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

Post by johnday » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 7:50 PM UTC

spencerchubb wrote: post #183

johnday wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your first point is not true. If Continue wanted a copyleft license, they would have done so. Continue basically said they are fine with people forking and changing the license

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 8:29 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #232

pclmulqdq wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people on sites like this hate patents and trademarks, but I have seen patents used in two ways: * In slapfights between huge companies that don't really matter. * To protect startups from copying. These things literally exist to protect startups.

I have never seen anybody succeed on that second usage, and I've seen a few people try. Patents protect the party with the most money to spend.

Post by steeeeeve » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 8:46 PM UTC

dewey wrote: post #42

stroupwaffle wrote: post #37

I watched the video promoting Continue.dev and just think to myself, these AI editors don’t actually add much value. EMacs and Treesitter is much faster way to “find all references to X” in the codebase. Other questions can be answered with the naive grep implementation and marginal brain power. If all they’re investing in here is to write boilerplate code, well, that takes not much time in the grand scheme of things…

> Am I missing something? Yes, you are basically posting a modern equivalent of the famous "Dropbox reply". "EMacs and Treesitter...naive grep implementation". There's value in these tools, that's why GitHub, JetBrains, Cursor all built businesses on top of AI coding extensions. Personally I don't use the "Write this full function for me"-features but use it as a way smarter auto-complete. People don't really use the…

Post by CharlieDigital » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:02 PM UTC

aguaviva wrote: post #235

CharlieDigital wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Right, we get it. But you completely ignored the commenter's main point: 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.

Post by aguaviva » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 11:38 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #257

aguaviva wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, we get it. But you completely ignored the commenter's main point: 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.

From a VC perspective, probably all the better: you've just shortcut a huge phase of R&D and can get right into marketing and sales. As long as there's some viable route to clean up any licensing issues (there almost always is). You're thinking ethically; without the shrewdness and single-minded focus on profit that VC's have.