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A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

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Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#11

Every time there is a post like this I go check the license of the original project. Invariably, it is MIT. I think this is probably indicative of something, although I couldn't say what.

It's probably indicative of the fact that MIT is the de-facto default license in the JS ecosystem. It's not like other licenses require much more of forks than MIT does.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#12
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say this. IIRC, the MIT license does not require attribution (EDIT: it does) Most people do not understand the philosophy of Open Source. It's not "hey look at me, I made this, look at me". They should not give liberties to other people if they don't want them to use it. EDIT: Seeing the comments to this one, this should be seen as a proof of Cunningham's Law[1] [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cu…

It's literally three lines of actual content. It would not take you long to read it. The MIT License (MIT) Copyright © 2021 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, an…

No need to be condescending with phrasing like "It would not take you long to read it".

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#13
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally three lines of actual content. It would not take you long to read it. The MIT License (MIT) Copyright © 2021 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, an…

No need to be condescending with phrasing like "It would not take you long to read it".

That was necessary to demonstrate that there was no need to falsely recall it. You could just read it. It's three lines, takes about thirty seconds to read carefully, and would have saved you the trouble of posting misinformation.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#15
post #6

Every time there is a post like this I go check the license of the original project. Invariably, it is MIT. I think this is probably indicative of something, although I couldn't say what.

I was going to say this. IIRC, the MIT license does not require attribution (EDIT: it does) Most people do not understand the philosophy of Open Source. It's not "hey look at me, I made this, look at me". They should not give liberties to other people if they don't want them to use it. EDIT: Seeing the comments to this one, this should be seen as a proof of Cunningham's Law[1] [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cu…

[deleted]

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#16

Every time there is a post like this I go check the license of the original project. Invariably, it is MIT. I think this is probably indicative of something, although I couldn't say what.

I think it's likely indicative of the fact that the JS ecosystem doesn't really understand the meaning of open source (or the distinction between "open source" and free/libre software).

The author's comments are quite enlightening of their incomplete understanding of the licenses they use:

> nanocolors implementation and API are the same as

> Colorette. You essentially pirated my work.

After using a license that explicitly allows others to take their work, it's suprising the author thinks that someone "pirated" their work.

Hopefully this signals the start of an awakening within the JS ecosystem, with more and more developers switching to licenses like the GPL that actually respect the developers.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#17
It's easily agreeable that attribution should have been given before publishing, but the level of hysteria in this post is excessive.

The author of the fork immediately complied and had likely just made a mistake in a hastily published fork. I suspect the original author was more frustrated with the fork existing.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#18

Frankly I do not appreciate most of the comments in that thread by others, a lot of then border on or enter "victim blaming", and others are straight up gaslighting, either intentionally or through negligence. Totally unhelpful to "OpenSource" to take this kind of attitude toward people when the terms of their license are exploited.

Agreed. It's like this person's fan club is out in full force to defend their honor. Impossible to see this as anything other than both unethical and a violation of the MIT license.

The issue only being resolved [1] when public shame was involved should close this case.

1 - https://github.com/ai/nanocolors/blob/main/COPYRIGHT#L1-L3

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#19
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to be condescending with phrasing like "It would not take you long to read it".

That was necessary to demonstrate that there was no need to falsely recall it. You could just read it. It's three lines, takes about thirty seconds to read carefully, and would have saved you the trouble of posting misinformation.

It was not necessary. I would have (and I did) edit my comment to rectify my error.

I did not claim I was "sure", which is the point of "IIRC". Calling this misinformation is a bit exaggerated.

You can choose to be kind.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#20
This is going to sound like a dumb question and is certainly going to be an unrelated tangent, but: why in the world does the Node ecosystem have half a dozen competing terminal colorization libraries? Is that much CLI tooling really being written in JavaScript?

I spend virtually my entire workday in a terminal, and I’ve never once needed a CLI tool written in JS. Where is all this code going?

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