Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 309 posts

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

#241

Post by cjaybo »

torstenvl wrote: post #225
woodruffw wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this particular comment deserves any downvotes (and I didn’t downvote either it or its parent), but remarking on a comment’s vote status on HN is a general faux pas.

I am aware that complaining about your own downvotes is against the site rules. That is not what's going on here. Instead, danw1979 was asking for someone to explain why a reasonable comment was getting downvoted into oblivion. Neither danw1979 nor lmilcin did anything to deserve the random dogpile they received.

The guideline is about discussing upvotes/downvotes in any comment, not just your own:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

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

#242

Post by iskin »

dandanua wrote: post #53
judofyr wrote: post #40

What is even going on here? https://github.com/jorgebucaran/colorette/issues/78 . They're arguing about who should have attribution for adding a single "!s &&" to improve performance? What happened with the world where open-source was about creating cool projects together , not about who has the most stars on GitHub? To be honest, this is the general feeling I get from the JavaScript community: Instead of working tog…

That's just bullying from Sitnik. Stealing the entire repository and then blaming the victim for stealing a few letters back.

I mentioned Colorette in docs and license even before this Twitter thread. Why is it a stealing?

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

#243

Post by samastur »

ergocoder wrote: post #230
n_e wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chalk maintainers basically discard the performance improvement as micro-benchmarking (i.e. "doesn't matter in the real world"). Chalk maintainers also say tree shaking doesn't matter in the real world. Chalk’s purpose is to color things printed to the terminal. Unless it’s performance is atrocious, which I doubt, it doesn’t matter unless a ridiculous amount of data is printed. > Chalk maintainers also say tree sha…

> Chalk’s purpose is to color things printed to the terminal. Unless it’s performance is atrocious, which I doubt, it doesn’t matter unless a ridiculous amount of data is printed. Chalk is downloaded 15 millions per day . We probably can multiply how much time has wasted from 15 millions run per day. It matters collectively. > No, they say it doesn’t matter for chalk’s use case. Which is command-line tools that are a…

I don't have a horse in this race, but I am a bit bothered by two arguments, because I see variations on them so often (so this is less of a reply to you personally).

> Chalk is downloaded 15 millions per day. > We probably can multiply how much time has wasted from 15 millions run per day. It matters collectively.

If I give you back 5 seconds each day, will it matter to you? Will you be able to enjoy or do something that you otherwise wouldn't? I doubt it. I am certain that is true practically every person in those 15 millions.

The cumulative loss of something can be huge, but still don't matter because its distributed to a degree where it is barely a rounding error.

> Are you saying people don't package the terminal app when written in Node.js?

Details matter. Chalk is ~100K and nanocolors is 16K. Yes, 90K is meaningless saving for a terminal app.

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

#244

Post by woodruffw »

torstenvl wrote: post #225
woodruffw wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this particular comment deserves any downvotes (and I didn’t downvote either it or its parent), but remarking on a comment’s vote status on HN is a general faux pas.

I am aware that complaining about your own downvotes is against the site rules. That is not what's going on here. Instead, danw1979 was asking for someone to explain why a reasonable comment was getting downvoted into oblivion. Neither danw1979 nor lmilcin did anything to deserve the random dogpile they received.

AFAIK, there’s no actual site rule about this. It’s just a faux pas in general, whether it’s your downvotes or someone else’s.

We’re on the same page about them not deserving it.

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

#245

Post by nrabulinski »

iskin wrote: post #232
detaro wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was ? The main problem here is that it wasn't doing these things until the noise started. Nobody cares about it being a fork, the entire problem is how it was forked. EDIT: lol, I only now realized you are ai. So now you are here, pretending you did all this the entire time and did not only add it all back after being called out on misrepresenting it? And at the same time trying to point at the other guys mistakes?

I added Colorette mention before the Twitter thread. Just after Colorette’s author asked me. We even agreed on text form of this mention. He started Twitter thread because of my PRs to Babel. After Twitter thread I just copied git commits (only because another person helped my with doing it right) and created COPYRIGHT file (but Colorette author was mentioned in LICENSE before the threat anyway).

Please tell me why didn’t you just click the fork button or mentioned Colorette from the very beginning but instead started out maliciously and tried to use your influence to your advantage? To me there’s no other explanation than you tried to sweep it under the rug but it didn’t work out so you’re playing the victim card.

