The worst part is that instead of backing out and let's say kicking them out of the batch, YC doubled down praising the (pretty poor imho) justification that may also have been written by ChatGPT, like the license :)
YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
11–20 of 276 posts
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#12This is completely allowed under the apache open source license. I'm not sure why people are so upset about it. If you don't want this to happen, release software under a different licensing model.
> This is completely allowed under the apache open source license. I'm not sure why people are so upset about it.
AFAIK, people are not upset about the forking, but everything surrounding the forking, the actual business they "created" and the LLM-generated license.
Otherwise I agree, would be very strange if someone publishes a FOSS project, someone forks it and people get outraged. But I guess wouldn't be the weirdest things social media folks been upset about in the end...
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#13YC Startup School needs a course on basic business ethics
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#14This is completely allowed under the apache open source license. I'm not sure why people are so upset about it. If you don't want this to happen, release software under a different licensing model.
This is a conversation I keep having with people who support permissive licenses.
>Oh no, you're allowed to do whatever you want, but you shouldn't.
>>Then why is Amazon allowed to do it if they shouldn't?
>It's not polite.
>>...
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#15This is completely allowed under the apache open source license. I'm not sure why people are so upset about it. If you don't want this to happen, release software under a different licensing model.
> I'm not sure why people are so upset about it. 1. It reflects poorly on YC. 2. Something can be legal without being moral or ethical.
1. I disagree
2. How is it not ethical or moral? As stated above, you are allowed to resell software based on the Apache license and integrate it into a service. The original authors haven't lost anything.
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#16This is completely allowed under the apache open source license. I'm not sure why people are so upset about it. If you don't want this to happen, release software under a different licensing model.
They initially changed the license to make it appear that they wrote the code, which is outright illegal:
"You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works;"
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#17Everything is getting en-shittified, even YC itself. This has been a trend for my cohort of college graduates. Graduated right in time for a housing crisis, inflation, layoffs, etc. Can't help but feel at least a little bitter about folks who pulled the ladder up behind them.
The people pulling those ladders never had to working about housing crisis, inflation, layoffs.
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#18People look at the top 5 YC success stories and think every company they fund is of that standard. In reality they "graduate" 500-1000 startups every year . They aren't all winners. In fact I'd wager Pear AI is a lot closer to the norm in terms of quality and competency than, say, Stripe or Airbnb. If you look at their recent batches there is an endless parade of thin ChatGPT wrappers.
This is true for every VC no? And the whole idea behind VCs? They aren't exactly only aiming to fund the startups they think 100% will be successful, as then they wouldn't fund anyone, so instead they spread out the risk to catch any surprise winners. Does anyone really look at the line-up of funded startups from a VC and think they're all winners?
Yes but there's a difference between a VC investing a billion dollars in one startup and one investing $100K each in a thousand of them. In the first case they will obviously do a ton of due diligence, go over business plans, get board seats, look at code and more. YC on the other hand has a 10-minute chat with the founder and...that's it.
The earlier you invest, the larger the risk and looser the diligence.
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#19This article reads like gossip/drama creation
Techcrunch article on BuzzFeed level
Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup
#20People look at the top 5 YC success stories and think every company they fund is of that standard. In reality they "graduate" 500-1000 startups every year . They aren't all winners. In fact I'd wager Pear AI is a lot closer to the norm in terms of quality and competency than, say, Stripe or Airbnb. If you look at their recent batches there is an endless parade of thin ChatGPT wrappers.
Well this just goes to the core of your view on the role of luck in life. Are there 1,000 startups coming out of YC every year and 5 of them are run by geniuses who single handedly disrupt loads of markets. Or are there 1,000 startups coming out of YC every year full of roughly equally good people 5 of which get extremely lucky and make boatloads of money.
Airbnb just forked hotels, Stripe just forked Visa.