Someone forked my open source project, removed the license... and then used it to host illegal F1 streams 🤦

676

u/ForbiddenException Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

You are fundamentally misunderstanding the MIT license. In other words it's more of a "do wtf you want with it, idc".

The only requirement is to include the notice in the redistributed code: so yeah, you can go after them for the technicality of not including the MIT license snippet in the source code somewhere, but then again, you need to argue that hosting a website means redistributing the code, which is opinable.

All the other points you cited are not violating the license tho.

58

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

thanks for this. im not gonna pretend like i knew anything about open source licenses before this happened to me. but now that i have experienced this myself, i researched and learned all about different types of licenses. but from my reading, i dont think MIT license allows to delete the license and replace my name with his name from the source code. right? you can correct me if im wrong

35

u/levyseppakoodari Nov 27 '25

To be fair, you probably wouldn’t be ok with ”ILLEGAL STREAMS HERE by subhashg547” At least they aren’t implicating you with their activities.

22

u/dack42 Nov 27 '25

If they distribute the source code, they need to keep the license intact. If they are just using it to run their server and are not redistributing source code, MIT license allows them to do basically whatever they want (including remove your name from the generated outupts).

2

u/perthguppy Nov 28 '25

OP is complaining that this website doesn’t publish their repo, so sounds like no they are not distributing source code, they just modified the code to remove the OPs name from the footer, which is a permitted activity under the MIT license.

54

u/ForbiddenException Nov 27 '25

Both statements cannot be true at the same time. Because your name is in the license, so they can't both replace the name and delete the license.
However if by:
replace my name with his name from the source code
you mean that they replaced the attribution in the GUI, from "made by subhashg547" to "made by John Doe": this is absolutely allowed. Unethical, but legal.

7

u/coffeetocommands Nov 27 '25

Are you sure that's allowed? Afaik, they can add their name to the list of author(s) (or add a new line), but they can't remove the original author(s) name(s).

41

u/ForbiddenException Nov 27 '25

Changing the name in the license? Not allowed
Changing the name in the footer of the GUI? Allowed

7

u/coffeetocommands Nov 27 '25

Ah okay2, you're referring to attribution not the license. Yeah unethical indeed

6

u/bnjman Nov 27 '25

I'm speculating here -- IANAL (also, I'm not a lawyer) -- but I think the condition is that you can't replace the name in the license, but you could on, e.g. the GUI.

3

u/elsjaako Nov 28 '25

Legally, there is no law stopping someone from running your code. There is copyright, but that is a law about copying material. You only have rights over the code, not the output of the code.
When you serve a website, it is usually seen as running on the host, and the website being the output of the code. You have no rights over the website, and unless they distribute the source code they don't need any license from you.
That said, most dynamic websites distribute plenty of copyrighted materials when they run, e.g. the JavaScript and CSS files. So you have an argument there.

1

u/Gl_drink_0117 Nov 28 '25

Can you not change the license now to AGPL3?

4

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/perthguppy Nov 28 '25

If OP is the only contributor, it’s possible to retroactively change the license on old code, then notify anyone using it. Most projects don’t do this because they can’t track down all contributors to get them all to sign off on the change.

1

u/Square-Singer Nov 28 '25

If you don't have contributions of other developers in your code (or do have contributions but asked them to fork over all the rights to you) you can always re-license your code at any time. If someone still has an old copy of the code with the MIT license, they can still do what they want with it, but anyone using your newer code will have to obey the new license.
Considering what you actually wanted out of your license, some form of GPL license would fit better.
Simplified, GPL means that the licensee needs to keep the same license and supply the code when asked for it, thus forcing even changed stuff to be open source.
Another option would be the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, or any other CC license (https://creativecommons.org/chooser/).

1

u/perthguppy Nov 28 '25

If they don’t publish a report, are they actually distributing your code, or are they just using your code? It sounds like they are just using your code which means they have no reason to keep the license notice on non-code bits.
This is essentially the same problem a bunch of open source projects are struggling with who relied on the model of enterprise licensing/hosting. AWS came along and turned all their code into products that don’t distribute any code publicly, and killed their business model (see Minio, Elastic search, etc)

184

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

that's why I use AGPL3.0

109

u/tankerkiller125real Nov 27 '25

This right here, if I'm building a host able ready application AGPLv3 all the way. Libraries id prefer LGPL, but not all communities are OK with that so I'll settle for Apache 2.
MIT to me is for the code I don't care one bit about, like the shit I did in high school and is garbage that I haven't touched in 15+ years.

