DEV Community

Discussion on: How a Rogue Developer Ruined Millions of Software (happened this weekend)

Collapse
 
seobridge profile image
Vasilii Pollock

Is there a safer way to change your piece of coding from being open-source and free of charge to a paid one rather than injecting a bug into it?

Collapse
 
cicirello profile image
Vincent A. Cicirello

They could have just stopped maintaining it. Versions that were already released would still be open. Nothing you can feasibly do about that. But if they no longer wanted future versions to be open source, they could have just announced that, and offered consulting services to add features, fix bugs, etc. Albeit, there'd be no way of stopping someone else with a fork of the last MIT licensed version from continuing open source development.

Collapse
 
anthonyjdella profile image
offline

Completely agree here. Not much else you can do if older versions of your software are OSS, free of charge.

Collapse
 
michelemauro profile image
michelemauro

It is well within the authors' rights. It's not on him to provide you with bug-free code, it's on you to check if the code you use with an open licence is up to what you need.

Collapse
 
sigzero profile image
sigzero

Uh...except he deliberately did it.

Thread Thread
 
hughesjj profile image
James

It's still within his right's. It's MIT, it's very forward about being warranty free.

Thread Thread
 
sigzero profile image
sigzero

I am not saying it isn't. I am saying he deliberately broke it knowing it would break all the projects who relied on it and had nothing to do with the kerfuffle.

Thread Thread
 
michelemauro profile image
michelemauro

They HAD something to do with it: they depended on it.
Was it an aggressive move, that caused problems? yes.
Was it within what the licence and copyright laws permit him to do? yes, too.