It wasn't actually stolen as it says in the README. It was a misconfigured Apache server which leaked raw, unprocessed PHP code. I received the code to home.php and profile.php but I didn't save it at the time (I was very very new to learning PHP and didn't realize the significance of what I was looking at).
I knew the significance the moment I saw the `<?php` but force of habit, I had already pressed shift + F5 by the time my brain registered. Somehow never got the code again, maybe some sort of load balancer was leaking something that was cached but just barely.
I want to be clear: I don't care, and I doubt Facebook cares.
But legally, I think this code was stolen. Facebook owns the copyright to the source code, so copying and distributing is theft in the same way that copying and distributing database contents is theft.
> In many states, "theft" is an umbrella term that includes all different kinds of criminal taking. This is the case in New York. Under the New York Codes, theft can be any type of taking, like identity theft, theft of intellectual property, theft of services and theft of personal property
If you're a mathematician and not a lawyer you might think those are different operations. But lawyers, judges, and juries have a unique capacity to argue that you're guilty of subtraction even if you only multiplied.
Does it matter? How is a random person on the internet sufficiently qualified to define theft in a complex domain like digital copyright and intellectual property? You don't have to be a lawyer to be skeptical of what someone says online.
My point is if they replied “yes” where would you be? It’s not inappropriate to be skeptical but asking a person for credentials online is next to useless.
Even if they were a lawyer, lawyers are frequently wrong in their interpretation of law, which is why they argue the relevant points in court, and a judge gets to decide which of them is right.
Still really cool to see.