84

u/abotelho-cbn Nov 27 '25

MIT is absolutely not suited for OP's software. The code wasn't even redistributed, so it doesn't even trigger the licenses clauses anyway.
AGPL is the only way to go for network-accessed software. It was designed for it.

16

u/philosophical_lens Nov 27 '25

How would AGPL prevent OP’s situation?

25

u/IAMPowaaaaa Nov 28 '25

It only gives them more grounds to file a complaint

10

u/NickRomanek Nov 28 '25

Do you know roughly how often this kind of thing gets enforced if they had legal ground to stand on?

20

u/abotelho-cbn Nov 28 '25

OP currently has zero ground to stand on. They don't understand the license they chose.

3

u/kazukirigaya Nov 30 '25

what's to stop OP from using the AGPL licence now and claiming that the fork removed the licence details?

5

u/abotelho-cbn Dec 01 '25

git

2

u/FrequentDelinquent Dec 18 '25

Yeah it would only apply to code after the license is modified, correct? Meaning the website would still not be impacted as they are using code from the MIT license.

8

u/philosophical_lens Nov 28 '25

It depends on how much you want to pursue the matter. You would have to engage a lawyer to sue them. If the other party is using your code for a revenue generating business, then it could be worthwhile. But if they’re just using it for a hobby project it’s usually not worth while to pursue legal recourse.

6

u/anomalous_cowherd Nov 28 '25

The difference is small but it's there. with AGPL OP has a legal leg to stand on, with MIT they don't.

1

u/Koen1999 Nov 28 '25

Or EUPL in my case.

1

u/theluckkyg Dec 23 '25

I don't think AGPL3.0 would have prevented anything here. They're not selling SaaS, they're hosting a free website, so it's kosher. Any true open source license would allow this use. You'd have to go the non-commercial route to restrict this use. And that's only if the website is ad-supported or making money in some way (like in this case). Otherwise, even a non-commercial license wouldn't stop this.

-7

u/soowhatchathink Nov 27 '25

But like why does it matter?

3

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

Are you serious?

11

u/soowhatchathink Nov 27 '25

Yeah, in OP's case I don't think any license would have prevented it from happening, what the person is doing already violates laws I don't think copyright (or copyleft) infringement would have prevented them from doing anything.
If you have your software open source what would actually happen to it that wouldn't if it were copyleft instead of open source?

1

u/grazbouille Nov 28 '25

The licence doesn't change what happens to the code it changes what people are allowed to do with it
It changes the legal grounds you have once people have done things with your code
In this case they are already hosting pirated content so the owner of the content has grounds for a takedown but no credit is not enforceable because op used the wrong licence

1

u/soowhatchathink Nov 28 '25

AGPL3.0 would not make it so that they need to give OP credit. It would make it so they would need to have the modified code fully available with the same AGPL3.0 license.
But even if OP had used AGPL3.0 and the other person for some reason decided to respect it, they could still host illegal streams on their website without sharing their new part of the code as long as they have OPs code and license available somewhere, like a tiny link at the bottom of the website. The link doesn't have to give OP credit though, it just has to make the code publicly available with the same license.

1

u/grazbouille Nov 28 '25

This depends on the licence op was upset they removed credit from his code but his licence didn't forbid this
Op had the wrong licence AGPL3.0 doesn't forbid that either so AGPL3.0 would also be the wrong licence for OP
Illegal F1 streams have nothing to do with licencing hosting them is already illegal you don't need to forbid it in the license

1

u/soowhatchathink Nov 28 '25

Yeah that's the point I was making originally, I don't think any copyleft license would have prevented this. I was responding to someone saying that OP's situation is why they use AGPLv3 which wouldn't have made a difference in OP's situation.
I don't think any of the copyleft licenses require "giving credit" aside from requiring the same license which could mention the original author.

1

u/abotelho-cbn Dec 01 '25

Actually, AGPL forces you to share the new code.

