DMCA takedown of markdown-it

[jonschlinkert]

I'm considering doing a DMCA takedown of markdown-it.

tldr; read this to understand why. The following explains what this issue is about.

I hate the idea of it, and hopefully through my own contributions I've proven that I value the spirit of open source as much or more than the next person (and something like this would be absurdly out of the ordinary for me and how I think), so I'd like feedback on the resolution before I do anything. That said, if you want to share your opinion, please do so in accordance with GitHub's open code of conduct.

(cc @petebacondarwin)

Most of all, I'm embarrassed to admit this out loud but I've sub-consciously and consciously somewhat avoided discussions or too much activity on this project because of the controversy and bullying from Vitaly. But I'd like to change that and start being more active here if that's what the community wants.

Here is what this is about. The markdown-it readme has the following comment:

Regarding this, the following comment was made on the markdown-it project about concerns of that project violating remarkable's copyright.

To which the maintainer of markdown-it replied:

then:

After which I made the following comment, which was promptly deleted (https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/issues/328#issuecomment-275676819)

---

Here is part of the initial email from Vitaly (the part that fit on my screen):

---

Last, since this factors into my motivation for spending time on this library, immediately after markdown-it was forked from remarkable, Vitaly went around and did prs on a number of "big" projects to replace remarkable with markdown-it, whilst also making disparaging and misleading comments about me. Which seemed to have the effect of rallying support from other devs who didn't really know what transpired. Like this:

I'm always excited to work on gratifying things that people enjoy using, and I'm not too motivated to work on things when I get slapped on the wrist or insulted. I've given the vast majority of my time to open source over the past several years, but this kind of thing is seriously disheartening.

[doowb]

I usually don't like the idea of doing a DMCA takedown either, but in this case I think it's acceptable.

I've seen this project since it was first called remarked and I remember when Vitaly contacted Jon about working on the project. Even if there were other agreements made between Jon and Vitaly, the copyright put on this project included both Jon and Vitaly, which means they both had copyright to the project.

Even though Vitaly is saying that markdown-it is not a "fork" of remarkable, the copyrighted code from remarkable is used in markdown-it and should include remarkable's copyright notice as specified in the LICENSE file.

Of course... another idea (since markdown-it is also using the MIT license) is to start merging changes from markdown-it back into remarkable. I'm sure there's some divergence, but it could be a good starting point to getting back into working on the remarkable codebase.

[elhigu]

@jonschlinkert I came across with this while going through my options which markdown library to use...

I checked the commit history of both projects and did see that all commit history was the same until version 1.5.0 where markdown-it did seem to separate. There was no commits from you at all in that part of history. Which part of code of markdown-it do you hold copyrights?

Also I'm sorry about the disagreements you're having... not nice stuff :(

[jonschlinkert]

There was no commits from you at all in that part of history. Which part of code of markdown-it do you hold copyrights?

Please read the OP and attached gist. It explains everything, in detail.

[jonschlinkert]

@olegchir aside from being incorrect, you've been blocked since you violated the code of conduct that was explicitly mentioned in the OP.

Edit: Since it seems convenient to act like the code in this project wasn't created from code in another one of my projects.

markdown-it is the result of the decision of the authors who contributed to 99% of the Remarkable code

Nice try. Here is just one example of where code in remarkable was created from code that I committed to remarked:

• The substitute function in remarked
• was used in remarkable and renamed to "rename"

I want to reiterate that I don't care about the copyright. I care that Vitaly is spreading disinformation that for some reason people are quick to believe (e.g. "markdown-it is not a fork of remarkable, it was 100% written by me". Regardless, let's just pretend that I didn't create remarked well before Vitaly even contacted me, and let's pretend that he didn't contact me and "pitch" me on collaborating. Let's say you did the same with vscode, and you refactored it completely from the ground up (100% new code), then submitted a pr to microsoft:

1. Do you think you would own the copyright?
2. If so, do you also think that you would not be required, or have reason to mention microsoft's claim, given that it's their name on the project and they created it in the first place? Just because you did a "complete refactor"?
3. If you answered yes to both of those questions, let's just ignore the law for a moment, and focus on the question: Why would you commit all of that time and effort to someone else's project "for no reason"? What are your motives? What were you trying to gain?

[jonschlinkert]

Please consider letting bygones be bygones.

I did, and do. You clearly didn't read the background. My name keeps getting brought into this. It's getting old.

[ethernal]

@jonschlinkert Clearly it seems that you were involved in one way or another and you did contribute to the project. You might want to add https://github.com/kentcdodds/all-contributors to your project at this point - that way in the future no one can say you or anyone else for that matter did not contribute anything.

DMCA - I am no lawyer and I actually was checking out markdown-it and remarkable - your project seems stalled quite a bit, now I do understand why. The thing is - IF you consider and will continue it it seems fair to fill the DMCA. You're name is mentioned and tarnished, you reputation at stake and as we know the Internet does not verify it's claims - just rages.

If you'll abandon this project let markdown-it live, but do all what is required to get your name and contribution acknowledged.

Could you please create / add to this topic ALL information that can be disclosed that proves your point? This should shut most mouths. I am not sure if there are other means to settle the dispute, but please consider them.

[mootari]

Is there a neutral third party that would be in a position to mediate in this conflict? While a takedown might be appropriate I'd expect the resulting backlash to be worse than the current situation (you don't win the internet with sound arguments).

[jonschlinkert]

I do appreciate the concern, but I'm going to lock this to collaborators only. I'll keep it open only as a reminder that I'm willing and ready to act on what I said in the OP, but I don't have the energy or desire to discuss this any further.