Note that MetaMask, by operating a public repository on GitHub, has agreed to grant all GitHub users worldwide the right to fork their public repository on GitHub, regardless of the terms otherwise stated in their new license.<p>> <i>If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).</i><p>(Disclaimer, I am not your lawyer.)
Wow, knowing the Ethereum community, this is a very quick way to start developing bad blood between the very open-source liberal community and this pretty important piece of Web3 infrastructure...
This isn't legal right? What does this mean and are there other examples?<p>Is it similar to this? <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/pulling-back-from-open-source-hardware-makerbot-angers-some-adherents/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnet.com/news/pulling-back-from-open-source-hard...</a>
> To ensure the longevity of the services we have been providing to the world, we feel that it is time that we establish some defensibility for our work from large commercial forks.<p>If you read that as "for our <i>future</i> work" it's just an ordinary license change. I suggest they add that clarification.
There is some interesting discussion in an open PR reverting this “<a href="https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/pull/9286“" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/pull/9286“</a>. It sounds like they may have broken the copyright on code by outside contributors.
There's still issues preventing this re-licensing from being valid. <a href="https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/9292" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/issues/9292</a>