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Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

smartcar.com

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Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#531

Post by jdsully »

intertextuality wrote: post #526
dmh2000 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Github terms of service, if you make a repo public, others are free to view and fork it, apparently even if you place a commercial license on it, or no license. The lawyers will have to figure out if that means copy, use or whatever. https://help.github.com/en/articles/licensing-a-repository

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But th…

GitHub require you license public repos to allow others to fork it. Whether they can use it for a specific purpose is still questionable - but clicking the fork button on github is allowed. They agreed when they uploaded the code.

Note that this is governed by GitHub’s TOS and supersedes anything in the License file.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#532

Post by intertextuality »

jdsully wrote: post #531
intertextuality wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But th…

GitHub require you license public repos to allow others to fork it. Whether they can use it for a specific purpose is still questionable - but clicking the fork button on github is allowed. They agreed when they uploaded the code. Note that this is governed by GitHub’s TOS and supersedes anything in the License file.

> If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking)

So I can "perform" and "reproduce" content through forking, solely on Github. But I couldn't clone it, nor make modifications to my fork, if I read that correctly.

It makes little sense and could be avoided altogether by disabling forking for un-licensed repositories. Or by simply giving all new projects a default (with an opt-out option for no license or alternate licenses).

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#533

Post by caseysoftware »

Cloning someone's documentation is not "cloning our product"

Using the Wayback machine, I looked at both company's docs and the navigation isn't the same - https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware/status/1120521768723255297 - so even the copy/paste job looks like a single page.

Yes, it's absolutely poor form and may be a copyright violation but the screencaps cover OAuth 2.0, therefore everything - yes, including the parameter names - MUST be the same, according to the spec.

Without more evidence, this is a nothing burger.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#534

Post by schwurb »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #298
king_magic wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, they are still parasites with no ethics.

If you won't throw your ethics into the pit for power, someone else will. And them everybody will be forced to throw the shared ethics or be outcompeted. And collectively, everyone will be poorer as a result. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

I leave it to that someone else to have to resolve the cognitive dissonance. One concrete benefit might be not doing in my 50ies due to stress-related health issues.

And I would happily live in a poorer society with better ethics any day (given some minimum threshold of live quality).

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#535

Post by BigJono »

mikekchar wrote: post #510
Gpetrium wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reality is that if an idea is really good, the people who came up with it know it better than anyone and that gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of knowing what is important and what isn't. I have to disagree with you emphasizing this point. If someone/entity manages to get your idea or code, they may be able to sell the solution at a fraction of the cost since their R&D was lower than yours. When the en…

What I find a bit crazy is why don't large corporations do this more often? I literally told my manager when I worked at Corel that we should do this: Find a promising looking startup, clone their offering and blow them out of the water by virtue of the fact that we have 500 sales and marketing people with 20 years of experience (not to mention by being second to the market we can learn how to avoid all the legacy pr…

My theory on this is that small dev teams are an order of magnitude more productive than large ones, and most large companies cannot help themselves when it comes time to assign team sizes.

You can definitely win a war with superior marketing, but it's not a sure thing if your product is inferior.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#536

Post by mlindner »

intertextuality wrote: post #526
dmh2000 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Github terms of service, if you make a repo public, others are free to view and fork it, apparently even if you place a commercial license on it, or no license. The lawyers will have to figure out if that means copy, use or whatever. https://help.github.com/en/articles/licensing-a-repository

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But th…

> Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings.

This is absurd. You don't have to use the "fork" button to copy a repository. It's as simple as cloning it and pushing it. Such a restriction servers no purpose at all.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#537

Post by fsloth »

intertextuality wrote: post #526
dmh2000 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Github terms of service, if you make a repo public, others are free to view and fork it, apparently even if you place a commercial license on it, or no license. The lawyers will have to figure out if that means copy, use or whatever. https://help.github.com/en/articles/licensing-a-repository

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But th…

Uh, if you don't wan't to fork, don't make it public in the first place? Code escrow is another thing, but that does not mean everyone needs access...

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#538

Post by singlewind »

I read the post, from the documentation I can tell it is a very standard oauth2 API will look like. Standard like OpenID connect has very specific on message and query format as well. Do you have more details about API which related to your product and they copied?

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#539

Post by intertextuality »

mlindner wrote: post #536
intertextuality wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But th…

> Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. This is absurd. You don't have to use the "fork" button to copy a repository. It's as simple as cloning it and pushing it. Such a restriction servers no purpose at all.

Obviously such an implementation would disable cloning as well.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#540

Post by intertextuality »

fsloth wrote: post #537
intertextuality wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings. It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But th…

Uh, if you don't wan't to fork, don't make it public in the first place? Code escrow is another thing, but that does not mean everyone needs access...

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, although yes I would agree with you. -In the case- of a repository being public without a license however, forking and related things should still be disabled to prevent licensing headaches.
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