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That's a weird thing to say in response to someone saying "the text was rewritten, so it's not actually a copy"
You are intentionally misrepresenting my comment. I explained that it was not verbatim which refers to an exact copy.
If we take what they're saying as fact and that they didn't copy and paste the code, but for all intents and purposes the LlM basically did reproduce the same code based on its crawling of the repo and not respecting the license. It would make a great civil case for the courts to decide. Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". Smells bad to me.
That's not how licenses work, and the license holder can absolutely tell you to get bent and/or pony up.
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The law cares about the process you took to get something, not just the final output. Stealing something and then changing some stuff to try to make it not look identical doesn't invalidate the fact that you stole it. I can't download someone's song, strip out the bass line and record my own, and then pass off the new song combining the old music with my bass recording as an original song. I don't know whether that's…
Are you familiar with "Weird Al Yankovic"?
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I did an interview a couple years ago when Corgi was first hiring engineers. Nico and I ... did not click and it was probably the least smooth interview I've ever had despite it just being a phone screen. I wouldn't be that surprised if Nico genuinely thinks "we didn't copy the code" is a reasonable defense. It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types often have trouble with the fuzziness of thing…
> It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types... It had to look that slang up: https://roonscape.ai/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words . > ...often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it. I'd say it's more like the fuzziness defeats most of the software-style "exploits" those types gravitate tow…
It's entirely possible that most startup founders are like that (I found out to my own detriment, when a now-YC founder once tried to game the membership system of a community space I help run), and that YC actively looks for that as a trait they like.
This entire thread also reminds me of this PG article on being Relentlessly Resourceful:
From what I can tell, his argument seems to be that 1. no code was manually copied by a developer, and 2. all software in the same space copies off of each other But the big giveaway here is the exact same layout/copywriting on both products. Telling an LLM "write this product and build a 1:1 clone" is still copying by all sensible definitions. The fact that he argues nothing was copied is ridiculous.
They're both boilerplate ShadCN from the looks of it: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks ShadCN is the most popular design system that AI automatically reaches for 90%+ times on its own. It's also the default most platforms like lovable, etc.
I used to have a lot of respect for YC and the kind of founders it used to attract. However, over the past few years, they have started attracting a certain type of founder that most people wouldn’t associate with. The decline in the quality of YC's founder pool and founder reputation is tarnishing its brand, but I doubt anyone there realizes it, or is willing to publicly admit it. It’s egregious that a portfolio com…
I don't follow YC acceptance enough to be able to see a trend, but there's one founder in one of 2025's batches that I feel the same way about: dodgy, questionable sense of ethics, never stops to consider whether they're in the wrong or how their actions may affect others detrimentally.
Then again, that could be a trait of a potentially successful founder. Or a psychopath.
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He was bragging about working on weekends and comparing his shitty little insurance company to the Manhattan Project a while back. Somewhere he claimed this company/industry is the most important application of AI in the world. I have no doubt they ripped it off, this guy is not trustworthy to say the least.. https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2061130574358773852?s=20
Kind of serious question: in tech circles is the Manhattan project generally seen as a _good_ thing, these days? Why use it as the example and not, say, Apollo? "We're working really hard so we can build things with the power to kill you all" is such weird messaging.
If I had to describe it, the zeitgeist of VC/Founder tech now is kind of originated in "It's Time to Build" [1]. The diagnosis is that the nation is incapable of doing anything - too hamstrung by bureaucracy, laws, congress gridlock etc. The same kind of things that MAGA uses to justify authoritarianism. The movement now basically prescribes action, agency, urgency, conquest void of any reflection of what the goals should be, any question of morality or values etc.. just build (what you're being told/funded to build).
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That's pretty lame. Startups that show this behavior to the OSS community should be equally punished, be under the YC umbrella or not.
I don't think there's some sort of "line" that Delve crossed and Corgi has not, more likely the financial upside for YC wrt Corgi is much, much bigger. They're not going to mess with that even if the screw over a few of their other startups. YC absolutely loves to tout this family dynamic across all their companies and alumni, but there is no way the relationship between a few dozen startups looks anything like that…
It's also false that YC will overlook IP theft for the sake of financial upside. One of the most fundamental principles that YC drums into startups is that they shouldn't breach software licenses. This comes from personal, painful experience for pg in the Viaweb days; a dispute over IP nearly killed their acquisition by Yahoo (or a major funding round soon before that). YC counsels startups to be super-prudent and upstanding about software licensing. Sure, sometimes startups will be cavalier about it and cross a line, in which case YC tells them to fix it immediately.