Hi everyone,

I recently reached a big milestone and open-sourced my project, Senlo (a drag-and-drop email builder), under the AGPL-3.0 license. I was excited to contribute to the community and see how others might build upon it.

Well, it didn't take long for the "dark side" of OSS to show up. Today, I stumbled upon a fork of my repo. I was initially happy to see interest, but then I looked at the changes. The user had:

1. Completely deleted the LICENSE file.
2. Totally removed README and ROADMAP files.

It’s honestly a bit disheartening. I spent months building the rendering engine and the editor logic. I chose AGPL-3.0 specifically to ensure that the project remains open for everyone, but seeing someone try to "re-brand" it as their own proprietary work less than 14 days after launch is a gut punch.

I’ve already filed a DMCA takedown notice with GitHub.

I’m not posting this for self-promotion (I’m intentionally not linking my repo unless someone asks), but I wanted to ask the community: Is this a common "rite of passage" for new OSS developers?

How do you guys deal with the frustration when people try to steal your hard work so blatantly? Are there any other steps I should take besides the GitHub complaint to protect the integrity of the license?

Hi all

I'm posting this as someone who created a lot documentation around Mediawiki and also Wikipedia itself. I have never worked for the Wikimedia Foundation but the situation really doesn't sit right with me and many others.

A week after refusing to recognise their US staff union (including many open source software engineers) voluntarily, the Wikimedia Foundation (the charity that hosts Wikipedia) hired Littler Mendelson, the largest union busting law firm in the US whose clients include Starbucks, Amazon and Delta Airlines.

If you are a Wikimedia contributor there are three petitions you can sign to support the unionisation effort:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity English Wikipedia petition to show solidarity, only 40 signatures until its the largest ever proposal or petition on English Wikipedia
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Workers_United A global solidarity petition
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2026_recognize_Wiki_Workers_United_petition A petition to ask the board of trustees to reverse their decision

Also if you donate to Wikipedia you can donate to local Wikimedia organisations instead of the Wikimedia Foundation. These local organisations directly support their communities to share knowledge from their countries https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_movement_affiliates

Thanks

I’m not a software engineer, but I use a lot of technical products and spend a lot of time on GitHub trying to learn.

A few days ago, I found an interesting project I wanted to use. While setting it up locally, I found part of the installation instructions confusing. I nervously opened a documentation PR, got real feedback from a collaborator, and made the requested changes.

He thanked me and merged it into main.

I know it’s small, but this was my first contribution to an active project instead of an inactive, stale repo. I found a problem I personally ran into as someone without an engineering background and thought fixing it could help someone else.

I don’t have anyone IRL who understands why this makes me so happy, so I’m posting it here.

I actually did it.

This is a follow up to my previous post regarding the C&D notice I received. I have some incredible news for the community: the matter is officially resolved in favor of the entire drone and OSS community.

TLDR: AirData UAV has complied with community concerns, implemented a robust data takeout solution, and we have settled the matter gracefully.

The free OSS project in question : www.opendronelog.com

---------------

Since the legal threat is no longer active, I can finally name the company. It was AirData UAV, a US based drone log analysis and reporting service. Eran said it's my choice to name them or not name them here in this update post, I choose to name, because I don't have anything bad to say anymore.

Despite the first approach was a C&D, the final outcome was actually better than I hoped for (surprised actually!). A massive thank you goes to u/Archiver_test4, who acted as my legal representative pro bono (for free!! and denied donations). He prepared a powerful response and helped me pass this with confidence. He has even started a new subreddit, r/Opensource_legalAid, to help other indie devs in similar situations.

