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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]

#181

Post by mns »

Disposal8433 wrote: post #75

And it has the same fake excuse as usual "Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’t realize at first." He sure discovered this new open source thing and it's very confusing. It's not like it's almost 40 years old at that point. I'll never understand people who lie like toddlers.

Because this is how the current corporate world works. It's all about appearances, someone can do whatever bad thing, will go on and say "upsie, I didn't realise that X is bad, it was an honest mistake" and then all is good, the person actually reporting it or signalling it out will be the bad one, for being critical, aggressive, not constructive or open minded.

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

#183

Post by ozgrakkurt »

luke5441 wrote: post #168
bawolff wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this would be a pretty open and shut case of copyright infringement.

Pursuing something like this would perhaps cost more than 200k in the US. And then the startup would likely just fold and you get nothing in return.

Unfortunately law being too expensive to pursue makes it practically non-existent. All IP/copyright etc. laws are complete bs because of this.

A large corporation can just roll over you and then say sorry and maybe pay some pocket change money

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

#186

Post by _pdp_ »

The classic playbook: copy an open-source project (or just vibe-code something similar), slap an open-source label on it, and toss in an unproven design system / framework (like Liquid Glass) to give it a shiny veneer.

Less about building something meaningful - more about manufacturing hype in hopes of catching a trend before it crashes!

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

#187

Post by aleph_minus_one »

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #131
Disposal8433 wrote: post #75

And it has the same fake excuse as usual "Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’t realize at first." He sure discovered this new open source thing and it's very confusing. It's not like it's almost 40 years old at that point. I'll never understand people who lie like toddlers.

This incompetence excuse puts YC in a bad spotlight too, because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.

> because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.

Being a great software developer does not make you a lawyer (not even a bad lawyer).

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

#188

Post by zettabomb »

dheerajvs wrote: post #173
npsomaratna wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the developer, but here is his repo: https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy

As an interviewer, I'm seeing a huge increase in proportion of candidates cheating surreptitiously during video interviews. And it's becoming difficult to suspect any wrong-doing unless you're very watchful by looking for academic responses to questions. Why would anyone encourage building such a tool, I can't fathom.

It's pretty simple - people need to eat (and fulfill other basic needs, of course), to eat they need jobs, to get jobs they need to pass the interview. The hiring process in a lot of industries is heavily gamed at this point, to the point that not cheating is basically an automatic fail. So, if you want to eat, you cheat.

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

#189

Post by aleph_minus_one »

oaiey wrote: post #162
Disposal8433 wrote: post #75

And it has the same fake excuse as usual "Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’t realize at first." He sure discovered this new open source thing and it's very confusing. It's not like it's almost 40 years old at that point. I'll never understand people who lie like toddlers.

I do not know what is wrong with software engineers. This is theft (or whatever the lawyers says in the IP law) and now stating: Ooops we did not know, our bad, we keep it till we have found a replacement. Mistakes happen also in real life, but libraries is a common thing, like cars standing on a street. You do not accidently steal a car. Software Engineering is more than coding. Basic license management incl. librar…

> Basic license management incl. library vetting is part of it.

This depends on whether you consider Compliance to be part of software engineering or a separate discipline. At least in most companies the compliance department is different from the software development/IT department, because the necessary skills are very different and barely transfer.

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

#190

Post by close04 »

sokoloff wrote: post #169
close04 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest way to check for integrity and ethics is if the startups YC finances routinely run afoul of YC's ethics code or the law. If YC has no ethics code, that's your answer right there. If they do but it fails to mention basic things like lying, cheating, deceiving especially when done intentionally, bingo again. If breaking the law isn't an automatic termination of the collaboration, it takes you to the same co…

GGP was clearly in the context of “how would YC evaluate this pre-funding?” rather than “how would outsiders evaluate YC?” but 15 seconds of search turned up: https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics

> 15 seconds of search turned up

...some latent passive aggressiveness and YC's founder ethics code not YC's own ethics code. You need an anchor for the chain of trust. That must be the VC's (YC in this case) integrity and ethics code first.

You stopped reading after the first few words, misunderstood even those, and rushed to answer didn't you?

I addressed exactly how to evaluate ethics and integrity prefunding, and ensure it post with 2 very simple concepts that would have worked perfectly at least for this easy to catch incident:

1) Do your due diligence. In this case "15 seconds of search" would have turned up the original code and the license mismatch.

2) Have clauses to ensure breaches of law or ethics have severe consequences to the founders.

The founders indisputably breached YC's founder ethics code, in particular "Being honest in the YC application and interview process" and "Generally operating in good faith and behaving in a professional and upstanding way". Or maybe the founders were honest and YC accepted this but then we circle back YC's own ethics code.

YC had means to check for this prefunding, and has means to deal with the problem now. If there's no transparency that any of this happened, it didn't happen. So the point of "checking integrity and ethics" becomes moot.

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