- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud.
It is being reported that many users’ repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without explicit authorization.
There is also a thread on Ycombinator (archived link)
It depends on the software license.
Does it though? You can still put up a fork somewhere else as long as you uphold the license right? Unless I guess in the case where the license explicitly disallows forks, but I don’t think that’s very common (can you even do that?).
Forks are derivative works (quite obviously) so yes you can forbid them via license terms. Whether or not that’s still open source, take it up with OSI. I vaguely recall that at least once upon a time there was some project that required modification to the code to be published as separate patches and it was generally accepted to be open source don’t ask me which.
Most GitHub repos don’t have a license, meaning you are not licensed to do anything with them. Rehosting them would be the same as rehosting an image you don’t have a license for.