

Plagiarism of my open source app ChatSecure - chrisballinger
https://chatsecure.org/blog#6

======
chrisdone
“I realize the BSD allows people to sell my binaries and source but I do not
believe it authorizes them to sell the source under a different license.”

Er, that's the exact point of the BSD license. The GPL even allows selling
binaries and source code, but not re-licensing.

So the gist of this blog post is that you offered your source code under a
license that allows re-licensing provided that your copyright and some notices
are included, someone did it, and now you realise you want the GPL. I applaud
this person for taking advantage of the very point of BSD and making some
business out of it, that chap is smart.

If he's using your logo and you didn't license the logo then that's a
copyright claim. But you have no right to whine about the source code. He can
say whatever he wants about it, that the "product" is his, etc. (You think
Google Chrome doesn't use a hundred libraries written by someone else? But
it's Google that made Chrome, right?) And in YOUR LICENSE you wrote “you
cannot use my name to advertise”, so the only question is whether your
copyright notice and license terms are included in the redistribution.

“… illegally selling licenses to my source code for $13.99-$59.99.”

I would be VERY careful about libeling people by publicly outing them as doing
illegal activities. Alexander Moskalev may even have a case against you for
defamation or libel. I'd take this blog down if I were you. And then go and
read some pages from <http://fsf.org/>.

~~~
chrisballinger
I don't have the cash to buy a "license" to my own code, but I would imagine
he removed the copyright notices like he did for Matt Gemmell:
<https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/235302914258792448>

I didn't have a problem with him selling my stuff, I just have a problem with
him claiming something I wrote as his own.

By the way, Chupamobile responded and removed his software:
<https://chatsecure.org/blog#7>

~~~
chrisdone
Guilty before proven guilty. I'm glad you're vindicated.

------
p4bl0
If you didn't download it, how do you know (s)he removed mentions of your
name, and the BSD license mention? Because if those things are still there,
what (s)he is doing is perfectly legal and fine.

I see two things that you could do (in addition to the DMCA if the BSD license
was actually not respected):

\- Selling it yourself cheaper than (s)he is (since anyway you weren't
counting on making any money with it) with premium/improved features that are
not in the version which is distributed open source ;

\- Or you could just try to advertise your free product, saying that it is the
same thing that this other person is selling, in order to get credited better
for your own work.

~~~
chrisballinger
I shouldn't have to pay money to find out if my license is being violated.
Honestly, I don't even care that they are selling the code, I just care that
they are representing my work as their own.

~~~
ZoFreX
As p4bl0 pointed out though, if your license isn't being violated then you
have no claim here, they're obeying the law and your takedowns are not valid.

~~~
chrisballinger
They are relicensing my software:

Regular License - $13.99

The regular license allows the use of the purchased item in a project for
either personal or commercial uses, without the payment of any further fees or
charges after the initial download cost. The regular license gives you the
right to use the purchased items within 1 project of your own or on behalf of
a client (commercial, personal, or non-profit). You or your client cannot
offer the item up for resale either on its own or as part of a project. Items
purchased under a regular license must not be redistributed or resold “as- is”
or as part of any other collection of files.

What you can do: You can integrate the component in 1 APP. You can be
distribute it only as a binary only (You cannot distribute Source Code).
Commercial use is allowed. You can customize the Source Code.

~~~
bermanoid
And what part of that is incompatible with a BSD license?

~~~
intui
The license was not reproduced. Please read the BSD license.

~~~
danieldk
Maybe you should too. The BSD license only requires reproduction of the
copyright and license terms in (1) the source code; or (2) in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the a binary distribution.

You don't have to state the use of (revised) BSD-licensed code outside the
source or binary distribution.

------
chrisballinger
Hey, author of ChatSecure here. Has anyone else experienced plagiarism of
their open source software? This guy was almost insultingly lazy and didn't
even bother to use a different logo or obfuscate the code.

~~~
dododo
i'm a bit confused: the bsd license allows you to re-sell someone else's
source, binaries, images, etc for a profit. you just have to include the
copyright notice.

is that what you're sending the dmca notice about? because you couldn't find
the necessary copyright notice? (if you didn't download it, how do you know
it's not in the about box?)

~~~
nhebb
If you go to the plagiarized product page
([http://www.chupamobile.com/products/details/600/Secured+Chat...](http://www.chupamobile.com/products/details/600/Secured+Chat/))
and click more info under Regular License, the license terms are more
restrictive than the BSD, which is a violation. However, the author is in
Indonesia, so there's probably not much recourse.

