LimeWire: Seriously, don't blame us for new "Pirate Edition"
Found on ArsTechnica on Thursday, 11 November 2010
"We have very recently become aware of unauthorized applications on the Internet purporting to use the LimeWire name," says the company. "We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so.
We checked in with "MetaPirate," the hacker behind LimeWire: Pirate Edition. He has no plans to change what he's doing.
"Given the legal pressure that LimeWire is under," he said by e-mail, "it's understandable that they would urge us to stop distributing LimeWire Pirate Edition - but under the terms of the GPL, we have the right to continue doing so. LimeWire Pirate Edition is free software in the most irksome sense of the word."
The sweet options the GPL offers: if you are unhappy with the original, start a fork. Nothing much can be done about that. Well, perhaps using the LimeWire name could be a problem, but renaming a project is just as easy. Just take a look at LibreOffice.