Hi, I’m happy to offer some clarification here. As others have mentioned above, the MIT license is automatically applied to public Repls, and this is a very permissive open source license which allows others to fork and remix.
Q: How can I stop someone from forking my code?
A: The best solution is to make your Repl private. A private Repl can be licensed under any license that you wish, and the best way to indicate that is to include a license file with the code. If you don’t include a license file in your private Repl, then by default you are retaining all rights and copying is not allowed at all. If someone forks a private Repl and makes it public in violation of its license, you can report this and we will delete the public fork.
Q: What license should I choose in order to ensure that my code retains its attribution and isn’t relicensed under MIT?
A: There are a lot of options here. The two main options are proprietary or open source. A proprietary license generally prohibits copying at all. An open source license generally allows copying, but may include conditions such as retaining attribution and keeping forks under the same license. We can’t recommend a specific open source license because there are so many, but you can check out some options at Licenses – Open Source Initiative .
Q: What if private code, or code that is already licensed under a more restrictive license, (eg. GPL) is uploaded to Replit?
A: If you wrote that code, then you are its owner, so by uploading it to Replit you are dual-licensing it so that it is available under the MIT license also. If you did not write the code, then most likely you are not its owner, and you could be infringing copyright by uploading it under the MIT license. The copyright owner could then send Replit a DMCA notice, and we would take the code down.
Q: Is there any other way to get my code taken down?
A: If a public Repl doesn’t otherwise violate Replit’s Terms of Service, we won’t delete it or warn a user for forking it. However, if they remove your attribution from your original code and present it as their own, this amounts to plagiarism and we will unpublish it from Community at your request. The code will still be available on the user’s account, but it won’t be able to trend.
If you have any more questions, please follow up and I’ll be happy to try to answer. I hope this helps!