Piracy of open source code!

Seems like open source software isn’t the solution to piracy of commercial software after all. These days with open source going main stream and more software and services becoming free to use, they are either funded by sponsored ads or paid versions of premium services. This is leading to a new form of piracy, where by people are claiming credits for source code they have not written and generating ad revenue or receiving donation from it.

Recently I had the dubious honor of having someone repackage a Firefox addon that I wrote and released on a Mozilla Public license. Although it was open sourced, this person stripped my credits from the source code (violating the licence it was released in) and releasing it as his own without even bothering to even change the name of the plugin.

He had linked the plugin to his ad filled site and then went about generating traffic to that addon on mozilla’s site even to the extend of creating bogus reviews and asking for donation. In fact, he did such a good job that his plugin ranked above mine on mozilla addon’s search page and even on Google search results.

Thanks to Mozilla’s swift response to my complaint, that addon was removed although no further actions were taken out on that user. Looking at his profile, hes other plugin is also a stolen from someone else. I’ve reported it to the owner of the original plugin but never got a response.