Why I closed FM source code
Monday, 9 January 2012 17:10
I'm being asked this again and again, so here it is:
One day I got an email from one of the users that was something like this: "check this out, looks just like FM". So I did check it out and I found that it was reskinned with some shitty library, authors (me & David) were removed, GPL License was removed and the guy was taking donations for this. But that wasn't enough... so I've started searching for this "Cyber Bandwith Monitor" and I've found two things:
1. almost every major software-download-website was hosting it
2. it was diagnosed on some websites that it contains malware
So I was pissed like hell... some shithead took our work and thought "Hey, let's make a profit out of someone elses work!". So I wasted 3 days just trying to put his website down and take all that apps down. The response was really poor... At that time his hosing provider was go daddy and they were very professional in taking it down in a matter of minutes, so the guy changed his provider and the next one replied to my mails: "So what?". So I've started looking for help and I've described everything and posted it to GPL Violations and all I got from them was: "We can tell you how you can sue him". So all I had was his whois from domain name:
Registrant:
Nir Halowani
serelin 18
holon, holon 58279
Israel
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SPEEDAPPS.COM
Created on: 20-Aug-06
Expires on: 20-Aug-08
Last Updated on: 01-Nov-07
Administrative Contact:
Halowani, Nir nirmice@gmail.com
serelin 18
holon, holon 58279
Israel
972544397622
Technical Contact:
Halowani, Nir nirmice@gmail.com
serelin 18
holon, holon 58279
Israel
972544397622
Since I don't have the time, money and he is in Israel and I'm in Poland I just taken the project down from SF. I left the version that was there just beacause I felt that if I published something it's no use to take it down since the damage was already done... I had a chat with Rick Brewster (the Paint.NET guy) since he had the same problems as I did and what he said is that without lawyers you can't do shit and since lawyers cost a lot of money... Rick had similar problems but had much more luck in taking down the sites - probably due to popularity of Paint.NET.
Since then everytime somebody says "OpenSource is great!" I ask him: "Are you a developer?" if the answer is "yes" then I ask them "Have you created any OS project that is used by anyone?" in 99% cases the answer is "no" and then I say: "Then fuck you".
(Sorry for the emotional tone, but this still boils my blood)
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