Hello,
It has recently been brought to my attention by a peer that one of your customers — the user holding the public IP 176.9.206.100 on your service and whos name I believe is ********** according to his DNS registration — is hosting[1] a modified version of an open software codebase[2] that my organization make available under the terms of the AGPL 3.0 license, and that this same person is refusing to make their modifications to our codebase available to their users. On that basis, I have been asked to contact you as one of the current stewards of that codebase[3].
The AGPL 3.0 license[4] is a version of the GPL 3.0 license[5]. In brief, the GPL 3.0 license requires that persons making use of materials acquired under its terms must make those materials and their modifications of those materials available to the people they distribute any binary matter built from those materials to. The AGPL version goes further and requires that materials and modifications be made available for binary matter hosted remotely that others are only provided access to — intended to prevent SaaS platforms using the lack of this use case in the original license as a loophole.
All we have asked from your customer is that they treat our open source community with reciprocity and respect. They have been able to make use of our work as the basis of their own, but have no interest in returning the favor by following the terms of the license. Attempts have been made to contact your customer about this issue and they have responded, to paraphrase, by lying, evading the matter, and insulting the people making the attempt.
I understand that you have no part in this but as the business providing the infrastructure that this individual is using we believe that requesting that you restrict or end their business with you, or that you pass on our concern as pressure on that basis, is our only available next step in resolving this issue. I am given to understand that other persons, from whom they have also taken parts of the material they are hosting, are making similar requests.
Thank you for your time and patience.
[1] <https://spacedust.us/>, 176.9.206.100
[2] <https://github.com/baystation12/baystation12>
[3] <https://github.com/orgs/baystation12/people/spookerton>, <https://github.com/spookerton>
[4] <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html>
[5] <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html>
Regards,
Spookerton
