
DMCA notice against oh-my-fish - dvcrn
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2015-09-22-wahoo.md
======
dfranke
Although this takedown notice evidences some... confusion... about how open
source is supposed to work, it looks to me like the target actually _did_
infringe the filer's copyright by stripping his name off the copyright
headers, which is the one thing that the MIT license doesn't allow.

------
azurelogic
What are the broader implications of this with respect to the rather
permissive nature of the MIT license? I mean, it grants users the ability to
outright copy the code, provided that they include a copy of the license. If
oh-my-fish included the copyright notice, then regardless of any disagreement
between the repo owners, it seems that the author of wahoo has no ground to
stand on here. Can someone explain otherwise?

~~~
linksbro
You are correct. If oh-my-fish properly included the copyright and permission
notice of the MIT license, then they are within the bounds of the license. It
doesn't matter what the author's requests are, they can use it if they
attribute properly. Of course, the author can henceforth change the license
for any future code, preventing any unauthorized forks, which would be against
then open-source spirit of the MIT license.

~~~
azurelogic
Thanks for validating my logic. I wanted to make sure that there wasn't some
major gotcha in the MIT license that I missed.

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knodi123
Without additional context, it appears this is just some high school drama
going on in a relatively minor project? I mean, yeah, clearly the MIT License
would seem to be at odds with his stated reasoning...

But this is not a war between companies. It's just some young guy who decided
to let his friends clone his project, and then he had a falling out with them,
so he unilaterally tried to un-clone it and use the DMCA to do so? Childish,
and maybe it will succeed and maybe it won't.... but it's just one doofus on a
nothing project....

~~~
ncr100
So ... Companies rights are more important than individuals?

~~~
knodi123
No, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that drama involving about
4 or 5 people is not very important to the rest of the world. If I create a
github project containing my favorite vim color scheme, and then I get in an
argument with a friend and try to have his fork deleted, will everyone on
hacker news talk about me too?

------
Tzadeck
If oh-my-fish properly included the copyright and permission notice of the MIT
license, then they are within the bounds of the license. It doesn't matter
what the author's requests are, they can use it if they attribute properly.
But they failed to do so and the creator's copyright was not credited, so they
are in violation of MIT, which is pretty lame considering how easy it is to
use MIT code in a compliant way. I am afraid this DMCA is legit.

------
TallGuyShort
So many comments are focusing on the MIT license. That is the license that
applies if you obtain it via Github and redistribute it.

But this...

>> On August 26, 2015, I, @bucaran, and "oh-my-fish" collaborators, led by
@bpinto, decided to replace the entire source code of "oh-my-fish!" with the
entire source code of "wahoo", but keeping the "oh-my-fish" name.

... sounds like giving he consented to give ownership of the code to the oh-
my-fish project, and is retroactively trying to apply the terms of the MIT
project now that they've had a falling out. I think the takedown needs to be
reversed.

~~~
icebraining
Replacing the code in the shared repository doesn't mean he transferred the
copyright to them. When you contribute to a project, you still own the
copyright, you just provided a licensed copy, and that project must still
comply with it.

~~~
uxp
This is correct. For an arbitrary and hypothetical example, imagine that Linus
woke up yesterday and decided to convert the Linux kernel to an Apache
licensed project. The long and almost impossible task would be to contact each
and every contributor to the Linux kernel and ask for the permission to change
the license of their contribution. The "short" and "easy" task would be to
write a new kernel and replace all of Linux with it, applying the new license.
The old Linux kernel would still be a GPL project, but moving forward any
contributions would need to be Apache licensed.

It appears that the latter example is somewhat like what happened here. The
old Oh-My-Fish project was some licensed project. It could have even been a
WTF Public License[0] that _did_ allow contributors to fork and remove
attribution. At some point, all the code in the repo was replaced with new
code under the MIT license that served the same purpose, and the repo's name
was changed. Moving forward, someone continued to merge in the new code to the
old repo and tried to remove attribution to the new code, breaking the new
code's license.

The Oh-My-Fish project could have done a classical fork, severing ties with
the Wahoo project just before the merge of the re-written code happened and
continue to work in isolation, but it seems that they did not.

[0] [http://www.wtfpl.net](http://www.wtfpl.net)

~~~
jimmy123
So if a contribution changes the LICENSE file without having every contributor
agreement, won't this be an invalid LICENSE change?

From what I heard about the discussion, it seems like the LICENSE file has
been altered by Jorge without all the OMF's contributors agreeing upon.

~~~
justinlardinois
It's invalid only if the license change is inconsistent with the original
license. That's why, for example, converting a project from MIT to GPL is
fine, because doing so doesn't violate the terms of the MIT license.

------
kriro
So apart from bruised egos and non-attribution the major issue seems to be
repo-stars?

I don't claim to understand what's going on at all or who is in the
right/wrong but reading the GH issue discussion it's about repo ownership?
Maybe I'm naive and easy to push around but why not just fork, re-add your
copyright and start from 0 stars...only the code should matter, right?

~~~
Roodgorf
From my understanding the oh-my-fish project has been around for a while and
likely has some size of following. So the problem I see is the members of the
organization using that existing notoriety to gain credit for the work the
Wahoo creator did without citing it as his/hers. The fork and re-add wouldn't
have the desired effect then because likely the core audience of OhMyFish
still wouldn't see it.

Although I'm not sure if I'm missing something here as well, your guess is as
good as mine.

------
kardos
Err, is that how DMCA works? Can the copyright owner retroactively change
conditions of the license [1]?

[1]
[https://github.com/wa/wahoo/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/wa/wahoo/blob/master/LICENSE)

~~~
johnmaguire2013
> Permission is hereby granted [...] and to permit persons to whom the
> Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
> all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

In his DMCA notice on Github, the author states that the copyright was not
left intact. I'm not certain whether he can void the whole license for "oh-my-
fish" because of that or not.

~~~
Ensorceled
That's exactly what the "subject to the following conditions" means. They have
_no_ right to use the code if the copyright notice provisions are not
followed, following those conditions are what gives you the right to use the
code.

If I give a license to use my code on the condition you pay me money, if you
don't pay you also don't get to use my code.