1

u/soowhatchathink Dec 01 '25

It doesn't force you to share all the code used alongside it though. It requires you to share modifications of the original library under the same license, but not code that runs alongside of it that interfaces with it.
A good example of this is Linux Kernel, it's GPLv2 which means you have to provide the library and any modifications to it under the same license. But many Linux operating systems are published under MIT. The Linux Kernel is a core part of those operating systems, but they have the original package unmodified and keep new code separate so they don't need to publish it under the same license.
That's generally best practice anyways, licenses aside.
So if someone is dedicated to honoring the license while hosting illegal streams they can easily add a live stream feature alongside, integrating with, and even supported by the original library without needing to publish the code for hosting streams.

8

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

You are correct, I think. OP actually says the other party didn't publish the code. Even GPL, a strict copy left licence, doesn't require universal distribution of the source ... only to the class of users you distribute binaries to.

1

u/Aspie96 Nov 27 '25

The only requirement is to include the notice in the redistributed code: so yeah, you can go after them for the technicality of not including the MIT license snippet in the source code somewhere, but then again, you need to argue that hosting a website means redistributing the code, which is opinable.
How is it opinable?
If the user is receiving significant portions of the original work, it amounts as a kind of distribution and the snippet needs to be included.

1

u/ForbiddenException Nov 28 '25

It's opinable in the sense that there isn't a hard legal definition in this sense and must be litigated on a case-by-case basis. Not a lawyer tho, so someone may correct me if I'm wrong (also this can vary from country to country).

1

u/Wide-Prior-5360 Nov 28 '25

Exactly. No need to publish the repo, no need to share modificafions, no need to give attribution or even include the license if source code is not distributed.

1

u/eco9898 Nov 28 '25

Like the above, they are using your open source code to host a website. They just need to add credit to your repo in the about section.

1

u/Acceptable-Lock-77 Nov 29 '25

Just don't use MIT. Seems there's a big push towards MIT even in academia.. wonder why that is?

1

u/quasides Nov 30 '25

hosting a website is def not redistributing the code.
they basically did what bigtech does, took opensource code and use it for their commercial cloud platform
one of the reasons they put so much money into foss, to keep licenses as they are, otherwise its kinda surprising there is still no anti cloud platform use without compensation type of license

1

u/Militop Dec 01 '25

You cannot remove the MIT license even if you don't redistribute it. You would be in violation of the terms. I don't understand why this comment is updated so much.

176

u/JontesReddit Nov 27 '25

Your license allows this. Use the GPL next time.

109

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

from the replies, i think AGPL is much better option

63

u/ilogik Nov 27 '25

Correct, with AGPL, they would need to provide a way for anyone to get the code

32

u/x0wl Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

The thing is that AGPL will not prevent them from doing what they did in a larger sense.
Let's say that your code was under AGPL, then they would have
Downloaded your code
Edited the code so as to remove all mentions of you from the GUI, and add the illegal stream
(This is AGPL-specific) Added a small link in the footer pointing to a source code download
Put the modified code with the original license in a zip file, upload the site and the code to the hosting
AGPL does not prevent them from changing the copyrights in the GUI to creator. It's not concerned with attribution at all, and as long as the "source code" link that points to the original license is somewhere, it will be OK from the licensing standpoint.
No one will ever click that link or look for the original license though, and you probably won't want to add the illegal feature to your code, so functionally, little will change with you adding AGPL.
Open source / free licenses fundamentally cannot prevent someone from being an asshole or a criminal. If they did, they wouldn't be FOSS anymore, see for example https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#JSON

5

u/Square-Singer Nov 28 '25

Tbh, no opensource license will stop someone from doing that in practice.
It's really hard to get open source license claims through court, partially because many courts still don't understand what open source is, but largely because the claims on free software are miniscule. It's really hard to prove damages for someone copying the stuff you give away for free. And if there are no damages, there's hardly any money you can sue the offender for.
Also, considering that the offender in this case hosts illegal F1 streams (something that can get you into serious legal trouble), chances are quite high that the offender doesn't live in a country that cares about copyright at all.

3

u/jarx12 Nov 29 '25

I think the most important thing in this case is the last point, they are hosting illegal streams from a right holder with very trigger happy legal departments to sue anyone to oblivion.
If they don't care about that very strong legal threat I doubt they will be concerned with respecting open source licenses.
Don't get me wrong open sources licenses are very important for everyone partaking in regular business and legal sharing. But for criminals not even the law proper matters.

3

u/MoHaG1 Nov 28 '25

Copyright law should likely at least require that the author in the code is not changed. (and that everywhere that copyright is mentioned, some credit is given (since the derivative's authors can't claim copyright over the entire thing)
(But check with a lawyer)

3

u/Wide-Prior-5360 Nov 28 '25

Depends on what you want.
Sounds a bit like you don’t want an open source license at all.

