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A comment on Maps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-source fork. Parent comment

Re:Maps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-... by Vinnl on Saturday December 07, 2024 @03:45AM (#42348279)
So am I understanding correctly that there was a private repo that had original code, and in that private repo, someone added the MIT licence? Which didn't make the code open source, because that licence hadn't actually been given to anyone*?

And then Roman made the repo public, effectively distributing the licence to people and thus making it open source, without coordinating with the other contributors?

I don't see any replies by Alexandr, but it feels like this could have easily been resolved with a less antagonistic response by Roman - but of course, I don't know what other history they have.

* I guess technically, it was given to the other contributors with access to the private repo - i.e. Roman did have the legal right to distribute it further under the MIT licence. Presumably, the original contributor (Alexandr) just applied that licence by mistake.

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Re:Maps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-... by pastk on Saturday December 07, 2024 @05:21AM (#42348726)
The MIT license was added by Alexander himself in the initial commit in June 2021. Since then Roman has contributed actively to the code and Viktor started to contribute more recently.

So there are people who contributed the code under the MIT license, so its not a sole work of Alexander and the license was not added as a mistake.

IMO from a legal standpoint Roman is absolutely in his right to redistribute the code.

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Re:Maps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-... by Vinnl on Saturday December 07, 2024 @11:18AM (#42350712)
Yes, as I mention in my footnote, Roman was absolutely legally in the clear. I'm just saying that Alexandr's initial adding of the licence was probably a mistake in the sense that he did not intend to do that (that led to people contributing under different assumptions), and one they probably could have found a way to resolve had he communicated about the difference in assumptions.
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