~~~
johnmaguire2013
I guess what I'm saying is: If they adjusted their code to comply with the
license (i.e. add the copyright back), can they retroactively agree to the
terms of the license?

Or in fact, does the creator of the original project have the ability to say
"I no longer offer this license to you"?

~~~
Tzadeck
He can't. Even if he authored all of the code in OhMyFish/Wahoo, which maybe
be the case, the OhMyFish folk can rightly use the entire source of Wahoo
granted they comply to the MIT license, which they didn't hence the DMCA
takedown:

    
    
        The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

~~~
johnmaguire2013
Yes, I was the one who initially noted that he didn't comply with that clause.
I was wondering whether the original creator could retroactively revoke the
MIT license permanently from the guy who abused the license.

------
justinmayer
As with most things, this probably began as a communication problem between
Jorge and Bruno, and it quickly went south from there.
[https://github.com/wa/wahoo/issues/95](https://github.com/wa/wahoo/issues/95)

If you'd like to try a Fish shell framework with a bit less drama, my I
suggest my alternative? (^_^)

[https://github.com/justinmayer/tacklebox](https://github.com/justinmayer/tacklebox)

[https://github.com/justinmayer/tackle](https://github.com/justinmayer/tackle)

~~~
jimmy123
Your plugins are copy and paste of several plugins used by Oh My Fish. Lucky
for you Jorge has no ownership on those so he can't claim a DCMA Takedown.

~~~
justinmayer
That's not a fair claim. While some of the plugins come from OMF, proper
attribution is given in the license.

Moreover, the majority of plugins in the repository do not, in fact, come from
OMF.

~~~
jimmy123
You might want to add the LICENSE to the following plugins then: extract, grc,
pip and python. (4 out of 7 plugins)

~~~
justinmayer
We disagree regarding the provenance of some of those plugins. That said, I'll
take another look and see if I can do a better job at giving proper credit
where it is due.

------
sethherr
Github issue discussion:
[https://github.com/wa/wahoo/issues/95](https://github.com/wa/wahoo/issues/95)

~~~
matheweis
Also this: [https://gitter.im/fishline/fin](https://gitter.im/fishline/fin)

And this: [https://github.com/derekstavis/diary-of-a-stolen-
repository](https://github.com/derekstavis/diary-of-a-stolen-repository)

This is about a lot more than the MIT license. Folks, be clear about the
copyright assignment of code that you contribute to projects, and project
admins, keep an eye on those copyrights.

------
CyberShadow
For another perspective, here is a comment by @bpinto (OMF creator I think?)
which @bucaran deleted from
[https://github.com/wa/wahoo/issues/95](https://github.com/wa/wahoo/issues/95)
:

[http://dump.thecybershadow.net/7ff5a1088842959fb4d8d4be7d3ab...](http://dump.thecybershadow.net/7ff5a1088842959fb4d8d4be7d3ab0b7/00000194.png)

~~~
jimmy123
Jorge Bucaran stole the project and destroyed it? An open source project?
Shame on you! That everyone that work with you know about your actions here!

------
chrisdew
Didn't they give everyone a license to copy their work?

(Due to the DCMA takedown, I can't see whether they honoured the MIT copyright
condition.)

[https://github.com/wa/wahoo/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/wa/wahoo/blob/master/LICENSE)

... Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to
deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software. ...

~~~
linksbro
They did, under the condition that "above copyright notice and this permission
notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
Software."

If oh-my-fish didn't include the copyright notice and permission notice for
wahoo's code they were using, then this is a valid use of the DMCA.

MIT doesn't mean you're free to use with abandon. You still have to credit and
provide the license.

------
justinlardinois
Since you can't read oh-my-fish's repository now, can anyone answer this: did
oh-my-fish's code give attribution to bucaran?

~~~
bucaran
No, they did not. The copyright was changed from my name to "Bruno Ferreira
Pinto".

~~~
jimmy123
I have the code here and it's LICENSED for Oh My Fish, not for you bucaran.

Update: It seems like the solution is simple:

1\. Oh My Fish repo changes the LICENSE to Licensed for Oh My Fish. 2\. As Fin
is a separate project that won't even share the same code, it is going to be
licensed to bucaran. 3\. Community is happy again! :D

------
striking
The DMCA is finally protecting the people it is meant to protect: content
creators that otherwise were powerless against people who stole work.

And to people who say this could have been solved more amicably in a different
way: This is obviously being used as a last resort in this case. Obviously all
other avenues of resolution have been exhausted.

~~~
irl_zebra
I'm not sure I would go that far in this case. The licence of Wahoo is as
follows:

"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software."

To me, that means anyone can fork it and do whatever they want with it, as
long as they keep that copyright notice intact.

~~~
tinco
> To me, that means anyone can fork it and do whatever they want with it, as
> long as they keep that copyright notice intact.

Which they didn't, and that's why this is a great reason to file a DMCA.

------
bucaran
We decided to reconcile and end the litigation amicably adding an AUTHORS file
and the following copyright:

* Copyright (c) 2015 Oh My Fish!

------
geofft
17 USC 512(f), come back, we miss you.