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

#246

Post by dehrmann »

smsm42 wrote: post #186
kgeist wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His explanation on Reddit: "The way I learned how to program was by publishing one project a day that used a specific language feature I was trying to learn. No one even looked at my projects or used them until I had quite a few published. I didn't even want people to use them at that point, since I had no idea what I was doing. Then one day I realized that people were actually using some of the things I published as…

Maybe public common repository shouldn't be used as a dumping ground for every random guy learning how to make their first script. It's a bit like learning to drive by going to a public highway and just starting driving at random directions and then saying "why are you folks screaming? I'm just learning, it's depressing you always assume the worst!"

Ever publish a Java project to Maven Central? It's a massive pain, but it also acts as a bar to make sure you're publishing something of value you think others might use.

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

#247

Post by dehrmann »

hitekker wrote: post #179
kgeist wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His explanation on Reddit: "The way I learned how to program was by publishing one project a day that used a specific language feature I was trying to learn. No one even looked at my projects or used them until I had quite a few published. I didn't even want people to use them at that point, since I had no idea what I was doing. Then one day I realized that people were actually using some of the things I published as…

It sounds like he's just making excuses. If he really thought his contributions were just for learning, he wouldn't be bragging in his bio that he's "created more than 1,000 open source projects". That's like saying "I've written more than a million lines of code" because I copy-pasted one line of code a million times in college.

> I hope he didn't brag about "more than 1,000 open source projects." That number's so large it's a red flag that he's never build anything complex.

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

#248

Post by ergocoder »

samastur wrote: post #243
ergocoder wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chalk’s purpose is to color things printed to the terminal. Unless it’s performance is atrocious, which I doubt, it doesn’t matter unless a ridiculous amount of data is printed. Chalk is downloaded 15 millions per day . We probably can multiply how much time has wasted from 15 millions run per day. It matters collectively. > No, they say it doesn’t matter for chalk’s use case. Which is command-line tools that are a…

I don't have a horse in this race, but I am a bit bothered by two arguments, because I see variations on them so often (so this is less of a reply to you personally). > Chalk is downloaded 15 millions per day. > We probably can multiply how much time has wasted from 15 millions run per day. It matters collectively. If I give you back 5 seconds each day, will it matter to you? Will you be able to enjoy or do something…

> The cumulative loss of something can be huge, but still don't matter because its distributed to a degree where it is barely a rounding error.

Are you claiming it doesn't matter to anyone or just you?

> If I give you back 5 seconds each day, will it matter to you? Will you be able to enjoy or do something that you otherwise wouldn't?

I'd welcome the time back since I don't lose anything in return anyway.

So, a big YES here.

Generally I would put faster library as a plus.

Working in a big company, when choosing between 2 open sources, we will need to list down pros and cons.

Among other things, being 4x smaller is definitely one of the plus consideration. I try not to exaggerate this; it's not a major plus, but a plus nonetheless

Saying these doesn't matter is disingenuous.

To you, maybe, but not for most. If everything else is equal, you would choose chalk despite it is 4x bigger in size and slower? Most will choose the smaller and faster library.

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

#249

Post by ergocoder »

iskin wrote: post #234
ergocoder wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And he copied the entire source code earlier and didn't mind hiding who wrote that? I agree with you here, but aren't we talking about something else? > But now suddenly a tiny fix It's an impactful fix. Now colorette can claim that there's no performance difference between colorette and nanocolors. If this fix wasn't there, colorette would be objectively slower than nanocolors. If I am the user, I will choose the…

> albeit after being called out Nano Colors mentioned Colorette in docs and Colorette author in LICENSE before Twitter thread. Colorette’s author asked m and I add the mention and agreed on the text.

Thank you for clarification. Would you mind providing proof of this?

It seems many other comments claiming that attribution is only provided after being called out.

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

#250

Post by hakre »

ghoward wrote: post #207
hakre wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put it under proprietary reciprocal terms and void the right to copy when history is damaged. Copyright should cover that. You can't do this with lax permissive licenses nor with copyleft as they allow to modify the work, which would mean the right to modify the history.

Those are good points. Is there any way to have an open source license that protects history?

None that I can think of. History of projects is by the people who do/participate.

If you want to remove the right to modify the project (which includes the history if shared as common on Github) it is not open source (free/libre) software any longer.

In this case such a license wouldn't be needed either honestly. There would be no win with it, b/c it would have been similarly easily violated and that's it. Don't hope for a strong "legal" thing here, it won't help to solve these kind of problems (IMHO).

And for the license troll:

Instead declare the repository on Github as Database Work. Put it under a proprietary license. Github _might_ falsely read a license from a software stored in that database as the database's license, but you can easily leave an "all rights reserved" in the project description that is more prominently visible than that.

Post reply on HN