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The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/Then_Dragonfly2734 on 2026-01-17 19:01:24+00:00.

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?