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Tell HN: Discord is violating open source licenses

91 points| _e3th | 9 years ago

As you might understand, having your own private open source library used by Discord is something big. Something that makes your effort worth while. So you download the distribution and look for your own, hard earned, copyright notice. Well it's not there because fuck you.

What I found by downloading the (Linux) Discord client from discordapp.com was that they clearly were distributing source copies of my project, but it had no license or copyright mentioning me (which is required). I also found that they are distributing ffmpeg binaries but I couldn't find any matching LGPL license or source code in the distribution.

So of course I contacted them. First via GitHub where I have reached them before, and then two times via their support people on their home page. I get about the same response as any one else: "I'm sorry but we cannot help you. Were you satisfied with the support response?".

It's not okay for companies to pull their pants down and take a big dump on your personal work. Not when they clearly do not even bother with complying with basic open source exchanges. If I write something I want to be properly mentioned as is required in my very license.

Discord, is this so fucking hard to understand?

46 comments

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[+] b1naryth1ef|9 years ago|reply
(Discord Dev here)

Hey Alex, this definitely sounds like a miss on our part, so apologies.

As you know, we're fans of uws and not including the original license was a screw-up in our automation. We're working on fixing it and immediately releasing it with the proper license. I've also asked support to follow up with you directly in case there are further issues.

For the contact, either opening an issue on one of our repos or emailing our legal team ([email protected]) would have been guaranteed to get you an accurate response. Unfortunately the verbiage you used in the email is very similar to that used in other support tickets we get for our API, and our team (as they did in your case) forwards users on to our API chat which can provide more in-depth/advanced support.

[+] socmag|9 years ago|reply
It's nice to see you've reached out to Alex publicly.

Any time someone or an organization brings in someone else's code and makes use of it, no matter what the license we really need to recognize that, it's just the morally responsible thing to do.

As far as ourselves, we're definitely using uWS and that is not going to go without recognition.

Nobody should need to "open a ticket", send an email or post on HN to get that sorted.

npm install and git clone making it way too easy for people not to give a crap about the works of others.

Good to see you guys are doing the right thing, uWS is a serious piece of tech and well worth recognition.

[+] alexhultman|9 years ago|reply
Well what can I say, I'm passionate and I don't like it when people ignore me. Thanks for the quick resolution.
[+] Etheryte|9 years ago|reply
For anyone else slightly confused at first: the Discord Linux release (https://discordapp.com/download) includes uWebSockets in ./resources/bootstrap/discord_rpc/uws.js.

This is only the JS source code and there is no licensing information attached whatsoever.

This directly conflicts with uWebSocket's licence (https://github.com/uWebSockets/uWebSockets/blob/master/LICEN...), which clearly states:

"3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution."

[+] peterwwillis|9 years ago|reply
One of the reasons the GPL is suggested to be applied to every source file is to make sure people don't miss it, which can cause issues like this (the other reason being to fully convey exclusion of warranty)
[+] nemothekid|9 years ago|reply
> First via GitHub where I have reached them before, and then two times via their support people on their home page.

I don't know why you thought dev/tech support would be the path you go down. This is a legal issue, so if this matters to you, send them a legal notice. I've done the work of exporting their contact for you [email protected] (from https://discordapp.com/tos)

[+] geofft|9 years ago|reply
Informally, sending a question via legal avenues is a good way for a company to go into "Our lawyers will be in touch, we can't say anything more on advice of counsel" mode - if you think a question can be satisfactorily resolved without lawyers (and I'd hope that "can you follow the rules" is a question that most people can answer with "yes"), everything will be more pleasant on all sides if the company doesn't go into lawyers-only mode.

Formally, neither the (US) legal code nor the zlib license says that you need to contact a violating company via some particular channel. A company is a single legal entity, and if you've contacted them somehow, you've contacted them, and they're now willfully violating the license.

Practically, abuse@ seems wrong; that's likely to reach an abuse department (which is just a specific support role that's empowered to do a specific subset of tasks), not a legal department.

[+] zelon88|9 years ago|reply
Lawyers didn't write the Discord source, and they probably wouldn't even know where to look on a repo for the license of an included package.

If it was a mistake, an oversight, or just a total afterthought I'd say he started in the right place.

Being that the transaction happened on Github it's likely that the exchange will be public record should litigation ever take place.

[+] chrisan|9 years ago|reply
> I don't know why you thought dev/tech support would be the path you go down.

Dev would be the first path I go down in this case. I'd like to think it was an honest mistake and if I made that mistake and someone brought it to my attention I'd be grateful this wasn't immediately escalated to legal.

I'd like to think everyone is chill/friendly, but I could be naive :)

[+] vecplane|9 years ago|reply
The library in question would be uWebSockets?

https://github.com/uWebSockets/uWebSockets

[+] TheDong|9 years ago|reply
If so, that's the zlib license, which requires no acknowledgement for binary distributions.

If they distributed the sourcecode, they'd have to include the license, but the zlib license has nothing to say about compiling it in.

[+] packetized|9 years ago|reply
Would you mind sharing with HN the data that you shared with the Discord team? I'm afraid that you didn't link what the project was, or how exactly it's a "private open-source library", which seems like a self-contradictory statement.
[+] devwastaken|9 years ago|reply
From the attitude many discord devs have shown in their channels towards other devs, this doesn't surprise me. Unless you make bots for discord, there is little respect. Especially if you're creating your own UI features that Discord just 'happens' to implement once they get popular. While simultaneously turning around and bashing said platform it was possible in in the first place.

Also, dev/tech support is absolutely the correct path in many cases, because they /lead/ you to legal, if necessary. Why users are claiming otherwise does not reflect the purpose of having a support network. Infact, [email protected] is much more for actual abuse of discord TOS, not directly legal matters. I could easily turn it around and ask why anyone would think /that/ is the correct contact.

[+] alexhultman|9 years ago|reply
Right, I agree 100%. Support should be able to direct the communication to where it makes sense. I cannot be hanging out on Snapchat or follow them on Twitter or things like that, I just need support for my issue.

It truly is a world for the rich - money makes money. Censor and sue everything that goes in your way. Get bigger, sue more. Get richer. Disregard everything in your path.

[+] hd4|9 years ago|reply
If you don't get a satisfactory response from contacting them as nemothekid said, contact the EFF

http://www.eff.org

[+] geofft|9 years ago|reply
The EFF are wonderful people but this isn't quite their usual business. I'd probably contact the Software Freedom Conservancy or the Software Freedom Law Center, who engage in free-software compliance efforts (including, if absolutely necessary, lawsuits).
[+] alexhultman|9 years ago|reply
So this post gets 60 upvotes in 30 minutes and is immediately censored by HN and taken off the front page. Right, thank you very much for stealing my work, giving me no credit and then censoring my appeal.
[+] dang|9 years ago|reply
Users flagged it. Moderators didn't touch it. That's routine.

You can call it censorship if you want to but it's a community reaction.

[+] fosco|9 years ago|reply
I have to assume it was an algorithm and not a person.

I think everyone on HN could learn from this situation. I'm not sure how to contact mods but maybe reach out to them...maybe the algorithm took it out due to profanity?

Best of luck!

[+] DanBC|9 years ago|reply
I think all self posts get penalised. You should have written a blog post and linked to that.

You can try emailing the mods and asking them to lift the penalty.

[+] sangupta|8 years ago|reply
It could have been flagged by an algorithm, or may be some over-eager Discord developers to remove this post from public appearance.
[+] socmag|9 years ago|reply
IMHO, you aren't going to get any respect from HN mods for being "correct".

Group-Think is what runs things around here not fairness.