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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

#41

Post by woodruffw »

ctvo wrote: post #38

I'm losing my mind with people who keep replying with "That's open source baby! Don't make it open source if you don't like!" The problem with this behavior is as follows: - The MIT license requires attribution of the original work. The author contacted the person who forked this privately [1]. It wasn't done until the Twitter thread. - Questionably the fork was renamed and didn't include git history to make the firs…

I was on the forker’s side of things until those last two points: I don’t think anybody should have to justify creating a fork, but the (seemingly intentional) stripping of the revision history and absence of attribution indicates a bad actor to me.

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

#42

Post by sofixa »

woodruffw wrote: post #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 ?

There's lots of CLI tools around JavaScript itself. And many third-party developer oriented services ( Firebase, Netlify, etc.) have their CLIs in JS as well.

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

#43

Post by andix »

gopiandcode wrote: post #16
svalorzen wrote: post #5

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 expl…

For libraries it is very difficult to chose a permissive license. Most companies have a whitelist for licenses for libraries they are allowed to use. And for a good reason. This is mostly MIT, BSD and Apache.

If you use a gpl licensed library in your project, it essentially becomes gpl licensed too. If you ever want to sell your software, this is probably a big no-no. It will become quite challenging, and could end up in a legal desaster.

So to create a successful library, other people are willing to use, you essentially have to release it without restrictions.

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

#44

Post by tylermenezes »

andix wrote: post #33
rasz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely normal fork starts by admitting its a Fork in the first place.

This was missed in the first place, and was a violation of the license. But this was quickly fixed. I don’t want to defend the „thief“ ai, but I think the original author is being a bit too dramatic. If you don’t like people „stealing“ your code, chose a more permissive license. But then also less people will use it.

It wasn't fixed until he went public. As a popular maintainer ai knows how to fork while preserving history. Not to mention that he originally claimed the API was merely "inspired" by colorette.

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

#45

Post by dochtman »

ctvo wrote: post #38

I'm losing my mind with people who keep replying with "That's open source baby! Don't make it open source if you don't like!" The problem with this behavior is as follows: - The MIT license requires attribution of the original work. The author contacted the person who forked this privately [1]. It wasn't done until the Twitter thread. - Questionably the fork was renamed and didn't include git history to make the firs…

IIUC lack of attribution in this case is enough to invoke GitHub's DMCA process against the violating repo.

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

#46

Post by woodruffw »

sofixa wrote: post #42
woodruffw wrote: post #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 ?

There's lots of CLI tools around JavaScript itself. And many third-party developer oriented services ( Firebase, Netlify, etc.) have their CLIs in JS as well.

Thanks for the context. I do very little work with SaaS services, so I’m extraordinarily ignorant of their CLIs!

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

#47

Post by tylermenezes »

ctvo wrote: post #38

I'm losing my mind with people who keep replying with "That's open source baby! Don't make it open source if you don't like!" The problem with this behavior is as follows: - The MIT license requires attribution of the original work. The author contacted the person who forked this privately [1]. It wasn't done until the Twitter thread. - Questionably the fork was renamed and didn't include git history to make the firs…

Don't forget when this was first brought up in Babel he was describing it as having an API "inspired" by colorette instead of what it was (a fork).

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

#48

Post by andix »

tylermenezes wrote: post #44
andix wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was missed in the first place, and was a violation of the license. But this was quickly fixed. I don’t want to defend the „thief“ ai, but I think the original author is being a bit too dramatic. If you don’t like people „stealing“ your code, chose a more permissive license. But then also less people will use it.

It wasn't fixed until he went public. As a popular maintainer ai knows how to fork while preserving history. Not to mention that he originally claimed the API was merely "inspired" by colorette.

I know. Maybe it was bad intent, maybe it was just missed. But it was fixed quickly. Now it is fixed. That’s the important part.

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

#49

Post by tomxor »

ctvo wrote: post #23
tomxor wrote: post #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.

The original author mentioned reaching out privately. https://twitter.com/DerianAndre/status/1441851684095811585 As a "prolific and known" open source personality you'd think they'd be more careful? Their attitude since then has left a lot to be desired.

> Did you talk with him before all of this?

> Yes

This is a pretty terse reply, talk with him when... a month ago, or yesterday. I don't care for either side but I'm suspicious when people reach for twitter shame - it's more plausible that insta-pressure just forced him to drop his daily activities and immediately make changes to save face in public.

> Their attitude since then has left a lot to be desired.

What are you referring to? (not rhetoric)

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

#50

Post by rasz »

andix wrote: post #33
rasz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely normal fork starts by admitting its a Fork in the first place.

This was missed in the first place, and was a violation of the license. But this was quickly fixed. I don’t want to defend the „thief“ ai, but I think the original author is being a bit too dramatic. If you don’t like people „stealing“ your code, chose a more permissive license. But then also less people will use it.

All fixed indeed https://github.com/babel/babel/pull/13783#issuecomment-92725...
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