the defendants, the user/customer/client sue the contractor/company/vendor who gave them modified GPL software, the defendant wins but loses the right to use the software they paid for, which is dumb!
- cortesoft 6y ago
  > I believe any user should be able to raise a claim, the software is deceitful and violating its license which raise a number of problems. This isn’t true, though... they aren’t violating their license, they changed the license. You are allowed to change a license for code you wrote at any time. The only issue is if they included other code that was licensed, either via a PR written by someone else that they merged or via a dependency that was licensed. You can’t violate your own license... even if I write code and release it as GPL, I am free to use a modified version in my own proprietary code (again, as long as you don’t use code licensed by someone else)
  - user5994461 6y ago
    It's been established that they have third party contributions under AGPL, so we're past the points you mention.
    - uberman 6y ago
      They do, and there are potentially 60 or so contributors. However, only those 60 people have a dog in this fight (or legally only they have "standing"). It is up to one of them to do "something" as none of us (anyone other than those 60) have any sort of actionable claim other than to shame them. You and I might not like the fact that they are altering / violating the license but that is moot.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      But that still wouldn't mean "any user" has a claim, which was what the post I was replying to suggested.

user5994461 6y ago

Speaking from an European perspective here. I believe any user should be able to raise a claim, the software is deceitful and violating its license which raise a number of problems. One problem though is that the software doesn't indicate a license at all. I can think of multiple angles of attack if they were reselling it or distributing it under another license (MIT/BSD/GPL/other), that'd instantly give you the right to sue them, but because it doesn't have any license and doesn't claim anything, I don't know. It could probably be considered to be defacto AGPL since the AGPL is contagious so there's nothing to complain about. It's tricky ^^ edit: The other thing is what's the purpose of attacking? You attack for a purpose, usually damages and/or shutting down the project. There's nothing to gain here. For reference the last GPL cases I've seen were self-defeating for the defendants, the user/customer/client sue the contractor/company/vendor who gave them modified GPL software, the defendant wins but loses the right to use the software they paid for, which is dumb!

cortesoft 6y ago
> I believe any user should be able to raise a claim, the software is deceitful and violating its license which raise a number of problems. This isn’t true, though... they aren’t violating their license, they changed the license. You are allowed to change a license for code you wrote at any time. The only issue is if they included other code that was licensed, either via a PR written by someone else that they merged or via a dependency that was licensed. You can’t violate your own license... even if I write code and release it as GPL, I am free to use a modified version in my own proprietary code (again, as long as you don’t use code licensed by someone else)
- user5994461 6y ago
  It's been established that they have third party contributions under AGPL, so we're past the points you mention.
  - uberman 6y ago
    They do, and there are potentially 60 or so contributors. However, only those 60 people have a dog in this fight (or legally only they have "standing"). It is up to one of them to do "something" as none of us (anyone other than those 60) have any sort of actionable claim other than to shame them. You and I might not like the fact that they are altering / violating the license but that is moot.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    But that still wouldn't mean "any user" has a claim, which was what the post I was replying to suggested.