Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules
by antihero on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @06:44AM
(#11343307)
Legally isn't it totally NPM as a company to publish existing versions of left-pad because those versions were already released under a license that allows redistribution, whether the author wants them to or not? Or can the author effectively veto this?
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Re:I've Just Liberated My Modules
by ShaneCurcuru on Wednesday March 23, 2016 @07:19AM
(#11343451)
Good question. Under something like GPL or Apache, npm (or anyone, really) would have a clear legal reason to continue using and redistributing the code; there's nothing the copyright holder can do about that (unless you actually violate the license terms).
Under WTFPL, that's certainly the intent of the license, but I haven't heard any court declaring a case based on WTFPL, so you don't actually know what the courts would make of it. But in general, yes, I'd bet a court would let people do what the f* they wanted once they got some code under WTFPL.
The separate question is: ethically or business-wise, do they want to continue publishing code from an author who explicitly tells them not to? Legally they (almost certainly) could, but as a FOSS business, would they want to?
Software Licenses are pretty easy for the basics - after you read the whole thing.
From what I can tell[0], left-pad was released under the "Do what the fuck you want public license"[1], so I suppose NPM can do whatever the fuck they want, including redistribution.
[0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/left-pad (although I suppose its possible the library was added after the package was re-added -- I don't see a license on the GitHub page)