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This AI Startup "Copied" an Open-Source Project and Got Half a Million Dollar Funding by Y Combinator (news.itsfoss.com)

submitted 2 months ago by RobotToaster@mander.xyz to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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[-] Markaos@lemmy.one 8 points 2 months ago

No, they are just in violation of the original license. That doesn't mean they have to comply with it by properly open sourcing the project. Generally it's also OK to just delete everything.

There were plenty of cases where commercial software included open source stuff in a way that violated its license, and the accepted way to fix the license violation was for the software/hardware vendor to stop using the violated project going forward. Usually they don't even have to for example scrub old firmware downloads that improperly included FOSS bits.

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online -1 points 2 months ago

The damages causes to the developers are equal to the profits made by the company that took their code and made improvements to it, without sharing it upstream as legally required

[-] Markaos@lemmy.one 3 points 2 months ago

OK, cool. Just remember that the only entity who can sue in this situation is Microsoft (because when you contribute code to VS Code, you must sign a CLA that says you give Microsoft full perpetual rights to distribute your code under any license they wish - it is Microsoft who then "graciously" releases your code under a copy left license while also building their proprietary version of VS Code using it).

And Microsoft cannot use the code if it gets released under a copyleft license - that wouldn't allow them to build their proprietary build with it. So the only one who can do anything has less than zero (because it would improve only the FOSS forks, which are meant to be inferior) interest in making these guys publish the source code as proper FOSS.