Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] GNU GPL license violation, copyright infringement and censorship on the ZeroNet GitHub repository!

[Ian Kelling]

Human Rights Activist via Discussions among Savannah Hackers, open subscription 
<address@hidden> writes:

> Hello!
>
> Hello!
>
> I requesting urgent help from the Free Software Foundation and hackers at 
> Savannah because at
> https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet a software is illegally distributed!
>
> I have notified the ZeroNet project that they are in violation of various 
> licenses and it resulted of the termination of the GNU GPLv2 license. Soon 
> after they started a voting at
> https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet/issues/2273 where they lied straight 
> into the face of all contributors (they was silent about that the GPLv2 
> license is terminated) and asked contributors to change the license from GPL.
>
> I have contributed to this software and my pull request was closed and than 
> the code I sent was merged without giving me credit for my contribution. More 
> than 14 GitHub account is suspended because I was reported license 
> violations, termination and demanded the repository to replace the license 
> with GPLv3+!
>
> According to my best knowledge once your release your software under GPL 
> there is nothing can stop users to keep distributing it under GPL. Since 
> ZeroNet is released under GPLv2 (and that license is terminated permanently) 
> this doesn't terminated our rights to keep distributing ZeroNet under GPL. 
> Because it would be illegal and in some cases criminal to distribute ZeroNet 
> under GPLv2 I'm legally obligated to replace the license with GPLv3.
>
> Also GPL requires to give credit to contributors and it is disgusting and 
> shameful if someone copy your code and claim credit for it by merging it in 
> his name! Not to mention I archived the
> https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet/issues/2273 url various times with 
> archive.org and you can see they even manipulated the voting, which by the 
> way voting about totally nonsense! They was also discussed to replace the 
> libraries but the issue remains, once you received the software under GPL you 
> are able to distribute it under GPL and because it would be illegal and 
> criminal to use a GPLv2 license everyone is required to use a GPLv3 or a 
> GPLv3+ license on the software!
>
> I noting here that most contributors agreed with me that GPLv3+ should be 
> used, but than @imachug @filips123 and a Hungarian neo-Nazi Tamas Kocsis (aka 
> @shortcutme and @HelloZeroNet) manipulated the voting and pushed for 
> GPL-3.0-only. In reality only 1 person voted for GPLv3-only and more than 60+ 
> for GPLv3+!
>
> Recently, the owner of the repository (who is a criminal copyright infringer 
> also)
> in this comment 
> https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet/issues/2273#issuecomment-564123671 
> proposed to relicense ZeroNet to MIT!
>
> I demand the Free Software Foundation to take action and contact GitHub and 
> GitLab to take down the ZeroNet repository!
>
> I will continue to distribute my copies of ZeroNet under GPLv3+ and nobody 
> can stop me in this specially not after that I was no credited at all for my 
> contributions! They can relicense it to MIT or Apache 2.0 disregarding 
> contributors and GPL terms of conditions but I will not!
>
> I kindly ask the Free Software Foundation and hackers at Savannah to take 
> action!

It's great that you are pushing for GPLv3+! In general, licensing
questions like this should be sent to address@hidden.

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org