Hugo Theme "Launch Page" Broke my MIT License

The Hugo theme that was announced yesterday on Twitter, Launch Page, is a modified version of my own theme, Lean Launch Page. Not only is it apparent in the design of the theme itself, but if you look at the theme’s README, it’s practically a straight copy off my project.

Now as I released my theme under the MIT license, this person has every right to modify and redistribute my theme. That’s fine. However they removed my original copyright from the theme which is a violation of the MIT license.

My original GitHup repo for my theme: https://github.com/felicianotech/hugo-theme-lean-launch-page
Their repo: https://github.com/binomads/hugo-theme-launch-page

Not only is removing my copyright against the rules and messed up, they didn’t fork it on GitHub either further hiding the fact that their theme is based on previous work.

I would like for their theme to be removed and maybe if they followed the MIT license, readded. Though, I’ve already lost respect for the person.

cc @bep @digitalcraftsman

Agree, this doesn’t look good.

Can you create a quick issue here https://github.com/gohugoio/hugoThemes/issues … just link back to this thread.

We will start by removing the theme from the theme site.

Note to @digitalcraftsman when we announce on Twitter that we add this theme, we should also probably announce that we remove it.

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Hello @FelicianoTech

this is obviously a copy of your theme and I agree with Bjørn Erik that it should be removed. And it doesn’t add any significant changes too your theme.

I should looker closer but with nearly 200 themes it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all of them.

Give me a moment to remove it.

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This theme was added by pros (a consultancy firm with the slogan “Consulting done right” or something like that). They should have known better. We remove the theme and it will not be re-added.

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Every new theme will be promoted on Twitter. We should remove the corresponding tweet as well as it will point to a 404 page.

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Just removed it from the hugoThemes repo and deleted the promotion tweet.

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Sorry I was a meeting. It looks like I don’t need to create that GH Issue anymore since @digitalcraftsman made one?

Thanks for the help.

Well, I removed the theme straight away. This is less overhead for everyone.

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Justice is swift!

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Hi people! Here the guilty.

The only reason why that was done it’s by mistake. The initial purpose was to evolve the theme to something totally different.

The reason why the MIT license was violated, was simply by mistake. I’ll add the reference to the original and obey with MIT license accordingly.

Sorry for the inconveniences.

To comply with the MIT license requirements, I’ve modified the repo and publicly accept the error and apologize for it (https://github.com/binomads/hugo-theme-launch-page/blob/master/LICENSE).

Lesson learned for the future.

Since I understand the original author’s frustration, Feliciano’s, I just want to make clear it was an error and we apologize for this, in behalf of my name and binomads. company.

I’ll also add this error case to the theme itself in order to let other people know how copied source code damages authors; how it happened, why, and how it got solved and communicated.

Thanks and sorry, again, for the inconveniences.

EDIT: I’ve added this error case to the theme itself in order to let other people know better the case and how this could potentially damage authors. Find the link here: https://github.com/binomads/hugo-theme-launch-page#license-error-case-of-study.

Thank you for fixing.