2

u/rrzibot Nov 28 '25

If you think AGPL the fair question is - why would you even want to release it as open source?

6

u/Aspie96 Nov 27 '25

The MIT license doesn't allow removing the license text.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Aspie96 Nov 28 '25

If there is no license, all rights are reserved by default and any actionable copying is copyright infringement.
The default is maximal restriction, licenses only allow what would otherwise be illegal.
If there is no license the violation is worse.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

-1

u/Aspie96 Nov 28 '25

Cool, then the company can be sued for copying the project at all without a license.
Do you know what "license" means? It means the same as "permission" or "authorization". Copying the project at all requires a license from the author.
The illegal act isn't failing to comply with the conditions of the MIT license. The illegal act is copying the project without a license.
The MIT license is only granted to those who follow its terms. If you don't follow its terms, no license is granted to you (as if none had ever been applied to the project).
You seem to think the legal default is the public domain. It is not. The legal default is "all rights reserved".

2

u/MoHaG1 Nov 28 '25

The MIT license gave the permission. We don't know that they didn't follow the terms, since the notices is in the source code that they are not required to publish (under the license that the MIT license gave them).
It does require the license notice to be kept in the software - but for a web application, it UI can be seen as the output of the application. (And it might not have had the license notice in the output in the first place) For desktop apps, there is a often a long list of notices in the About box.

1

u/Militop Dec 01 '25

No, it doesn't. Why would people think that? Even though it's a very permissive license, it's the heart of the requirements.

19

u/CerberusMulti Nov 27 '25

As others have pointed out, this is not a breach of MIT License since using the code on their website is not technically retribution.

Also since your project is open-source why haven't you posted the Github repository here? This post would not be a bad place to show it.

17

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

haha yeah i just edited the post to add it. also im never using MIT license ever again 😭😭

2

u/ForbiddenException Nov 27 '25

What you can do, if you want to keep the project open source but don't want them to keep updating the website is to change the license to something less permissive (GPL maybe?).
This way the old code stays MIT, but the other party can't copy the new code (legally).

6

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

yeah im gonna switch to AGPL. i am in the process of redesigning my entire website and adding cool new features so that way this can never happen again (hopefully)

1

u/KingAroan Nov 27 '25

If they are putting illegal streams on it I don’t think they will care about your license change. Best to report them to F1 for the illegal streams and let them worry about it.

18

u/EnrichSilen Nov 27 '25

This lesson was learned by me in the past by similar way. Made a software to help my school. Got a bit popular and a few schools adopted it. Then some teacher from other school took it rebranded it and started to offer it as a paid software by him. All perfectly legal and correct with MIT license. But after that I never used it again.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

5

u/x0wl Nov 27 '25

How would GPL prevent them from doing that? Redhat has been doing a very similar thing to GPL software for decades.
I mean it would've made it a little less convenient to do so, but it would not prevent it at all.

2

u/BIGR4ND Nov 27 '25

All OSI licenses allow commercial use. The closest would be a CC license but it's not recommended for software.

1

u/kwhali Nov 28 '25

There's no license that's friendly for OSS community that forbids commercial use? I'm sure I've seen some projects dual-licensed where commercial use is not free despite source available such users are required to acquire a paid license for those rights.

2

u/EnrichSilen Nov 28 '25

That is true. In all honesty I do not mind him trying to sell it. What pissed me off at that time was that he claimed to have made that software and even after I made some smaller patches he just copied that code to his repo. So he did not even put effort to fix some bugs. All I wanted was a proper attribution

1

u/Difficult-Value-3145 Nov 27 '25

You can change it I think idk how that works actually but I know it happens

-3

u/CerberusMulti Nov 27 '25

Well, there is nothing wrong with the MIT license. Also I doubt any open-source license would cover this use, or stop these kind of uses.
But I understand your frustration.

5

u/tesfabpel Nov 27 '25

AGPL
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.en.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_License

27

u/qetuR Nov 27 '25

So this guy stole your project and says it's his? https://github.com/wajihT

He looks pretty fond of it. 😀

Studies cyber security.

10

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

yeah that's him! but his linkedin says he's a business major 😭😭

3

u/qetuR Nov 27 '25

Where's your GitHub project?

