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A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

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Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#281

Post by smsm42 »

hamburglar wrote: post #259
kgeist wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His explanation on Reddit: "The way I learned how to program was by publishing one project a day that used a specific language feature I was trying to learn. No one even looked at my projects or used them until I had quite a few published. I didn't even want people to use them at that point, since I had no idea what I was doing. Then one day I realized that people were actually using some of the things I published as…

It kind of stretches credulity for him to say these are just test projects that he doesn’t want people to use when his profile is bragging about having 1000 open source projects.

Exactly. I almost believed it until I saw shameless self-promotion and soliciting donations under it. I mean I have nothing against people getting paid for their work, especially open-source developers, but you can't both claim you were just learning and didn't expect anything, and use that to brag and solicit donations.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#282

Post by jeppester »

iskin wrote: post #213
jeppester wrote: post #124

I don't think this behaviour is acceptable. People should be encouraged to open source their code if it's useful for the community. They should not be worried that some big gun take it and promote it as its own. I wonder how the community can best prevent this behaviour?

I completely agree with it. This is why I used Colorette for a year, promote it and send PRs there. https://twitter.com/sitnikcode/status/1441824191624486924 For for created because Colorette changed API and author didn’t want to change it back. The reasons of fork is clearly desrcibed in project’s docs https://github.com/ai/nanocolors/wiki/Colorette-Changes I mentioned Colorette in Nano Colors docs, COPYRIGHT and ke…

I don't feel very convinced by the case you are trying to make here.

You did not mention colorette until you were forced to do it. Why not talk to the author before making a fork?

You mention that you disagreed with changes in colorette, but you have no evidence for it. If you discussed it in an issue or PR, that would be easy to find and share.

You took all of colorette. The "backported" performance improvement is a single line of code. That you try to make it seem like exactly the same thing seems childish and bullish to me.

If you are really not acting in bad faith, why not drop your fork now that colorette has changed the API back?

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#283

Post by iskin »

jeppester wrote: post #282
iskin wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with it. This is why I used Colorette for a year, promote it and send PRs there. https://twitter.com/sitnikcode/status/1441824191624486924 For for created because Colorette changed API and author didn’t want to change it back. The reasons of fork is clearly desrcibed in project’s docs https://github.com/ai/nanocolors/wiki/Colorette-Changes I mentioned Colorette in Nano Colors docs, COPYRIGHT and ke…

I don't feel very convinced by the case you are trying to make here. You did not mention colorette until you were forced to do it. Why not talk to the author before making a fork? You mention that you disagreed with changes in colorette, but you have no evidence for it. If you discussed it in an issue or PR, that would be easy to find and share. You took all of colorette. The "backported" performance improvement is a…

I started to mention Colorette when author asked me.

First mention (it was changed later) was added 6 days ago (threat was created 2 days ago): https://www.npmjs.com/package/nanocolors/v/0.1.2

Webpack team ask Colorette’s author to rollback API 2.x changes here (discussion was cleaned by Colorette’s author, but he said that it is how it see the best API): https://github.com/jorgebucaran/colorette/issues/70

> why not drop your fork now that colorette has changed the API back?

Author continued to act impulsively. He rolled back API in patch release instead of major made breaking changes.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#284

Post by thdespou »

hamburglar wrote: post #259
kgeist wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His explanation on Reddit: "The way I learned how to program was by publishing one project a day that used a specific language feature I was trying to learn. No one even looked at my projects or used them until I had quite a few published. I didn't even want people to use them at that point, since I had no idea what I was doing. Then one day I realized that people were actually using some of the things I published as…

It kind of stretches credulity for him to say these are just test projects that he doesn’t want people to use when his profile is bragging about having 1000 open source projects.

Agree. And also when you publish something on NPM you could expect someone to download it and you would need to maintain it. You cannot say later "Ohh I didn't know or I had no idea".

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#285

Post by jeppester »

iskin wrote: post #283
jeppester wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel very convinced by the case you are trying to make here. You did not mention colorette until you were forced to do it. Why not talk to the author before making a fork? You mention that you disagreed with changes in colorette, but you have no evidence for it. If you discussed it in an issue or PR, that would be easy to find and share. You took all of colorette. The "backported" performance improvement is a…

I started to mention Colorette when author asked me. First mention (it was changed later) was added 6 days ago (threat was created 2 days ago): https://www.npmjs.com/package/nanocolors/v/0.1.2 Webpack team ask Colorette’s author to rollback API 2.x changes here (discussion was cleaned by Colorette’s author, but he said that it is how it see the best API): https://github.com/jorgebucaran/colorette/issues/70 > why not…

You mentioned colorette, but not that the package was a fork, only that the API was the same. It's very hard to not interpret that as dishonesty.

The author acted impulsively after you copied and rebranded his package and then started pushing it everywhere. And now that's your excuse to keep your fork.

