Well, that sounds totally fine within GPL. What's your expected copyright violation here? And how is this related to you not trusting Microsoft? Is that even relevant for the question?

"without my permission" - When you license something under the GPL (or any other open source license), you already gave them permission to copy and redistribute it subject to certain conditions. So the right question you should really ask is whether they satisfied all the GPL requirements or not. If you do not want anyone to redistribute your software without first asking you personally, then you need to apply a non-open source license to your code.

This old project of yours, did you distribute this project to other people under the GPL? In other words; how did other people obtain a copy of your project? From you, under the conditions of the GPL?

Duplicate of opensource.stackexchange.com/q/6185/758

@Brandin I know my question sounds silly, but I have a concern that Github under Microsoft's ownership is not benevolent. If the act of uploading can be claimed by their corporate lawyers as transferring copyright ownership, they this other person's action harms me.

@NumLock I'm OK with the terms of the GPL, however I am not ever going to trust Microsoft, who seem to be beyond redemption.

When you make code GPL, you're providing the code to the community. Companies like Microsoft behave well and badly; harvest usage data, but use mostly for improvements. GitHub is pretty well-entrenched in users' lives and minds because it works well and is some flavor of free. You are likely better off simply joining, setting up your own org and pipeline to synchronize it with your favored repo, and enjoying the pretty robust code hosting and community GitHub has. Independently and quickly reaching out to the fork is probably ideal and kind too! For legalities, try law.stackexchange.com

Possible duplicate of How do I license, "Use my code as per the GNU GPL, but don't put it on GitHub"

I don't think Microsoft would be able to assert copyright in that way. I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know, you'd need to be the owner of the copyright in order for it to be transferred away like that. You are the owner of the copyright as the sole author of the file, and you have licensed it in such a way that Microsoft is free to distribute it, but they don't own the code and they won't unless you transfer ownership to them. If you're worried about them doing something "illegal" like this, it wouldn't be legally binding.

@derik Why do you care if someone else transfers whatever copyright ownership they might have? That has no effect on your copyright ownership. It is very important to understand that the GPL does not permit any sublicensing of any kind (nor could it under US law). Every recipient of your code gets, and only gets, a GPL license to the elements you authored from you directly, automatically.

"what if Microsoft does something illegal, like assign the copyright of my work to itself" - This would be impossible. However if you really want to clarify this point as to why it would be impossible for someone to set up a system like this to 'steal' or 'swindle' people out of their copyrights, it should probably be a separate question, perhaps on law.stackexchange.com It is not really open-source specific or GPL specific.

"Years ago, the "fine print" on Sourceforge literally said that by uploading code you are assigning copyright to them" - This would also be impossible. If you post your question about your concern of someone setting up an EvilHub designed to 'steal' copyrights, please include a reference for this example. If Sourceforge ever had language like that it was either a misunderstanding or not legally meaningful. Just because you write something in a terms of service agreement does not necessarily mean it is binding.

Ok, reading all the comments and OP's statements, this is just another post to rant about Microsoft. Distrusting Microsoft is not related to the question at all, has nothing to do with GPL or anything else mentioned in this question. OP dislikes Microsoft and just wants everyone to know. Case closed.

If SourceForge did require you to transfer copyright ownership to them in order to upload, then that meant that only the current copyright owners would be allowed to upload anything. If GitHub's TOS included a similar provision, then the other party that uploaded your code would have been committing fraud (by claiming that they were able to transfer copyright ownership they did not actually have). That's unrelated to any violation of the copyright license they do have, and it certainly isn't a violation of the license simply that you fear GitHub's TOS may change in the future.

@derik Regarding distrusting Microsoft and if/how they might "steal" the copyright of uploaded code (using TOS or so): This is not relevant to the question you asked (3rd party uploading "your" GPL code to Github) - please ask it as a separate question (at the correct exchange site) if you need to.

I just googled the article, found this -"Prosecutors said the 33-year-old ripped off Microsoft by manufacturing 28,000 counterfeit discs with the company's Windows operating system on them" and note that you think that Microsoft is unethical for enforcing copyright and thus suspect them of not enforcing copyright ?

I distrust Microsoft too, but if you release open source software then you run the risk that someone will do something illegal with it, and your only defence against that is through the courts. You've got to stop thinking of it as "yours": once it's open source, it's not really yours at all in any meaningful sense; it can be used and abused by anyone.

@Orangesandlemons The irony of OP's post... lol

@Orangesandlemons You seem very naive about how corporations work. Two things are true: Yes, they will try to steal IP. Yes, they will try to attack anyone whom they claim steals from them. And they will lie, even inventing wild claims of harm.

@Derik we for sure can't start a debate about their ethic but the guy in that article CLEARLY violated the law. The restore disc is LEGALLY linked to a specific computer and it cannot be used with another one. If you do not like it then...you do not use MS Windows and you can try an Open Source alternative. If you sell those discs (which are not even licensed to YOU) then you're selling: 1) something you do not own 2) something that can't be sold 3) you're making money out of it 4) refurbishers pays you instead of MS 5) end users have a pirated copy. It's like selling your friend's car...

I seriously hope OP is trolling.

AH NO MICROS$$$$AFTZZZ STEALIN MAH CODEZZZZ