Did Ente Locker copy my code without attribution?
70 points by tusharhero
70 points by tusharhero
I don’t really understand the problem here because fairscan is under GPL and all Ente code appears to be AGPL, which is allowed. Ente also did this quite openly (the blog post says that they even contacted the author).
So, as the title implies, it is only a matter of putting the attribution into the code itself. But as the code as been rewritten in a new language, I can understand that this has been removed without really thinking about it. They probably rewrite it in Rust whith Fairscan code next to them but, then, in all honesty, it is not the same copyrighted code. It is also well possible that the Ente engineer was using several academical sources and, as such, don’t remember that he had one main source for several functions.
What would makes OP happy? Having his name in the code itself? Or elsewhere? It is not really clear to me.
But, yeah, Ente could be a bit more thankful and handling this more elegantly. It might be that Ente people didn’t really understood what OP was really asking (I mean they talked about Fairscan on their blog, they contacted the author, …).
BTW, Fairscan looks awesome. I wonder how it compares to OSS Docs Scanner.
From the split view presented in the blog post, the code in Ente looks to be a 1:1 translation of FairScan's code, with the same variable names and everything. An attribution would absolutely be warranted, and to my understanding required by the terms of the GPL.
IANAL I think beyond "having the name in the code itself", GPL has specific, legal requirements. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4577/does-gplv3-require-attribution
The question is whether these AI rewrites skirt around this by being a "clean rewrite". Again, IANAL, but the proponents seem to argue that it is, while the detractors say that it is not a clear rewrite, or it may not be a clean rewrite in specific circumstances.
I've personally written GPL code, and then had a company who is selling a service come and ask for features, all the while never making any changes they have made to the codebase freely available back. It sucks, because I spent probably upwards of 1000 hours of work on it, all for no financial compensation, while the company is making money off of my work without giving me a single cent. Which they're allowed to do, but again it sucks.
I'd like to continue to write the software, but after my paid work I have hardly any energy to work on it, and also, what's the use? Not only am I never going to see a cent from it, but also the people who use it are making bank off of my free efforts. Additionally, LLMs are trained on it and used to then argue that I should be fired from my paid job as what I do can be replaced with AI slop.
Bit of a rant!
I don’t really understand the problem here because fairscan is under GPL and all Ente code appears to be AGPL, which is allowed. Ente also did this quite openly (the blog post says that they even contacted the author).
Opensource is not public domain. It frustrates me how often people act like it is.
The entire point of all of the open source licenses is that they are protected by copyright. Anyone can distribute a derivative work, but they can't remove the original copyright owner, nor claim to be the copyright owner. Similarly they can't relicense beyond what the original license permits, and even if they do, they still cannot remove the copyright information because the original author[s] have not rescinded their ownership of the code.
But, yeah, Ente could be a bit more thankful and handling this more elegantly.
What Ente did was steal open source code and claim ownership of code that was not theirs to own. They cannot claim ownership of derived code.
why did they rewrite more than 6,000 lines in 3 days after my email?
Oh no, that sounds like slop was involved.
As a paying Ente customer, this pains me and makes me consider leaving for the very first time.
If you work there and read this, please do better.
As a paying subscriber (which I will not renew) and someone who have had bad experience with ente before, this doesn't surprises me, I was already looking for alternatives when I found Claude commits in their code base.
But I am more angry because Fairscan is one of hard to find app where author has really put genuine effort. I have been using it since its Inception and been reading author's blog too, so I am biased.
Also I don't know if this would get my subscription canceled or but this was my mail to ente in 2025 (mind the grammatical mistakes) and everything in this mail still stand, nothing has changed.
app size is 345mb on f-droid
they promote discord over their webpage and I don't know about the matrix situation because I left the channel
The email:
On June 20, 2025 3:26:00 PM UTC, Yumm <redacted email> wrote:
Hello ente, I am a paid user of your photo service, and I love it. But I have several concerns and requets regarding the serivce
- As a service who priortise privacy and Open Source, having discord as your main exchange medium is concerning, I have sent my
requets in the matrix channel quite a few times but no one from the team replied to that. Eventually I found out matrix channel is not
looked after by the team and that saddening, As a paid user, I feel neglected even if I was a non-paid user I would want my problems
be heard by the team.
- The app size is over 350mb and that's also an issue on lower end devices and such. You should work on reducing the app size as a
priority. Also you could app provide apps for diferent Architectures, that would reduce the size to half rather than one universal
apk.
I hope my requests will be heard this time.
The reply:
Hi, thanks for the feedback!
We've shared your concerns with our dev team and will be discussing them internally.
<stuff related to jpeg-xl support i had requested in another email>
Thanks again for reaching out and helping us improve!
Best,
Jay