pirating open source products piracy is ilegal action where you modify (and maybe publish) the product without actually permission from owner But there is interesting question here: 1. is legal to crack or pirating open source product? do we will end up in the jail for it? before i answer this question you need to understand what is license? and how license will affect creator work Spoiler: What is License? according to wikipedia license is a given permission to other to use their creation or work in other word license is definitely give you indication that product it protected by developer / owner... how this will affect creator work? 1. with license you may gain profit. + people paid pro license + people paid loyalty to use your creation + people can't make any copy cat of your hardwork if that happens you as owner have full right to take it down or even worst things sue them. in general permission is required if you want to do anything regarding to their work and usually restriction also apply but what if we want to modify open source product? can we do it? without getting sued or any trouble? answer is depending on under what license the product is released Spoiler: Explanation some open source license is allowing modifications under their TOS or user agreement if the open source product is released under that license then answer is yes but if not then answer is no and please note that piracy is also counted as modification here because crack mean we modify the product to unlock all paid things for free so now is that clear we are allowed to piracy open source product if that license is allowing modifications Spoiler: Freedom license this a list of freedom license (license that allow modification) remember if the product have CC and ND license don't modify it because that license prohibit modification 1. AGPL 2. GNU GPL (Family) 3. GPL 4. MIT 5. License Apache 2.0 6. The Unlicense (this one is totally freedom) Spoiler: FAQ 1. do developer will feeling uncomfortable when user piracy their open sourced product under that freedom license? maybe yes but the things is you put the product under that freedom license that's mean user can do anything except restriction rule 2. do lawyer will sue you? it should not because that product is released under those freedom license 3. is legal or ilegal to pirating open source product that are released under the freedom license? based on all explanation above yes is legal as long as you only mod the product under freedom license the only issues is that's not ethic because we got something in unofficial way 4. what if the product using license that restric modification like CC and ND? then answer is obviously no you can't modify product with that restricted license
I think the majority of your uses of the word 'piracy' would be best replaced with, for example, 'redistribute' or simple additional uses of the word 'modify'. Also, if you are given license to use a software, you usually (depending on legal whims that year ) also have the right to examine/reverse engineer the software, which may require modification to accomplish. U.S. law makes a specific distinction between modifications made in effort to circumvent a copy protection mechanism, and any that are done for a different purpose. Also, in nearly all cases, except when the freest of license is given to recipients of the software/code, you will either be prohibited from redistributing the modified work, or will be required to follow procedures such as ensuring the original unmodified code is included along with their license or otherwise, depending ont he terms stated in the license.