A developer sabotaged his own open-source libraries, breaking thousands of apps as a protest for commercial companies which make millions from his code and contribute back nothing.
What do you think about his act? Is it legitimate since the license of open source is given "as is"? Should he have changed the license to a non-commercial one?
Can companies that have been damaged out of his act file a lawsuit against him?
Some call what he did DLC/DRM.
I think he'll suffer from reputation loss and vendors will move away from his software or try to back engineer their own based on his code.
Since it is open-source they should be able to do this with the right coder. It's legitimate, companies do this all the time, look at open JDK, used by nearly every single network vendor. It is, AS IS, the software you get what you pay for.
Don't know the specifics around the licensing but I do know GLP means you can edit/alter the code to your own needs but give credit to the author.
Changing the license could ensure he gets paid for all his work effort and support to it as well. I think the clause of AS IS says enough in and of itself and can hold up in court.
Hi @Jairo Willian Pereira, @ITSecuri7cfd, @Rahul Patel, @KashifJamil and @Attila Mate Kovacs,
What do you think about this story? Can you share your thoughts with @ZvikaRonen and the PeerSpot community?