111–120 of 276 posts
I've been in the VC-backed startup space as a lead/principal engineer or technical advisor for the last 4 years. In that time, I've worked at 1 startup that closed a $100m C, one that closed a multi-million B, one that recently closed a $30m C, and one that started with a $8m seed. I've started my own startup and worked with founders of other startups on the side advising on the technical side (and once in a while bu…
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> It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses. It appears that they did violate the license: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html 4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions: a. You must give any other recipient…
That's a problem to be resolved by their legal counsel and often not even a fatal problem (e.g. work out some licensing agreement). The first job of a startup is to understand how to solve a valuable problem. If the team is solving a valuable problem, they can figure out how they want to navigate even violation of licenses. Everything else can be negotiated.
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It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses. Where the product starts and where it ends will be two totally different endpoints that are sure to diverge once they find their domain and business model.
Starting off by making an obviously hamfisted move matters. It's a headwind to overcome. Is it possible to overcome? Sure. Yes, you can heal after shooting yourself in the foot. (And, of course, removing attribution is violating licenses ). However, they're unlikely to face litigation for this. The possible legal consequences aren't the actual consequences they're likely to face.
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> It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses. It appears that they did violate the license: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html 4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions: a. You must give any other recipient…
That's a problem to be resolved by their legal counsel and often not even a fatal problem (e.g. work out some licensing agreement). The first job of a startup is to understand how to solve a valuable problem. If the team is solving a valuable problem, they can figure out how they want to navigate even violation of licenses. Everything else can be negotiated.
They lose claim to intellectual property rights over their own technology, even the risk (certainty) of a lawsuit over this is enough to kill the company.
And we are not talking about the company being sued for a breach of license. We are talking about this being used in any kind of dispute in court, client didn't pay? They can just allege that whatever they bought wasn't even the property of the startup, so they had no righ to sell it to them, boom good luck collecting your contract payments.
If you are a big company with a lot of business, sure you move on. But a company that is a couple of months old with this liability already? It's doomed.
Denormalize incompetence again.
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It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses. Where the product starts and where it ends will be two totally different endpoints that are sure to diverge once they find their domain and business model.
If you are so inept that copying someone else's codebase wholesale is what makes you a viable company, then perhaps you aren't worthy of investing in. Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people, which as I type this seems like a sad but unsurprising move.
Just, Devil's Advocate. But isn't that kind of a smart strategy?
Not saying it's "nice", nor even how I would do things. But I'd imagine many, many people get excessively wealthy investing in this fashion.
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> It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses. It appears that they did violate the license: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html 4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions: a. You must give any other recipient…
That's a problem to be resolved by their legal counsel and often not even a fatal problem (e.g. work out some licensing agreement). The first job of a startup is to understand how to solve a valuable problem. If the team is solving a valuable problem, they can figure out how they want to navigate even violation of licenses. Everything else can be negotiated.