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tadfisheryesterday at 11:37 PM1 replyview on HN

The license doesn't prevent those leeches from succeeding. They will republish your app, whether it is fully proprietary or licensed under the GPLv3, and neither Google nor Apple will respond to takedown requests for apps. We get many reports of this behavior in an Android developer community I help moderate, it's pretty obvious there are a few known actors doing this with hundreds of apps, and the stores don't care.

So no, the license doesn't matter.


Replies

copper-floattoday at 12:03 AM

Yeah, it's pretty pathetic on Google and Apple's part.

It might be not a foolproof solution, but I think the license is better than nothing. Then you have a legal precedent that you can cite when you file a lawsuit against these rats.

Most of these people doing this probably aren't in the same country. But whatever. It's better than nothing.