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My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

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Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#121

Post by seanhunter »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #89
rustystump wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the crux of it all to me. Anyone in the industry knows mistakes happen all the time but the braggadocios nature rubs me the wrong way and spits in the face to those of YC who do indeed have integrity.

It's baffling why someone would do this tbh. It's not like the base project is some spectacular piece of engineering that would be very costly to replicate. I'm guessing they just looked at it as a jumping point. It probably went something like: - We know how to polish an electron app - here is a barebone electron app with an interesting idea - Can we build a polished UI around this, and give a demo? The baffling par…

Like the frog in the parable,[1] people with integrity often struggle when they attempt to understand the motivations of people who cheat. “Why would they cheat in this particular situation?”, they ask themselves. “It makes no sense!” Well they are cheaters. Cheaters cheat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#122

Post by matsemann »

jwilber wrote: post #31

Over the last decade or two, the builder/hacker ethos has seemed to shift towards this grifter, money-over-everything attitude. I’m sure there’s a lot at play (crypto culture, VC self-selection, the attraction of ‘easy’ high salaries), but I’m sure it’ll get markedly worse with ai tooling and the any-publicity-is-good fomo marketing that’s taken over the startup scene. My take is both OP’s tool and the blatant plagia…

Yeah, most VC founders on twitter are annoying and not worth following anymore. It used to be inspiring to follow some of them many years ago, see them build a cool product and sharing learnings. Now it's all just promotion, straight up lies, and their personal brand comes across as more important than actually building something. The "learnings" shared are now more tailored to go viral than actually help others etc.

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#124

Post by noufalibrahim »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #14

In a general sense, open source theft is bad, obviously. I have trouble feeling bad for this specific case though, given that it is a tool for cheating in interviews and tests.

Two separate issues.

I'd be happy for a platform that encourages and facilities cheating to disappear and not be used anymore. So, on that front, I'd agree. As a side point though, the fact that someone big is funding something like that means, it's not really an issue for, atleast some, people.

The license violation is a problem independent of this. If this becomes acceptable for any reason (including the one that your post seemed to suggest - original work is unethical), it will have detrimental effects on a lot of good players as well.

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#125

Post by dns_snek »

fargle wrote: post #42

looks like they fixed it: https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889... let's not freak out - you can't "steal" open-source code, they used an incompatible license. that was accidentally too free. people monetizing something you open-source isn't stealing.

The license they used was less free than the GPL license. Laundering GPL code into projects with licenses that aren't as free is classic copyright infringement.

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#126

Post by sakjur »

oefrha wrote: post #112
danielpkl wrote: post #92

Hi everyone, this is Daniel from the Pickle team. Glass is a new open source project from us that we plan to build on and improve. We built several original features for it like live summaries, real-time STT Transcript and one-click "Ask" from summary that we're very excited about. However in initially building it we included code from a GPL-licensed project that we incorrectly attributed as Apache. This was incorrec…

Hiding the entire history of this incident[1] behind a force push[2] to make it seem as if credit was given and proper license was chosen from the start really displays a lack of integrity, and tells me it’s definitely malicious (which should be quite clear from zero mention of the original project to begin with, but this act reinforces that) rather an inadvertent screwup. [1] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/comm…

I don’t think the rebase is malicious. Would they even be allowed to continue distributing the older commits (where they claim an Apache license) or would that be to perpetuate the license violation?

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#128

Post by csomar »

tomhow wrote: post #100
sebmellen wrote: post #94

This being on page 2 with 247 upvotes in the three hour time period this post has been up is surprising to me. I wouldn't be surprised if @dang is suppressing it (but I'd also be happy to hear that it's not being suppressed). It's pretty spineless for the Pickle team to come out and pretend they mistakenly re-licensed GPL code. Hilarious. > in initially building it we included code from a GPL-licensed project that we…

The first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate (i.e., intervene) less if a story reflects negatively on a YC company or YC itself. This principle goes right back to pg days, and was the first thing he taught dang [1]. That said, it doesn't mean we avoid moderation at all and it doesn't mean the guidelines all go out the window. Different factors influence the story's rank and visibility on the front page: upvote…

> The first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate (i.e., intervene) less if a story reflects negatively on a YC company or YC itself.

Unless you have transparency on flagging and mod actions, these are just your words. And as these events keep happening, your credibility erodes.

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#129

Post by diimdeep »

Here you are OP, a little closer to idiocracy by your own actions and by HN zealots here, and all you SV tech bro wannabes who participate in this day by day ever more fake economy.

Propel and fund into the world the product with sole purpose to pretend, to cheat, to fraud everyone, then to make "open source" version on this, and then to complain that someone stole it from you, to fund and sell even more sophisticated product with sole purpose to pretend, to cheat, to fraud everyone.

This maliciously deliberate hustling behavior, fake it till you make it, feel good, superiority complex, reality distorted, this version of society, a bubble, a community, open source, call it, or wrap it too sell whatever you want it, this all post-post-modern obscenery will be ruin of you all.

Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

#130

Post by rendall »

fargle wrote: post #42

looks like they fixed it: https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889... let's not freak out - you can't "steal" open-source code, they used an incompatible license. that was accidentally too free. people monetizing something you open-source isn't stealing.

They cloned (not forked) the repo, removed the history, claimed it as their own, and changed the license. This is not a mistake
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