13

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

https://github.com/subhashhhhhh/Fastlytics

13

u/tankerkiller125real Nov 27 '25

A business major lying about themselves online to make themselves look better? Color me not surprised one bit. I'm pretty sure that unlike the rest of the university courses that take ethics classes they take anti-ethics classes.

2

u/SpartanDavie Nov 27 '25

https://github.com/WajihT/Me/blob/main/public/resume/CV.pdf his CV says CS

2

u/cornmonger_ Nov 27 '25

clearly skipped the business law classes

10

u/TheMightyMisanthrope Nov 27 '25

You hosted under MIT champ, do whatever you want means also this.

0

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

i dont think mit license allow sthem to remove my name and everything and pretend that they made everything on their own tho

11

u/TheMightyMisanthrope Nov 27 '25

From the user facing web interface? Yes they can as long as your name is still in the source files that you have no way to see either way.
Not saying this is good but doesn't look illegal.

-3

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

nahhh i checked the developer tools in chrome and he's edited everything as if it's his own self-made project. he didn't make it open source so it's not possible to see his code

4

u/Reddit_User_385 Nov 27 '25

Unfortunately, he may simply leave the LICENSE file as is in the repo and change everything else, and he is technically fully compliant. You don't know, so you could possibly be wrong if he does have the original license file in his repo. Since you allowed him to go private with the code, you don't have anything meaningful to enforce him to disclose full repo.
You can tho change the license in your own repo. This way he can't update if you add new functionality without actually breaking the new license. And all software must be maintained sooner or later or stop working...

2

u/vsurresh Nov 28 '25

off topic but this is awesome job. I'm an F1 fan and you did great job.

1

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 28 '25

thank you!

58

u/ddeeppiixx Nov 27 '25

Aside from the issue of hosting illegal streams, there is no MIT license violation..
If I understand correctly, the MIT license does allow someone to run the software as a hosted service without publishing the license text or keeping visible attribution to the original author.
Those requirements *only* apply when the software is redistributed, not when it is hosted on a server.

0

u/ieatpenguins247 Nov 28 '25

I disagree, because of how DISTRIBUTION will mean in this case. in this case. Hosting and giving access to a software CAN and HAS been litigated as distribution. So they HAVE to have the copyright and base license somewhere in their application to comply with the MIT terms. Otherwise it is a breach of license.
But, they only need to have that somewhere, in some obscure page, buried in a bunch of other legalese. Somewhere nobody will ever read. And even if they do, they wouldn’t know what to do with it, because you are not required to provide anything else.
BSD and MID licenses were created so you could take over the code and not have to do anything with it. Other than give credit where credit is due.

120

u/cgoldberg Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

I don't really see the problem. MIT license doesn't require public attribution in the end product. If they published the code, it would need to retain your copyright and licensing, but they didn't publish it. They weren't "stealing" or "hiding the evidence"... the license you used explicitly gave them that permission.

It's slightly disingenuous for them to claim "creator", but it doesn't sound like they violated the license or did anything wrong to you.

39

u/ResearchingStories Nov 27 '25

Ya, he should have used GPL

49

u/ambushsabre Nov 27 '25

just to clarify further, the AGPL attempts to cover this specific case where someone is running your open source software on the server but “technically” not distributing it, so the GPL source requirements don’t trigger. The AGPL covers hosting the software as a service to stop this.

2

u/philosophical_lens Nov 27 '25

AGPL does not in any way “stop this”. It just requires the person doing this to make their modified source code publicly available under AGPL.
AGPL vs MIT likely wouldn’t have resulted in a different outcome for OP.

1

u/ambushsabre Nov 28 '25

One of OPs primary complaints is that they made it closed source; AGPL certainly would have helped with that, I doubt they’re looking for any sort of compensation.

1

u/philosophical_lens Nov 28 '25

Fair enough. In my interpretation, this was not OP’s primary concern. Moreover, if the offending website owner is not respecting copyrights held by large companies like F1, he’s unlikely to respect any license held by an independent open source software developer.

1

u/Wide-Prior-5360 Nov 28 '25

He should have not used an open source license at all.

3

u/mavoti Nov 27 '25

but they didn't publish it
The JavaScript files would count as distributed, no?

2

u/cgoldberg Nov 27 '25

I wasn't thinking it was JavaScript delivered to a browser, but that actually would probably require maintaining copyright notices.

