Rimu recently started a new rant thread. I copied the response of the person they had targeted and in less than a minute Rimu had deleted the comment.
This is the comment Rimu did not want people being able to see: https://feddit.uk/post/53824748/26875911
This is the thread I shared it on: https://feddit.uk/post/53824747
BPR - I tried to look at this from both points of view. Both parties have had beef in the past, so tempers are going to be quick on both sides.
Rimu could have done things differently, but AGPL is AGPL. There’s no requirement to provide attribution unless the license is specifically modified. The PyLova license doesn’t add that requirement from what I can tell. The creator(s) of PyLova are getting a little too upset about this, so it’s a reasonable reaction to delete a comment that isn’t really made in good faith.
If they would like attribution in the code, why don’t they act like adults and reach out?
No. The AGPL requires declaring alterations to the code. You cannot alter the license. And you must attribute the original author.
Rimu did not declare alterations and attempted to remove attribution.
You seem pretty sure of that, but I don’t see any of that in the actual AGPL license.
Section 5
This has already been debated on the internet and I’m not an expert so I’m giving up. I guess it boils down to what is a “copyright”, and if the source in this case (PyLova) has a copright notice that needs to be copied over. That’s beyond my expertise.
Edit:
Read this if you want to, but I'm not completely convinced that I'm right
Thanks. I’m trying to understand where you’re seeing the requirement to give attribution still.
I read this section as "if you use code from an AGPL project (PyLova in this case), then you need to:
a) have a dated commit on the project that is using it (PieFed)
b) keep the license the same
c) the entire project (PieFed) now falls under this license (it does)
d) have legal notices about it being AGPL, unless the original source (PieFed, then PyLova, then PieFed again) don’t have them.
Then there’s a paragraph about aggregate projects and how the AGPL license doesn’t automatically spread to all parts of those projects.
So I’m still confused where it’s required to say “Mia was the author”. All it’s saying is “this is AGPL code – keep it AGPL and make the code available for others to see.”
Oh, I didn’t realize you meant the attribution. Section 5 is about declaring changes. Attribution comes from including the original license, which should have a line like
"Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>", per the AGPL text.It doesn’t look like PyLova changed this when forking, because the top of the license file attributes the project to the FSF, and the bottom of the file attributes it to rimu. So both projects screwed this part up, because piefed should contain a line like “portions of this software copyright 2026 rimu atkinson”, and after picking the changes from PyLova, piefed should have “portions of this software copyright 2026” whoever is the author of the portions used.
It’s a common practice and one of the few “moral rights” recognized in the Berne Convention:
Edit to add: Death to Copyright Laws!
because Rimu blocked us for making the fork in the first place. we tried to reach out when we offered him patches for the zero-days that .ML user dropped, and he refused them before copy/pasting them to Piefed and purging the Piefed Matrix channel of anyone who called him out for being a manbaby. even MrKaplan said he was out of line when he admitted that he did it that way specifically so that Mia did not get credit for the code SHE wrote. these were bugs that had existed in Piefed, PyLova devs fixed them, and we offered them as a peace offering to Rimu since he was mad we forked his software.
well, he burnt that bridge. now, if anyone wants to see further Piefed security vulnerabilities, they can just watch the PyLova changelog. we’re not going to go out of our way to help him fix his shit anymore, and we’re not going to keep security patches on the down low just to protect him and his shoddy fucking code.
MrKaplan does seem like the most level headed person in this from the little bit that I’ve read, but that doesn’t make him the AGPL police.
On the topic of “should the comment have been deleted”, I still see it as BPR. The overall tone wasn’t in good faith, combined with previous beefs. You can’t be surprised that the comment was deleted.
a BPR on a post Rimu lied in to gether sympathy from idiots. we don’t need to be level-headed, we didn’t start this fight and we aren’t the ones who keep dragging the drama back up. we’re not the narcissistic loser who can’t stand that he isn’t in control of his little fiefdom anymore or that people aren’t fawning over him like he demands. we also aren’t the ones who purged our communities of everyone who didn’t pass a Trump-style loyalty test.
Rimu can get fucked. PyLova is now beyond his control, headed for a hard fork, and has more features and better security than Piefed ever did or ever will. and since he’s pulling this shit, I’m considering rewriting the entire thing from scratch so we can use a license that requires attribution. so that the next time he uses patches we wrote to fix his shoddy code, he has to prominently display attribution to us since I know that will piss him off to no end.
You don’t need all that. Just put a blurb for copyrights and license in each file, then it’s against the licence to remove it.
From what I’ve heard from others around here, attribution is required with AGPL as long as the author puts a copyright in somehow. Beyond that I’m clueless, but this whole thing seems like people got really worked up over their own mistake. Lesson learned, I guess.