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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]

#291

Post by xandrius »

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.

Probably you've been out of the getting hired game but I had a glimpse of it last year: absolutely terrible.

When I started you'd send a mail to the company directly about a position, you'd go to the office, have a short interview, meet the team and they'll let you know. That's it.

Now it's 2 rounds of HR bs, 3 layers of tech interviews, then meet the CEO/CTO/etc. And then references and then a final "chat". And you still can get ghosted at literally any step, even at the final cozy chat, just because of "vibes".

And throw in companies sending you leetcode even before talking to you and you can see why one would want to get through the bs.

I still stand about my favourite approach for tech jobs: intro and tech chat (1-2h) about your resume, what you'll be doing and anything you might have questions about (no challenges or stupid riddles). Then, if everything goes smoothly, you get a 2 weeks contract and you are in probation. If everything goes well, you get another contract for 3-6 months (up to you to accept or not) and then you get converted to permanent if everything went well for both parties.

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

#292

Post by re-thc »

ipsum2 wrote: post #90

This is the second time in less than a year something similar has happened. Previously, a different YC company (Pear AI) copied Continue, changed the licenses, and "launched". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495 I wonder if Pear AI is dead or pivoted, their open source repos have not been updated since May.

> I wonder if Pear AI is dead or pivoted, their open source repos have not been updated since May.

They went pear-shaped.

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

#293

Post by tombert »

bruce511 wrote: post #115
tombert wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a bunch of jobs. When I have wanted to use open source libraries, I have been told “no” because the repo has no recent updates, because that suggests that whomever built it isn’t working it anymore. Conversely, where there are lots of updates, the project is likely to be used. Why am I telling this story? Because it suggests to me that companies will only use these libraries if there is a guarantee of ongo…

There are different actors in play here, and each one has a different perspective. That's OK, there's enough room in the world for different perspectives. For the company, making use of Open Source code is free labor. That's good for them. You are free to offer that labor or not. For some developers, it's cool to write code that's used by zillions. That's reward enough. Other developers release the code for free, but…

Of course they’re not “making” me do anything, but I think they have weaponized well-meaning people to do work for them for free and masking it under some vague notion of “charity”.

You’re obviously free to disagree, but it’s why I have become disillusioned with it. I think it’s an exploitative relationship.

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

#294

Post by eqvinox »

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…

> This was incorrect and sloppy work […]

You meant: this was illegal and unethical work.

You might be lucky with the original author not suing you. I'm not sure your backers will be equally kind. I certainly wouldn't, depending on what exactly you told your investors we may be looking at straight up securities fraud here.

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

#295

Post by gwd »

oefrha wrote: post #217
Mashimo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few weeks ago people on here where mad at a company (Microsoft?) for NOT force pushing the corrected credit of a source code. You just can't win.

A good lesson that you should NOT do shady shit?

Do you never ever do anything that's wrong?

If so, well, I guess good for you; but the rest of us sometimes screw up. There needs to be a path for redemption. Admit you were at fault, make it right, do better next time.

ETA And, it doesn't matter whether people do the above steps because they "really mean it", or because they're just afraid of the consequences otherwise; any more than it matters, from a societal perspective, if people refrain from stealing or murdering because they're good people, or because they're afraid of being thrown in jail.

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

#296

Post by matthewmacleod »

RobotToaster wrote: post #206
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.

It's funny these "founders" only use this hollow excuse with open source licensing, you never see "since this was my first company, we didn't realize taxes exist"

This happens literally all the time.

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

#297

Post by aleph_minus_one »

oefrha wrote: post #217
Mashimo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few weeks ago people on here where mad at a company (Microsoft?) for NOT force pushing the corrected credit of a source code. You just can't win.

A good lesson that you should NOT do shady shit?

[flagged]

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

#298

Post by reaperducer »

eqvinox wrote: post #294
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…

> This was incorrect and sloppy work […] You meant: this was illegal and unethical work. You might be lucky with the original author not suing you. I'm not sure your backers will be equally kind. I certainly wouldn't, depending on what exactly you told your investors we may be looking at straight up securities fraud here.

You meant: this was illegal and unethical work.

But... but... but... Velocity! And moats! And we're VC-funded! Doesn't that mean we can do whatever we want?

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

#299

Post by gpderetta »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #246

"Fair enough. Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’t realize at first. We’ve now revised it. Thanks for your contribution." We didn't notice that we copied your codebase, changed the name then pretended to have built it in four days? Good grief.

"we are sorry we got caught"

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

#300

Post by tombert »

bawolff wrote: post #152
tombert wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can directly prove a violation dead to rights (or have enough cause for a discovery request) and you have money for legal defense, sure. A lot of open source stuff is libraries and utilities though that is pretty entrenched in the code. It is hard to even find out about a violation, let alone prove anything. Imagine I came up with a new algorithm to do Fourier Transforms 10% faster than FFTW (or whatever the c…

> Imagine I came up with a new algorithm to do Fourier Transforms 10% faster than FFTW (or whatever the current market leader is) and make a library and I release it as GPL. A company could fairly easily just import it to whatever project they’re doing, and it would be extremely difficult for me to prove anything, especially if I don’t have any obvious things like strings in there. If you're doing something algorithm…

> If you're doing something algorithmically different and unique, presumably that would show up in the assembly.

I don’t think it is realistic to expect a developer to load every executable that might use their software into Ghidra or something and try and find a smoking gun about how their code might be used, and then hire an attorney to put together a case on that. In the case of my example, Fourier transforms are used everywhere in a wide variety of applications, and if my implementation is only like 10% faster it wouldn’t be very clear to an outside observer.

> Important to keep in mind that copyright is not patents. If they are just stealing the "idea" of your algorithmic improvement, that probably isn't even a GPL violation.

I am not saying it’s legal or not, I have no idea, just that that is why I have become disillusioned with the idea of open source, and I am not convinced that a well-meaning license like GPL is a realistic safeguard against corporate exploitation.

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