Edit: the _plagiarist_ is in Indonesia

~~~
yarrel
More restrictive terms than BSD aren't a violation.

Plenty of proprietary systems have been based on BSD code. That's pretty much
the point of BSD.

If you want to prevent people placing more restrictive conditions on your
code, that's what the GPL is for.

------
shared4you
What your "plagiarist" is doing is perfectly legal I think. As long as your
name appears in the source code and/or binary, you can't send a DMCA takedown.
Also, he is _not_ using your name to endorse his own product, which is what
point 3 of the BSD license is all about.

Also, note that the plagiarist's derivative software can be under any license
of his choice, be it commercial, non-commercial or personal. He is free to
include / modify your source code and sell it under a different license of his
choice -- the only restriction being that your name must appear in those parts
of his source code _you_ have written. Unless you buy his product and confirm
that he has removed your name, you can't do anything.

Remember that BSD license roughly means public domain with copyright notice
preservation. That's all. It doesn't restrict anything else.

------
jasonkester
I think you're missing an important lesson here: _Your product is more
valuable than you think._

This guy wouldn't have started selling your thing is it wasn't clear that it's
something that people will pay for. Your first reaction when you hear that
he's making money off of it shouldn't be how to stop him. It should be "Wow.
_I_ could be making money off of this.

My advice:

    
    
      - Don't worry about this guy.
      - Put a price on your product
      - Stop giving away the source
      - Improve it until your "competitor" fades away
    

There's no rule saying that you have to give your work away as open source.
And as you've demonstrated, there's also no rule that if you give your work
away for free, somebody else won't notice its value and sell it in your place.

~~~
chrisballinger
Would you trust proprietary software to encrypt your communications?

~~~
charlesdm
Absolutely. Time to start charging for it - you've got something here. Might
as well pick the fruits of your labor.

~~~
jasonkester
Amazingly, this (and the root comment up top) are actually getting downvoted.
I hadn't realized the sentiment among open source developers against making
money from their craft was so strong.

But it shouldn't be. We, as developers, shouldn't harbor any ill will toward
the OP should he decide to pull the open source version and sell it for
profit. We certainly shouldn't advise him _against_ it or recommend an
alternative open source license that better guarantees that nobody can make
money off this excellent piece of software.

Geeks like us tend to have a natural aversion to making money by selling our
work directly, as though it's somehow dirty or wrong in some way that we can't
quite articulate.

But we need to get over that.

We have a guy here (patio11) whose job this normally is, but he seems to have
taken the morning off so I'll do this in his place:

 _On behalf of the Internet, I hereby grant you, the developer, permission to
charge money for your software._

There, you're good.

~~~
statictype
I know you (probably) mean well but you're missing the point and come off as
fairly condescending.

Did you consider the possibility that the author already has a job that pays
him extremely well and that the ROI he gets in spending time providing
customer support/marketing for a commercial iOS app is actually losing money
for him?

You should save the "you are allowed to make money" talk for people who are
actually trying to sell software and doing it badly (Because they undervalue
the work they created) instead of directing it at someone producing what looks
like a labor of love and is not interested in marketing everything he has ever
created.

~~~
jasonkester
_Did you consider the possibility that the author already has a job that pays
him extremely well and that the ROI he gets in spending time providing
customer support/marketing for a commercial iOS app is actually losing money
for him?_

I think that's more a rationalization that developers use to convince
themselves not to charge for their stuff than a reality. I've certainly never
experienced any support/marketing overload with any of my products.

He already has the app in the app store. His support/marketing is where it is
already. All he need do is tick a box marked "allow people to send me money"
in his app store control panel and he's done. In short, there's no "down" for
the app to go. It's already maxed out on the "losing money" front, and doesn't
seem to be overburdening him.

On the customer support side, he might actually see that go down too by
charging. Here's yesterday's discussion on exactly that:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4376126>

This really is a case where there's no downside to charging money. And,
seemingly, a very real downside of keeping it open source.

~~~
statictype
_I've certainly never experienced any support/marketing overload with any of
my products._

Presumably because that's your full time job?

~~~
jasonkester
Far from it. Yikes, I've never bought into the valley startup idea, where you
spend all your time working on your thing. I spend maybe a dozen hours a month
maintaining my little software empire and supporting customers.

There's a reason I promote the lifestyle. Having a little pile of software
products paying you a full developer salary in exchange for answering a few
emails a week is a pretty good place to be.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Well, someone could use your code if it is BSD and charge as much as he wants.

He could use your code with the only requirement to add you to the credits. He
also could modify the license, provided that he respects the due credit.

You can't say: "Now my code is GPL!!", the code that this person is using
continues being BSD. You gave it away, your DMCA complaint is invalid.

Stop whining and learn about the basics of licensing first. Then focus on your
product and not on what other people do. You could also charge for it while
giving your code.

~~~
chrisballinger
Yeah, apparently he removed the copyright notices, violating the BSD:
<https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/235302914258792448>

To help prevent any future problems I have changed the license to GPL.

------
calciphus
Seems like a pretty reasonable response to me.

More importantly, I wonder how frequently this happens - pulling down an open-
source project and trying to sell it elsewhere?

~~~
icebraining
There's nothing illegal about doing that. Only the relicensing is iffy.

~~~
calciphus
If you violate the license, it's illegal.

------
chrisballinger
Here is an update from the co-founder of Chupamobile:

<https://chatsecure.org/blog#7>

------
invaliddata
I just looked at the license he referenced in the blog post:
[https://raw.github.com/chrisballinger/Off-the-Record-
iOS/mas...](https://raw.github.com/chrisballinger/Off-the-Record-
iOS/master/LICENSE) and it is the GPL, not BSD. So all the discussion about
BSD is moot (unless it was really licensed under a BSD style license
previously, and was just changed).

~~~
shared4you
He changed from BSD to GPL just now: [https://github.com/chrisballinger/Off-
the-Record-iOS/commit/...](https://github.com/chrisballinger/Off-the-Record-
iOS/commit/20e7110e5ce29b3f6b91b93e45987e5fc65bef37)

