Regarding Licenses: Consider more restrictive licenses for some use cases #356

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2025-11-06T15:13:33-06:00

GiteaMirror commented

2025-11-06 15:13:33 -06:00

Originally created by @hesreallyhim on GitHub (Sep 17, 2025).

My awesome-list (Awesome Claude Code) has been appropriated by a lot of spurious and exploitive websites that take all the resources and try to package them as a product. A CC-0 license means that would be totally within their right to do so, which is exploitative of both myself and the work of the people whose resources I link to. You might mention this threat for lists that pertain to very contemporary tech products.

Originally created by @hesreallyhim on GitHub (Sep 17, 2025). My awesome-list ([Awesome Claude Code](https://github.com/hesreallyhim/awesome-claude-code)) has been appropriated by a lot of spurious and exploitive websites that take all the resources and try to package them as a product. A CC-0 license means that would be totally within their right to do so, which is exploitative of both myself and the work of the people whose resources I link to. You might mention this threat for lists that pertain to very contemporary tech products.

GiteaMirror closed this issue

2025-11-06 15:13:34 -06:00

GiteaMirror commented

2025-11-06 15:13:34 -06:00

@sindresorhus commented on GitHub (Sep 18, 2025):

Licensing will not stop this. Bad actors will copy your list regardless of whether it is CC-0, CC-BY, or more restrictive. What a restrictive license will do is hurt collaboration: fewer contributions, less sharing between projects, more confusion about what is allowed. The point of awesome-lists is openness and reuse, and locking it down undermines that without protecting you.

@sindresorhus commented on GitHub (Sep 18, 2025): Licensing will not stop this. Bad actors will copy your list regardless of whether it is CC-0, CC-BY, or more restrictive. What a restrictive license will do is hurt collaboration: fewer contributions, less sharing between projects, more confusion about what is allowed. The point of awesome-lists is openness and reuse, and locking it down undermines that without protecting you.

GiteaMirror commented

2025-11-06 15:13:34 -06:00

@hesreallyhim commented on GitHub (Sep 18, 2025):

Well said!

@hesreallyhim commented on GitHub (Sep 18, 2025): Well said!

GiteaMirror commented

2025-11-06 15:13:35 -06:00

@hesreallyhim commented on GitHub (Oct 30, 2025):

@sindresorhus i respect your opinion, but i just wanted to share a regrettable case study that is currently being carried out.

This user got mad at me, even after I accepted his submission to my list, and since then has been leading a heroic campaign against me as a gatekeeper and setting up his own list:

https://github.com/thedotmack/awesome-claude-code

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1oi1l8u/i_donated_to_awesomeclaudecode_passed_validation/

Honestly most of it is uninteresting but he is accusing me of pressuring people to donate to a charitable fund in order to get on the list (his claim that he gave a donation is either a lie or at least unsubstantiated, i have a record of all donations (very few unfortunately). That is such an outrageously immoral accusation i finally decided i had enough (i was hoping it would just go away). But because I decided to change the license about a month ago, he is having a bit of difficulty figuring out how to get away with this. You can see an exhaustive debate he had trying to get copilot to rewrite the history, instead copilot was saying to just do a proper merge so that the investigation is preserved, so he clearly is trying to hide provenance: https://github.com/thedotmack/awesome-claude-code/pull/14

i wouldn't recommend reading all of this garbage, and i don't mean to raise this to start an argument or debate with you, i just wanted to point out that this is really heinous behavior and the only thing that has gotten in his way is the license change that i made, to protect from exactly this kind of abuse. i'm really saddened by this situation, and just wanted to share this to give another perspective on the licensing issue. Anyway, I hope you can understand where I'm coming from, again I don't wish to challenge your position and I respect your work immensely, and I hope other awesome-list maintainers do not have to suffer this kind of abuse.

@hesreallyhim commented on GitHub (Oct 30, 2025): @sindresorhus i respect your opinion, but i just wanted to share a regrettable case study that is currently being carried out. This user got mad at me, even after I accepted his submission to my list, and since then has been leading a heroic campaign against me as a gatekeeper and setting up his own list: https://github.com/thedotmack/awesome-claude-code https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1oi1l8u/i_donated_to_awesomeclaudecode_passed_validation/ Honestly most of it is uninteresting but he is accusing me of pressuring people to donate to a charitable fund in order to get on the list (his claim that he gave a donation is either a lie or at least unsubstantiated, i have a record of all donations (very few unfortunately). That is such an outrageously immoral accusation i finally decided i had enough (i was hoping it would just go away). But because I decided to change the license about a month ago, he is having a bit of difficulty figuring out how to get away with this. You can see an exhaustive debate he had trying to get copilot to rewrite the history, instead copilot was saying to just do a proper merge so that the investigation is preserved, so he clearly is trying to hide provenance: https://github.com/thedotmack/awesome-claude-code/pull/14 i wouldn't recommend reading all of this garbage, and i don't mean to raise this to start an argument or debate with you, i just wanted to point out that this is really heinous behavior and the only thing that has gotten in his way is the license change that i made, to protect from exactly this kind of abuse. i'm really saddened by this situation, and just wanted to share this to give another perspective on the licensing issue. Anyway, I hope you can understand where I'm coming from, again I don't wish to challenge your position and I respect your work immensely, and I hope other awesome-list maintainers do not have to suffer this kind of abuse.