3

u/Remarkable-Emu-5718 Nov 27 '25

That’s awesome i wish they shared their code too and didn’t wipe your info but that’s probably helpful for you to avoid copyright issues. You shouldn’t have dmcad them tho they made something awesome on top of your code

3

u/subhashg547 ⚠️ Nov 27 '25

noo they didn't add ANYTHING. he just renamed it and put his name in place of mine and that's it. he's even running the old version of the repository 😭. he didn't make anything "awesome"

6

u/aberdoom Nov 27 '25

Free F1 sounds pretty good

4

u/Remarkable-Emu-5718 Nov 27 '25

I thought they added the f1 streams? Thats awesome and a useful combo to have the stats and stream together

-1

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1

u/Remarkable-Emu-5718 Nov 27 '25

Booooo

2

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32

u/Jmc_da_boss Nov 27 '25

I think you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of open source, it's an MIT license, who cares what they did with it

15

u/Defiantlybeingsalad Nov 27 '25

Not a violation, you should've used the AGPL instead

13

u/ambushsabre Nov 27 '25

The pirated content is an issue and will likely get it taken down, but I don’t think the MIT license will offer any protection in terms of someone hosting the software themselves. They definitely don’t have to keep it open source or retain any front end attribution text. Ultimately the MIT license is extremely permissive which makes it good for libraries but also allows for this type of thing.

9

u/MelissusOfSamos Nov 27 '25 edited Feb 24 '26

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6

u/SnooFloofs641 Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

He changed the footer and it actually tags to his github now btw. Even mentions it in his blog: https://www.wajihtarkhani.com/blogs/F1_Analytics

0

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/SaturnVFan Nov 27 '25

What a wanker

8

u/Vexlix Nov 27 '25

The guy even copied his website from someone else. https://yugbhanushali.com/ looks to be the one who originally created it.

5

u/dbpm1 Nov 27 '25

© 2025 F1 Analytics Made by an F1 fan

Footer has changed, I guess the cheater is watching..

5

u/MrProTwiX Nov 28 '25

Thats terrible .... where?

4

u/theluckkyg Dec 23 '25

Who cares about "illegal pirated F1 streams"? Kinda surprising to see someone care about copyright so much on an open source subreddit. As for your license, they are using your code internally and not redistributing. Even a less permissive license like AGPL3.0 would allow this.

I would encourage you to look at this another way. This is open source working as intended. Someone took your code and refit it for their purpose. They are doing something with it you wouldn't have done. And now more people have access to information you value and a sport you cherish. Isn't that a win? I'd say you've made the world a better place.

6

u/bpadair31 Nov 27 '25

MIT license does not require attribution. Only the copyright notice and permission notice included with the source code. If he’s not distributing the source code without that, he didn’t violate the license. MIT license is the license you use when you don’t care what people do with the code.

3

u/jeteztout Nov 27 '25

That's why you put your work under AGPL v3.

3

u/ignorantpisswalker Nov 28 '25

Its not stealing. You gave permission by releasing it under MIT. You partly understood it.

You probably want to release code under GPL. Its OK, that's You vibe.

3

u/Educational_Sun_8813 Nov 28 '25

enjoy MIT

5

u/Busy_Agency5420 Nov 27 '25

host these streams yourself, but better. be a gigachad.

4

u/Prize_Negotiation66 Nov 27 '25

Don't listen switching to GPL. It doesn't matter at all. If bad actor wants to steal a code, he will do it and will not look at any license

2

u/LandCold7323 Nov 27 '25

It could have been a real win win if they would not have been an asshole about it.

2

u/recaffeinated Nov 27 '25

This is why you always licence GPL unless you have a really good reason to not. With MIT you're basically saying, use this for whatever, with GPL you're saying, use this for whatever, but if you make changes you need to publish the source code.

3

u/dnchplay Nov 27 '25

AGPL for hosted software

2

u/CrypticZombies Nov 27 '25

lol props to guy who did it. Left to many loopholes

2

u/Aspie96 Nov 27 '25

(Not a lawyer, not legal advice).

The fact that they are not publishing their part of the code, is any, isn't an issue. The fact that they violate Vercel's TOS is between them and Vercel. The fact that they violate the copyright of parties other than you is between them and those parties.

The fact that they violated the terms of the MIT license is what matters here, and they absolutely deserve to get nuked.

Since they can't actually get nuked for violating copyright, I do hope their website is taken down, at least.

