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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

#271

Post by seoulmetro »

zkldi wrote: post #153

The JS Open Source Community is filled with people grifting things like this. Quite notably, there's a linter called JS Standard Style, which actually has nothing to do with JS Standards. It's marketed as if it was a standard, the fact that it isn't is tucked away in the readme, and also -- the entire project is just a wrapper around someones .eslintrc file, yet barely any credit is given to the ESLint devs who do al…

Wow, how cringey. They reference "standard" as not being used the same way, but instead like "high quality standard". Do they not know that high quality itself is a verified standard, that's why it's sought after? Just weird and writes like a child.

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

#272

Post by andrewflnr »

torstenvl wrote: post #217
andrewflnr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's downvoted because it's a semantic nitpick based on a misunderstanding; it doesn't have enough meaning to contain a "factual error".

If it's just a misunderstanding, why try to punish him with the karma hit? That's just bullying, imho.

The comment provides negative value, noise with insufficient signal. Getting such comments out of the way is exactly what downvotes are for, regardless of whether the intent was malicious.

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

#273

Post by grzm »

woodruffw wrote: post #244
torstenvl wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the guidelines:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#274

Post by smsm42 »

nextaccountic wrote: post #255
smsm42 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

Unlike a public highway, you can't actually harm anyone by publishing to a public repository. The code is just there; you can ignore if you prefer (you can't ignore a swerving car in a highway). What's actually harmful is the blind trust most developers have on adding dependencies without proper vetting. But if someone publishes a package they are not responsible for vetting it for inclusion in your project. So shift…

By publishing one single script - not likely. By publishing 1000 scripts - yes, you can, by polluting the public space and making it so much harder to find real supported code that can be relied upon. It's like throwing garbage on the street. One can won't do much, do it many times - and your neighborhood is a dump.

Same argument as with spam. Sending an email is not a crime, and sending an email to somebody you didn't know to ask them maybe they want to do business with you is not that bad. Do it couple of millions of times, and it breaks the whole system.

> What's actually harmful is the blind trust most developers have on adding dependencies without proper vetting.

Now comes the victim blaming. Nope, the fact the people should verify stuff does not absolve the guilt of those who put garbage into the public space. On the contrary, they are making the problem so much worse. And yes, there are means to deal with the problem, but again "you can clean up" is not an argument that absolves the guilt of somebody who throws trash around. They are doing bad thing, and should feel bad about it.

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

#275

Post by RocketMan9999 »

Some months ago, most of HN didn't like the idea that China's Mars rover (and a large part of their space tech stack) were copied from the US, kinda like "just leave it alone, it's for the sake of humanity."

But I see totally different reactions here. What's the difference here? Or why the double standards? Please enlighten me.

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

#276

Post by dudeinjapan »

honzzz wrote: post #205
smoldesu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he should have made a PR, or at the very least retained the commit history to recognize the original programmer's work. That's non-negotiable, because commit history can be essential to understanding breakage in mature libraries. The fact that anyone would feel comfortable erasing it leads me to believe there's an ulterior motive.

If I understand correctly, the parent is talking about the original author of the library, not the person who forked it.

Yes, this is correct, I was referring to colorette's maintainer. Sorry for confusion.

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

#277

Post by kennm »

d3nj4l wrote: post #73

I keep thinking about this event and it seems like a fractal of bizarre phenomena. The act of stripping git history and attribution while forking is itself malicious, but then aggressively creating pull requests across major projects to use the new version and rack up your download count (???), then picking petty fights with the creator of the original over attribution (????), and the fanbase (?????) of the forker do…

That's Andrey Sitnik's MO. He's done it before (size-limit vs bundlesize, nanoid). Copy. Tweak. Logo. Repeat. He then goes around opening pull requests painting himself as author.

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

#278

Post by hitekker »

krono wrote: post #111
Zerverus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldnt be surprised if the package then gets sold to some shady people. Desperate people do desperate things and this surely looks desperate.

Only just now noticed I've worked with Andrey on several issues in other projects he's involved with (there are many). For what it's worth, these dealings left me with a very solid impression of his person, one that his current behaviour does not at all match. It is either just a really bad judgement call and an even worse handling of the resulting fallout, or, if something fishy is indeed going on, the result of som…

The third possibility is that is your impression of him was wrong.

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

#279

Post by iskin »

noptd wrote: post #270
iskin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Nano Colors author. Even before this Twitter thread we had talk with Colorette author and I added mention to the docs, his name to LICENSE and promised him to not replace Colorette by Nano Colors. The Colorette mention was there 5 days ago.

>promised him to not replace Colorette by Nano Colors. And was that before or after you opened several PRs to replace Colorette with Nano Colors?

In my PRs I replace chalk to nanocolors

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

#280

Post by riffraff »

enumjorge wrote: post #118
riffraff wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cascade of attention deficit[0]? JS is a vast ecosystem with little barriers to entry, and > Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again. I don't think there's anything malicious going on, except a lot of people doing JS. [0] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

> I don't think there's anything malicious going on The dev who copied the code forked someone’s repo, went out of his way to remove attribution and git history, sent PRs to replace the original package in other libraries with his own version, and when called out on it got defensive instead of apologizing. I think malicious is a fair way to describe his behavior.

I wasn't talking about the specific case, but about the general attitude of the JS ecosystem to replace a library very frequently.
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