This is definitely a horrifying story, and I feel terrible that you had to go through this! That being said, I'm not sure that open source software is what's to blame here; it sounds more like Sourceforge (along with the nasty people who stole your project, of course) was the main issue; I think the lesson that I and others can learn from is not that open source allows theft, but that relying on a single external service (Github, Sourceforge, etc.) for everything can lead to a loss of control.

This all seems incredible.

> They also wanted to erase me from the history of the project. I was wiped out of the AUTHORS file.

If your characterizations are accurate they defrauded your users as well and in a major way. Many of your users wouldn't wish to continue using your software if its leadership got changed in a deceitful manner. If I'm reading this correctly they were pushed essentially a fork they haven't agreed to. Care to name names in case some users on HN fell pray to this fraud and possibly provide proof that what you allege did occur?

> I was wiped out of the AUTHORS file.

INAL. If they wiped your name from license text then you may also have a strong case for copyright infringement as many licenses require attribution.

I left that out in my post because I've moved on. I may seem a bit triggered, but that is because reading about this Void project possibly doing the same thing to someone else right here in such public view just brought back strong memories. What the void guys are doing is clearly wrong, they should fork with another name, with a separate website, github, mailing list, etc. If the users want to follow them they will. Performing a takeover, even if the guy really is missing, is underhanded. If you see any project doing this, it should set off alarm bells. And, the open source community as a whole should start digging into some of these projects and see if proper attribution is being given. Because, I can guarantee there's a percent of those of us who were erased for political or personal reasons. I made peace with my exit, others might still be clenching their fists over it.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with this, but this is simply not the case here. There is a big blog post about it, no one is trying to boot anyone out. Yes the article does not mention names, but its easy to find out and verify commit histories and social media accounts.

And just to be sure, I think most if not all of the contributors would be happy to hear back and know if everything is alright. The lead was a very central and active part of the community until over a year ago.

Forking the project would kill the original, all servers are payed for and maintained by currently active contributors. We can not simply pull the plug and ask users to switch, if we do this this has to happen over a long time period until we know there are not many users left and there is no significant amount of traffic on the repository mirrors.

Plus, of course, as you have pointed out, you have a non-trivial amount of goodwill built up for the name "void".

Sticking to the proprietary side of the fence makes a lot of sense for you. Steve Jobs is among the many who would tell you that you could never get ousted from your own company as long as it creates proprietary products.

They may have tossed him out of the company but he still gets credit for having created it, and saving it again later. These guys wiped me from open source history. When you aren't making money, credit is one of the few perks. But, I get your point.

If you quit, the story ends there. If you mount a comeback, you can re-rewrite history and be the creator and savior of your project.

Sure you can get fired, but at least you got paid for your work.

If you want someone to volunteer their time, you'd better treat him well.