YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup • Hacker News Board

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#121

Post by light_hue_1 » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #68

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…

The problem is that they took someone else's code, claimed they built it themselves, and then claimed that as evidence for the velocity and capability of their team.

If they had said it's based on X. Or that they're going in a different direction. Or even that they're going in the same direction but will best that other team. Who cares? YC should bet on multiple companies in the same space. It's only logical.

What bothers people is the lie.

Also. They did break the terms of the license. They replaced the Apache license with their own enterprise license. They said they have the rights to relicense the code. Apache requires that they disclose the origin of the code and what modifications they made. And they lied to YC about that, they don't have any of these rights.

It's not sound business to lie to investors. It's not sound business to violate licenses.

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#122

Post by wpietri » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

llm_trw wrote: post #72

wpietri wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think those conversations are worth listening to. Do we want a society where people release a lot of open-source code? Or do we want one where people get tired of doing free labor for greedy jerks, and so stop releasing things openly? Civilization runs on politeness and other things that flow not from our current laws but from respect for others. We ignore that at our peril.

We're not talking about open source code. We are talking about the MIT license. The two are not the same.

As long as we're nit-picking, we're talking about the Apache license.

But my point isn't about the specific license. It's about one set of people very generously doing lots of labor and publishing the result in hopes of making the world a little better. And then some other people exploiting that for personal gain with no regard for the first group.

That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. For example, Gutenberg enabled the creation of the publishing industry. Pirate book publishers saw a way to make some money by exploiting the labor of authors and original publishers for their own gain. That moral problem is why copyright was considered important enough to put into the constitution. [1]

Focusing on the specific text of a specific license is missing the point. Both my point and the point of this article, which is why YC is taking heat for backing these guys.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C8-1/...

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#123

Post by dangitman » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

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Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#124

Post by CharlieDigital » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

drawkward wrote: post #104

CharlieDigital wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

    > Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people

This is exactly what VCs are looking for. They are going to hand you a check worth several hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. They are not doing this because it's a charity; they are doing this because they are making a bet that they'll get some return on that investment.

This is the purpose of a VC: to deploy capital in a way that is likely to yield the greatest returns for the investors.

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#125

Post by foobarian » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #68

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…

> Here is a lesson-learned as far as "copying" goes: it doesn't matter.

There is this tendency among a subset of the tech community to look down on copying. I think this is probably coming from more junior people who recently came out of university where plagiarism is punished, or people in academia such as in PhD programs which are trained to highly value originality.

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#126

Post by ramraj07 » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

shubhamjain wrote: post #91

This reminds me of another clone that YC backed: Athens Research[1]. Supposedly, open-source alternative to Roam Research. The company barely lasted for two years before shutting down[1]. While it's laudable to create open-source alternative, I always believed copying in such cases should be spiritual, not blatant, where even your name is just a derivative of the original. YC's decision-making has become very questio…

It’s not cloning if they don’t literally fork the code which isn’t possible for Roam research

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#127

Post by dangitman » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

johnday wrote: post #6

jazz9k wrote: post #2

This 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.

There are a few confounding factors here: 1. It may be legally permissible, but it is impolite, to change the license away from the well-known Apache software license towards something which has not been legally vetted, and is in fact generated entirely by AI with minimal oversight. 2. There is an open question of what the supposed value add is here from the Pear team, that could not have been achieved by the people…

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Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#128

Post by brendoelfrendo » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #101

mlyle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAICT, the attribution's been there since the beginning on their GitHub? (see: About section)[1]. I agree adding their own license was hamfisted, but honestly, if I'm funding a company I hope they would spend less than https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app?tab=readme-ov-file

I mean, whatever floats your boat, but if I'm funding a company, I hope they've spent whatever they need to spend to determine whether or not what they're doing is legal and sensible, even if that involves spending more than $1.

Cloning an open source project and having Chat-GPT write you an enterprise license is not how you "prove whether your business should even exist." It's how you scam rich people into giving you money.

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#129

Post by lolinder » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #101

mlyle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAICT, the attribution's been there since the beginning on their GitHub? (see: About section)[1]. I agree adding their own license was hamfisted, but honestly, if I'm funding a company I hope they would spend less than https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app?tab=readme-ov-file

> I hope they would spend less than They claim that they intended to make the project open source all along. Just keeping the Apache license would have been less time consuming than asking ChatGPT for one, with the added benefit of being a real license.

Re: YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

#130

Post by drawkward » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #118

drawkward wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people 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.

That's why I pointed it out. It's a perfectly legitimate explanation for this type of behavior. (And, imo, abhorrent and where capitalism-as-harnessing-greed really falls apart.)

As for "smart," I assume there are some not well understood externalities to this kind of behavior, such as erosion of trust or other social ills that are hard to quantify until they reach a critical point.