To get back to my original post. We want people to open source their code if it's useful for the community. Your behaviour here is going to scare people away from doing that. One little mistake and then boom someone with a bigger name takes all of your work and fame.

Don't you see that this is not beneficial for the community?

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#286

Post by raxxorrax »

d3nj4l wrote: post #73

I keep thinking about this event and it seems like a fractal of bizarre phenomena. The act of stripping git history and attribution while forking is itself malicious, but then aggressively creating pull requests across major projects to use the new version and rack up your download count (???), then picking petty fights with the creator of the original over attribution (????), and the fanbase (?????) of the forker do…

That development went social is really awesome. Like having the flu or something.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#287

Post by Bobylonian »

jsploit wrote: post #203
Bobylonian wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguments of other side explains a lot: https://twitter.com/PostCSS/status/1441734989490446336 https://twitter.com/sitnikcode/status/1441878805337935877

That does not at all explain their overly aggressive approach and (initial) lack of attribution.

It explains their course of action, as Jorge was not flexible in his "my way or highway" approach. And I would also either ditch or fork earlier version, if maintainer of API is sabotaging my project.

IMO, making fork, instead of integrating or writing their own(without the need to acknowledge original author due to significant changes to a code) shows struggle of dealing with this situation. I think that it is too harsh to declare it as intent that is directed specifically towards Jorge, but they took that route where they were vulnerable to attack. In the place of users of Jorges API(because I'm not related in any way to anyone here - I'm just reading this piece an making my comment), if I knew that Jorge would be taking this to public and rally a mob to torch other side, I would be making my own code, but then I don't exactl'y understand using so many unowned modules on personal project, as it is vulnerable to do so in first place(it saves some time initially, but if they are improving code so much, that it is running faster, then that is not an issue to write their own) - and one of the vulnerabilities is exactly this situation.

I am sympathising here with Jorge, but only on that side where his efforts in making that API might be significant to him. I don't see anything else good from this situation, as he is not going to get back his main user and others might avoid using his other works because of this conflict. Well, he might have a temporary victory in getting his name in fork, but that will just lead to ditching any code of his in future. The important part is distinguishing author side and his ability to communicate with users and once again I can sympathise with him as author, but not as user, as his communication and solving issues are taken from defensive-aggressive side. You can like or dislike my opinion, but that does not change that fact.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#288

Post by 5560675260 »

PeterisP wrote: post #84
andix wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For libraries it is very difficult to chose a permissive license. Most companies have a whitelist for licenses for libraries they are allowed to use. And for a good reason. This is mostly MIT, BSD and Apache. If you use a gpl licensed library in your project, it essentially becomes gpl licensed too. If you ever want to sell your software, this is probably a big no-no. It will become quite challenging, and could end u…

What about LGPL which is quite explicitly designed for libraries?

This could work, but it's just annoying. You'd have to modify your build process to serve this library separately instead of including it in your main bundle and then doing some code splitting.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#289

Post by samastur »

ergocoder wrote: post #248
samastur wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a horse in this race, but I am a bit bothered by two arguments, because I see variations on them so often (so this is less of a reply to you personally). > Chalk is downloaded 15 millions per day. > We probably can multiply how much time has wasted from 15 millions run per day. It matters collectively. If I give you back 5 seconds each day, will it matter to you? Will you be able to enjoy or do something…

> The cumulative loss of something can be huge, but still don't matter because its distributed to a degree where it is barely a rounding error. Are you claiming it doesn't matter to anyone or just you? > If I give you back 5 seconds each day, will it matter to you? Will you be able to enjoy or do something that you otherwise wouldn't? I'd welcome the time back since I don't lose anything in return anyway. So, a big Y…

Yes, I am claiming that saving 5 seconds out of 86400 in a day does not matter to any healthy person.

As a web developer I generally prefer things being faster and/or smaller too, but I would not change a working field-tested library for negligible effect. The problem in the case that is being discussed is not which library would be chosen when none is being used yet, but does it make sense to replace an existing one to save 90K of disk space and maybe a few seconds per day? To me this looks like very definition of bike-shedding and yes, I would definitely not switch library if these are the only compelling reasons.

4x smaller than the other one doesn't really tell anything without considering how big the whole app that uses this library is. On our fairly basic Nuxt project node_modules directory takes 250M. Do you really think any of us should care about 90K?

And lastly, you don't know me. Save your "disingenuous" remarks for people you do.

Re: A notable JavaScript developer shamelessly copied one of my most downloaded nod

#290

Post by 5560675260 »

atdrummond wrote: post #185

I feel I must come from a bizarro world. Most people on Twitter are supporting the actions of the “forker” despite it being clear he did no work to improve the code and is going out of his way to supplant the original project in other codebases. What am I missing?

Most people probably don't realise that all attribution was gone at first.
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