this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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Conclusion of this thread:
It took a mightly long time, but the company eventually coughed up the source code. They sent me a big ZIP with an large git repo full of uncommitted changes and a bunch of comments and temp files that really shouldn't leave the company ๐ Clearly some engineer just zipped up the local repo on his hard disk without doing any cleanup.
So they complied with the GPL in the end. Just the bare minimum - i.e. providing the source code on request and nothing mode. I wish they put it up in their Github but they don't want to do that apparently. I'll clean up the embarrassing files and comments and put it up in mine.
@ExtremeDullard just publish everything, they gave it to you under GPL so you can. Sounds like they deserve all the embarrassment they can get.
Nah... It's not a matter of embarrassing the company, it's out of decency for the people who work(ed) there. There's stuff like "This shit is why Stu was fired - Phil" or "Best leave this out of the repo for now as I don't want to be included in the next round of downsizing - Tom" this would make Stu, Phil and Tom look bad and possibly hurt their careers. And it would advertise that whoever prepared this ZIP file for me didn't bother sanitizing company confidential information out of it, possibly putting their job on the line too.
The code is GPL, and I consider the git history part of the code. The rest is inappropriate and potentially hurtful to people who didn't do anything to deserve grief.
@ExtremeDullard You are too kind and thoughtful, they really don't deserve you. A company is just a collection of the people who work there. Maybe the reason why they violated GPL in the first place is because Stu, Phil and Tom didn't care about their work at all. The comments paint a picture of a toxic work environment, and again, that's just the result of the people working there. Good people need to leave bad companies, it's the only way to let the bad die without hurting the good.
It's not kindness ๐ I only made a GPL claim. All I want is the stuff that the GPL entitles me to have. The rest is off-topic and - as you say - toxic. Nobody needs the off-topic stuff in the Github repo I'll post the GPL code to: it's about the code, not the people or whatever drama happened at their workplace.