guy creates very cool looking, advanced css effects library that went viral

guy puts it up on GitHub

guy writes a ranty post and pins it to top the of issues with stuff like "i'm not going to make this a module or library that can be installed, and also don't try because i've already created a seperate repo for that" ON AN OPEN SOURCE LIBRARY

dude, you already open-sourced it, people are going to use it however they want

idk, just found this to be a very weird vibe, thought i'd share. thoughts?

Open source ≠ FLOSS

Free to read does not imply free to use

That is an awkward and wrong way of informing the public about "all rights reserved" being the license of choice for that CSS library.

Are you saying some people put LICENSE file for a checkmark and expect consumers to not derive their work when LICENSE file is kept intact and is not being violated? Sounds about right. /s

wow, a lot of idealists here in the comments. regardless of the license field, i could fork said repo, and mangle it enough that it would be indistinguishable from the original. then whose to say i "stole" it? you can't prove it.

I'm just saying this guy seems like he wants to have his cake and eat it too

Reminds me of the guy behind the faker-php library. It's a library to generate false data so it has a lot of files just full of possible data to be used, making it a rather large library.

He abandoned the package, which isn't such a big deal honestly. A lot of people don't want to stay as maintainers forever, even on packages they themselves created.

Buuut he didn't leave it at that.

He made a big post on his blog where he tried justifying abandoning the package (honestly not needed) and discourage people from using it using some bro-science to conclude his heavy package was super bad because global warming.

@vintprox @fullstackclown you seem to have misunderstood what a license file is. You don't even need a license file, but then no one can legally use your code in a way that infringes your copyrights. No one gives a shit if some home gamer makes a website with it, but it's another thing if it gets commercial usage. Then there's actual money involved and it's worthy of a legal battle.

I was kinda hoping that someone would write a comment from another angle. It's his own repo, why would he need to accept changes to it?

@electrineer And I was hoping someone could read through sarcasm (marked with "/s"). I'm not coming from the mentality that maintainer must accept anything at all.

@vintprox lol, I remember reading the /s but for some reason I just didn't register it. Well, I'm still feeling cognitive dissonance since we don't actually know if a license was in place and what kind.

Im not sure I see the problem of having public code that’s not free to use …? Many companies do that in fact, I think vscode was such an example. If in the end the library the person is doing is free to use what’s the big deal after all ?

@Earu

It's not open source when code has no permissive license attached, that's the deal. "Open source" is not the same as "source-available" nor free tier. You don't get to redistribute anything nor publicize modifications to such code.

In this particular scenario, however, the scenario is reversed: author issued FOSS license (I infer this from @fullstackclown's words) along with his code and now demands that people don't exercise their rights and permissions expressed by this same license, meaning double standards.

Open source is open source e.g source available im not sure why you make a difference when there isn’t any. The difference lies in licensing in which case I agree with you if that’s the case

@Earu

"Im not sure I see the problem of having public code that’s not free to use …?"

"Open source is open source e.g source available im not sure why you make a difference when there isn’t any."

Not all source-available software qualifies as open-source one, meanwhile all open-source is exclusively source-available. Let's not make an argument of ladder vs stepladder.