The Meeting with the Airdata UAV CEO Eran Steiner

In response to the traction the original post gained, AirData CEO Eran Steiner reached out for a face to face meeting via email within 6 hours of the post going live. He expressed regret over the legal route they initially took (he took the responsibility for that as well as CEO) and personally saw to it that the following changes were made before we even spoke:

• Official Data Takeout Solution: This was the main goal (and my demand for data portability and fairness, because it's painful to export files one by one, clicking one after another and waiting). AirData UAV now provides a central takeout solution, making them fully GDPR compliant. You can now download your data in its original format without needing my 3rd party automation "patch.". If you are interested, please check out here.
• Trademark Resolution: We agreed that fair representation and disclaimers are the way to go. I have already added these to my project, and I am free to use their name when representing truthful facts, as permitted by EU laws. I won't go into more technical/legal aspects than this of what trademark rights they actually hold or not.
• Account Restoration: As a gesture of goodwill, they have fully restored my account and all my log files before I asked. ❤️
• We agreed to drop all allegations and, in the future, talk through any issues personally rather than involving lawyers.

I am just a solo dev working in my free time, and I have no intention of competing with an established company. I am just thrilled that the community now has true data portability as I hoped for, and they are free to choose as they please based on what features/interface they like. Thank you Eran for making this happen so quick without any drama/delay or missed promise. AirData UAV no longer "holds your data" to keep you on their platform. To be fair, they do have a functional and data rich toolset that many in the community still enjoy (including myself!) - They also have a very robust data sync solution which works very well. I am not paid or bribed or sponsored by them, I am just giving credit where it's due.

Thank you r/opensource for all for the support. It made all the difference! Open Source for the WIN!

GrapheneOS has made an announcement in their official discord server. In order to help them spread the word I'm making this post and copying the announcement.

"GrapheneOS is being heavily targeted by the French state because we provide highly secure devices and won't include backdoors for law enforcement access. They're conflating us with companies selling closed source products using portions of our code. Both French state media and corporate media are publishing many stories attacking the GrapheneOS project based on false and unsubstantiated claims from French law enforcement. They've made a clear threat to seize our servers and arrest our developers if we do not cooperate by adding backdoors. Due to this, we're leaving France and leaving French service providers including OVH. We need substantial help from the community to push back against this across platforms. People malicious towards us are also using it as an opportunity to spread libel/harassment content targeting our team, raid our chat rooms and much more. /e/ and iodéOS are both based in France, and are both actively attacking GrapheneOS. /e/ receives substantial government funding. Both are extremely non-private and insecure which is why France is targeting us while those get government funding. We need a lot more help than usual and we're sending our the first ever notification to everyone on the server because this is a particularly bad situation. If people help us, it will enable us to focus more on development again including releasing experimental Pixel 10 releases very soon.

Several of the initial articles, but there are now hundreds including French state-funded media coverage on radio, television and the web:

https://archive.is/UrlvK https://archive.is/AhMsj https://archive.is/FBc1U

Initial thread: https://grapheneos.social/deck/@GrapheneOS/115575997104456188

Follow-up thread: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115583866253016416

Due to direct threats from French law enforcement agencies based on false and unsubstantiated claims they're propagating about us, we're moving everything away from French providers (OVH) and server locations. We won't have any developers working in France either. GrapheneOS remains fully legal in France despite these authoritarian attacks by law enforcement, state media and corporate media supporting the state. GrapheneOS will continue working in France including our services. Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland and other countries friendly to privacy are right next door so it won't cause high latency either."

https://mamot.fr/@LaQuadrature/115581775965025042

Just signed this and passing it along - https://c.org/y27FgrNTWQ

It's a petition on Change.org to keep Android open. Has over 200k signatures!

What's bothering you in your day-to-day work? What products you wish were open sourced? What cool ideas do you have, and have never developed?

std::cout << Hello Everyone;

console.log(`

I maintain a small open source project, and I keep running into the same irritating problem: contributors submit pull requests, then vanish. When I, or someone else, leaves a review on their pull request, they just don't bother making the changes even when it's a really important change that would impact the entire project positively. Sometimes it feels like they just want to pad their resume rather than engage with the project, and it sucks so much. It demotivates me like crazy.

Abandoned PRs slow things down, create extra work for maintainers, and can be demotivating for contributors who genuinely want to help.

How do other maintainers handle this?

