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What are the legal consequences of changing the license of an open source product (github.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by Jozav to c/[email protected]

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The (2?) maintainers of Fluent Assertions have changed the license in the GitHub repository from Apache 2 to a proprietary commercial license. This happened yesterday, it looks like the other 200 contributors were not asked. Commercial users can now buy a license for $130 per developer, per year.

There are some suggestions that the take-over and the new license are violating some articles in the Apache 2 license.

My question is: Suppose that -with reasonable certainty- the maintainers and new owners violated the Apache 2 license. Is there anything that can be done? Is there any way violations like this can be brought to court?

(I'm just asking, not using FluentAssertions and not involved nor affected by this).

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Any previous contributor can bring them to court for violation of license / copyright violation. They contributed under Apache 2, which has conditions. They're redistributing without meeting those conditions.

I'm not sure how that applies to third parties. They seem to be misrepresenting what they're distributing. Seems like that would be sueable by anyone. At the latest, after becoming a customer and paying, under false advertised premises, anyone could sue them.