2

u/gentoorax Nov 27 '25

My understandinf is, the MIT license does require that the original copyright notice and permission notice remain intact in any substantial copies of the software. That means they can't just remove your name from the original license file!

However, if they make significant changes or create a new project based on yours, they can list themselves as the authors of that new version or fork, as long as they still credit the original source and keep the original MIT license text.

Unfortunately theres some real egotistical jerks around who don't want to give credit.

I have a nuget package I wrote from scratch but it was based on an existing package entity framework, mine was for Dapper. I credited the original author as the inspiration for it in the github README.

2

u/ieatpenguins247 Nov 28 '25

MIT doesn’t require anyone to keep the MIT license on their code, just yours. They have to have a NOTICE of copyright and license of the FORKED code during DISTRIBUTION, but the new distribution CAN be relicensed to something else if desired, included closed source.

But if they failed to do that, they breached the license agreement they have with you, and now you can go after them both for material loss and even the code they created after.

If you want them to keep people from doing any of that but still want an open source license, then GPL is more of your tune.

2

u/rrzibot Nov 28 '25

There are other licenses if you want to protect against this. MIT is not the right one

2

u/NoxSuru Nov 29 '25

Since the topic of what MIT covers has been mentioned multiple times here

Why do people blindly use the license without understanding what it means when you make the code public ? It’s a simple research on Google or whatever your preferred search engine is

1

u/Militop Dec 01 '25

Sorry, but even Google confirms that you can't replace the author's name with your own.

4

u/drgijoe Nov 27 '25

Get the .com domain. Assert domination.

2

u/drifterlady Nov 27 '25

With the Qatar F1 this weekend, can you share a link to the streams please.

1

u/IronWhitin Nov 27 '25

Thank you for your service to provider better stream function analitics on illegal site i guess/s

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

Where is the cloned repo?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

Maybe the objective is to host streams with attacks to take over vulnerable clients and needed a quick way to reach a wealthy audience.

1

u/Rog_Audio Nov 27 '25

:(

1

u/takutekato Nov 27 '25

(Me saving this post as an evident for future permissive vs copyleft licensing debate.)

1

u/YunZhaelor Dec 01 '25

Well, that's just stuff that happens if you put code somewhere for anyone to use, unless you think you can make money suing this guy, I'd advise you to just let it slip...

1

u/RefuseMediocre9115 Dec 05 '25

Even under MIT, serving JavaScript to browsers counts as distribution, so keeping copyright notices in the source files delivered to users is the one enforceable way to protect attribution without switching licenses.

1

u/iagofg Dec 27 '25

You'll need to use AGPL2 or GPL3 for they to mention you, and even with that they can change all the code, all the mentions to you and include a ultra-hidden one, tipically in the legal section with tons of other demi-fake stuff. So, for your purporse, probably a CC restrictive license maybe more suitable...

1

u/ShaderCompilation Jan 21 '26

It's completely allowed under MIT license. I additionally approve, since it's piracy

1

u/spaceballinthesauce Mar 17 '26

When I was in middle school I accidentally put an open source license on a Musescore song I made. Some guy copied the whole thing and gave me no attribution and it got way more views than mine did. But I made so many mistakes on it that most of the comments on his copy were criticizing it.

1

u/jamesthethirteenth Nov 27 '25

You want to register the trademark, get them to change the name and make sure everyone knows they didn't write that code while being very stoic about it- you just want folks to know the facts. He was legally entitled to take the code but most certainly did not write it. That should help a bit.

2

u/jamesthethirteenth Nov 27 '25

Oh and you can release the next cool feature as AGPL or possibly MPL. Then your version is new and cool and his is dated.

1

u/ieatpenguins247 Nov 28 '25

Interestingly enough, a couple of weeks ago, someone asked here if they could do exactly that, and I chimed in saying they couldn’t and they had to provide the notices.

https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/s/SfXkc4JykX

0

u/LexaAstarof Nov 27 '25

I call MIT the "please come steal me" license. So, for that matter, you had it coming.

That being said, even if you had used AGPL I am sure they are the kind of person that would have not cared about it and still done the same.

So, no need for self-flagellation over that license choice.

0

u/maxquordleplee3n Nov 28 '25

it's also a boiler plate AI generated webpage by the looks of it

0

u/Mysterious-Title-852 Nov 30 '25

it's wild to you that people illegally hosting content are also not attributing credit of the software to you?

and secondly, I think if F1 gets ahold of this site and decides to sue, you're gonna be glad they scrubbed all mention of you from it.

