Sulkan is infringing on VulkanMod's Licence

[ImNotEverOffline]

There is a mod posted on Modrinth called Sulkan and it was mentioned in the Fabric Discord server as well. The owner was extremely hesitant to provide the source code of his mod. I downloaded the .jar file from their Modrinth page and decompiled it. When i looked into the fabric.mod.json, it showed that the modid was 'vulkanmod' and they left the author as Collateral but renamed the mod to VulkanShader. they also consistently used the package 'net.vulkanmod'.

they failed to mention Sulkan is a fork of VulkanMod and also listed ARR as the licence on Github and CC0 on Modrinth. They have not provided the source code of Sulkan which is a violation of the LGPLv3.

Decompiled Sulkan.jar link: https://www.decompiler.com/jar/b46f695ef11f3bc0813b11fcd54c3f66/VulkanShader_1.21.10-0.0.4-alpha.jar

[vancong68]

hmm i think this is a bad problem

[mravatins]

https://github.com/mravatins/VulkanShader

Next time you open an issue, please spend 5 min doing some research.
When the mod used VulkanMod as the base in modrinth and curseforge it's license file is the same as VulkanMod. The new version of Sulkan is a new codebase and has nothing to do with VulkanMod.

[ImNotEverOffline]

I have done my research. The previous versions of your mod (<0.0.4) has been posted on Modrinth along with the newer versions. Even if you intended the newer versions to be listed as ARR, you still included the older versions on the same page and still licenced as ARR which opens you for legal action from the original authors of VulkanMod and the Free Software Foundation. Even if the distributed jars were internally licenced as LGPL, the page on which a user could have downloaded it on(i.e Modrinth, Curseforge) was listed as ARR which is a direct violation LGPL/GPL Section 10:

GNU General Public Licence v3.0 - Section 10

"Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License.

An "entity transaction" is a transaction transferring control of an organization, or substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an organization, or merging organizations. If propagation of a covered work results from an entity transaction, each party to that transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever licenses to the work the party's predecessor in interest had or could give under the previous paragraph, plus a right to possession of the Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in interest, if the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it."

You specifically violated "You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License." by licencing it as ARR on Modrinth. According to Section 8 of the LGPL/GPL, your right to use the licence has been revoked. You do have a 30-day 'grace' period to fix the infringement before your right to use VulkanMod's code is permanently revoked. The 30-day 'grace' period only applies if you are a first time violator. If you do not fix within the 30-day period, you cannot use VulkanMod's code ever again, even if you fix it after. Although newer versions are still fully independent, your older versions still have VulkanMod's code in them and the project itself is listed as ARR so it is still a violation.

[mravatins]

The modrinth page is updated for the latest version of the mod. Previous versions which depended on it, is still under GPL license, which you can see once you download it. Modrinth doesn't have an option to have multiple licenses for different versions, so the license will always reflect the latest version, and individual licenses are in the .jar files for each version. So both versions will continue to stay on the mod page.

[ImNotEverOffline]

Your entire project(the page with the older versions and newer) is listed as ARR which is still a violation of LGPL. Im also aware that you cannot apply multiple licences individually. Your only options would be to:
A) Relicence the whole project(newer versions included) which means you would have to share the source code of the newer versions that were ARR
OR
B) Delete the older versions
OR
C) Move the older versions to a new page which CORRECTLY licences them.

Btw ur in Day 1 of your 30 day 'grace' Period as the DMCA was filed yesterday