Comment by galad87
4 months ago
I wrote a small app to display a bitrate graph of video files, and posted the code on GitHub with the GPL2 license. A few weeks later someone uploaded it to the Mac App Store and sold it for 7$, the only difference was the name.
This is extremely common. As far as I know any open source app that is remotely interesting will be downloaded, renamed and republished. And this is why a lot of such apps are no longer open source. One example is Sinder Sorhus, which has thousands of open source npm packages but zero open source iOS apps, even the free ones are closed source.
Sinder Sorhus is god damn amazing for the amount of high quality stuff they make
That stings, but how many purchases do you think it's getting?
If they're not complying with your license terms, sue them. If they are then I guess you missed the boat on money.
Taking that all the way to court would be like $10,000, right? Big companies will sue. For individuals it's a barrier to entry
Yeah, that sounds like more hassle than it’s worth. It should be free to file a DMCA claim with Apple, though, and get it yanked from the App Store.
2 replies →
Small claims is cheaper than that and the other side often isn't allowed to use lawyers.
You can cause a decent amount of kerfuffle pro se if you have time and no money.
Well you should be able to sue them for the profits they made selling your app. If it's "only $10,000" and not worth it then OK, but what if they're making 10x or more that amount?
Did they at least attribute you?
No.