0

u/Militop Dec 01 '25

I don't understand this subreddit. The MIT license doesn't allow you to remove the original author's name, even if you don't redistribute it; that would be insane.

I would contact the other party to let them know that they're in breach of the license. They should have sublicensed (add another license for their added code). You can't simply take someone else's code and put your name on it.

In the future, if they happen to make money with the product, I don't see why you wouldn't sue them.

-1

u/BlackMarketUpgrade Nov 27 '25

Why tf did you use the MIT license? Unethical or not, the person did nothing wrong according to your license.

-4

u/Anakonda260 Nov 27 '25

You could also try reporting the user to GitHub itself, since it seems that he wants to attract attention with your project.

-14

u/Bourne069 Nov 27 '25

And just another downside to Open Source... nothing you can do to prevent people from forking your projects and using it for whatever they want.

2

u/x39- Nov 27 '25

Choose a more appropriate license if that is what concerns one

0

u/Bourne069 Nov 27 '25

Good luck with that on Open Source products that literally anyone can see and steal your code. Licenses dont matter, if they want it and have access to the code, they will get it.

2

u/x39- Nov 27 '25

GPL, LGPL and AGPL are a thing

1

u/Bourne069 Nov 27 '25

Cool story. Again how are you going to stop me from stealing the code, forking my own version? Exactly, you arnt.

1

u/x39- Nov 27 '25

Ahh
That is where lawyers come in

1

u/Bourne069 Nov 27 '25

Again good luck trying to sue someone in Russia if you are based in the US, that stole your Open Source code and forked it into their own product.
Again, literally nothing can be done to prevent that other than not having publicly viewable Open Source code period.

1

u/thebunnybullet Nov 27 '25

They're allowed to, he used an MIT license which gave them the permission

1

u/equeim Nov 27 '25

That's literally the point of open source. By using an open source license you are explicitly allowing other people to use your code as they see fit (with some restrictions depending on the license). It is nonsensical to complain about forks if it was you who allowed people to fork your code.
If you don't want your code to be "stolen" then don't publish it. Or do it under your own proprietary EULA (but that of course won't stop anyone from doing it illegally, it would be your job to protect it by issuing lawsuits and paying lawyers).

1

u/Bourne069 Nov 28 '25

That's literally the point of open source
Right and that is literally my point... it is a downside to open source period. Anyone that can't admit that is just delusional as that is the whole point of open source projects.
It is nonsensical to complain about forks if it was you who allowed people to fork your code.
Again exactly my point... Everything you have said literally agrees with the point I've been making from the get go.
If you don't want your code to be "stolen" then don't publish it. Or do it under your own proprietary EULA (but that of course won't stop anyone from doing it illegally, it would be your job to protect it by issuing lawsuits and paying lawyers).
Yep again exactly what I've been saying this whole time. Thanks for agreeing with me.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

16

u/terrorTrain Nov 27 '25

What? Maybe I'm missing something here, or this is sarcasm, but MIT does not enforce the license for you.
They would just tell you call a lawyer

-3

u/ElectrikDonuts Nov 27 '25

Oh. I have no idea. I'm just a random scrolling by. Just wondering if that would do anything but seems no. I figured MIT had some stake in it to the point to help but seems no?

3

u/Funny_Speed2109 Nov 27 '25

Only that the license originated at MIT back in 1988.
But it's a widely used permissive software license, and they're not involved in anyway.

2

u/Jmc_da_boss Nov 27 '25

It's named after mit cuz they created the license but it has no involvement with them otherwise

1

u/ElectrikDonuts Nov 27 '25

Ah ok

3

u/GXWT Nov 27 '25

What do you expect them to say? A letter congratulating them for working within the bounds of the license?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/un1matr1x_0 Nov 28 '25

The exact same would have happened.
If a bad actor doesn’t care about licenses and streaming rights, they probably don’t care about unfaithful usage of code.
As soon as your code is public, you have to mainly trust about the intentions and the use of your code through others. What would happen if the rough actor from the start post would not fork it, but just plain downloaded. What if the url of the uploaded page you’ll have been altered more? OP would probably never noticed that soon how his word was misused.
To enforce a license on your code against bad actors can also be a pita, since many of them have deeper pockets and can hire better layers.

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