Opensource Licensing: Prevent hijacking

Hello everyone,

I am using MIT for my foss projects, but I want to add a few things:

  • any fork should credit all of the contributors, and must not change authors of commits
  • forks must not leave the fork network if they dont add anything
  • forks outside of fork network must not use the original Repo name

I want to add these terms to prevent people copying my Repo without forking, then changing the author of all commits and lastly claiming it is their work and using the original name. (Has happened to me)

Is this possible, whilst still
preserving the opensource principles?

Thanks in advance!

Hi @CodeShell, thank you for your questions.

While I’m not a lawyer, I believe the only way to protect your project name (or Brand) would be through trademarks (not through Open Source licenses).

As for given credit to contributors (or attribution) this is very much aligned with Open Source principles.

Since you are using the MIT license, you may add an attribution notice or a list of original contributors.

A license like Apache 2.0 might be a better fit because it explicitly states that one must respect attribution (and trademarks, among other things).

While I’m sympathetic to your frustration with people who copy your project and claim it as their own work (that’s definitely a no-no), please note that restricting distribution (or forks) of your project does not meet the Open Source Definition. So the solution is not to limit forking, but to ensure proper attribution and protect your project name via trademark.

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