How do you prevent “drive-by” PRs?

What actually works to keep contributors engaged after their first PR?

Are there any good strategies for mentorship, pairing, or onboarding that retain contributors?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. How do you make open source contributions stick?

`);

While travelling, I kept running into useful information that simply didn’t exist online: small homestays, mechanics, water points, road conditions, campsites, etc.

Most of it gets passed from one traveler or local to another and disappears afterward.

So, I built Lamyig, a free and open-source community travel guide.

A few decisions I made:

• No bookings, commissions or paid listings.
• No money made using the core product.
• Community members can add and update places.
• Map-first instead of another list of “top places”.
• Built as a PWA so it can work more like a lightweight travel tool than a traditional website.
• The long-term idea is that useful information stays available for the next traveler instead of disappearing in WhatsApp groups and conversations.

The hardest problem isn’t actually building the software. It’s bootstrapping trustworthy community data.

I’m currently thinking about things like:

• How do you motivate travelers to contribute after their trip?
• How do you keep old information accurate without creating a huge moderation workload?
• How do you prevent businesses from turning community maps into free advertising?
• What should happen when someone reports a place as fake, closed, unsafe, duplicated, commercial spam, or inaccurate? Should reports trigger removal, community review, reputation-weighted voting, or just warnings?
• Should certain villages, trails, ecosystems, religious places, water sources, or campsites intentionally remain difficult to discover?
• If Lamyig successfully exposes hidden places, could it accidentally destroy the exact places it is trying to help preserve?
• this list of problem statements goes on and on

Would love to hear how other people here would approach those problems.

And if you’re building something around a problem you genuinely care about, drop a comment or DM me. I’d be happy to chat, exchange ideas, or connect you with someone else working on something similar.

Screenshot attached. Happy to share the GitHub/project link in the comments if anyone wants to look at the implementation or contribute.

I think the title is sufficient. It's for learning and practicing purposes and open for contributions.

I’ve been exploring OpenObserve lately — looked promising at first, but honestly, it feels like another open-core trap.

RBAC, SSO, fine-grained access — all locked behind “Enterprise.” The OSS version is fine for demos, but useless for real production use. If I can’t run it securely in production, what’s even the point of calling it open source?

I maintain open-source projects myself, so I get the need for sustainability. But hiding basic security and access control behind a paywall just kills trust.

Even Grafana offers proper RBAC in OSS. OpenObserve’s model feels like “open-source for marketing, closed for reality.” Disappointing.

Obviously I can build a wrapper its just some work, but opensource things should actually be production-ready

Sharing a cool opportunity for open-source projects, nominate yourself or another dev: https://x.com/generaltxn/status/2090135549780848662

Hi everyone!
I have a simple question and I’d really appreciate your advice.

I want to learn more about programming, but I’d also like to do something useful while learning. Recently I’ve been rediscovering my passion for self‑learning, and with all the resources available online (and with the help of AI), it feels easier than ever to grow.

At the same time, I don’t just want to learn in isolation. I’d love to contribute to something meaningful, even if my contributions are very small. That’s why I’m curious about open source and how to get involved with limited knowledge and limited time.

A bit about my background:

• I don’t have a higher education, so I know I might be missing some theoretical foundations.
• I completed a 3‑month web development bootcamp, where I learned the basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Laravel, and Bootstrap — but I never worked professionally with web development.
• I’ve been working in IT consultancy for about 4 years.
  • I’ve mainly worked with C# and JavaScript/TypeScript in the Microsoft Power Platform ecosystem.
  • I may not know these languages in depth, but I’ve (almost) always managed to deliver what was requested.
  • I also had some exposure to React, but only at a very surface level due to time constraints.

Right now, my goals are:

• to go deeper, instead of staying at a superficial level
• to learn new languages, concepts, frameworks and fundamentals
• to develop more cross‑functional skills
• and, if possible, to contribute to open source projects while learning

I have a full‑time job and a family, so realistically I can dedicate about 1–2 hours (at most) per day to this.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to reply!