I really hope y-combinator does the right thing and kicks them out.
Doing the right thing only matters when the market rewards it. That hasn't been the case for decades now (if ever).
My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
371–380 of 536 posts
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
All completely true. And something you can clearly take into account when you decide what to do with your code. You may decide its worth people using it, reading it, learning from it, exploiting it, or you may not. It's your choice. Of course your work may be used outside of the license terms. That's pretty much impossible to enforce. That's true for most-all software, commercial or open or free. If that's your main…
Because I think people should be properly compensated for their labor instead of directly donating it to a mega corporation I should choose a “different career”? Do you realize how utterly insane that sounds? You’re free to do what you want. I just find a lot of the entire FOSS process kind of exploitative and why I have become disillusioned with it. ETA: To be clear, I have a fair active GitHub and I still post stuf…
Oh, think people should be properly compensated for their labor. And I'm still programming.
But lots of programmers don't get properly compensated. Some by choice, some by external factors.
I'm saying that's a reality. How you feel about other programmers and the choices they make for themselves is up to you.
Clearly there's no obligation to post anything yo public repositories, send the vast majority of programmers never do.
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#373I really hope y-combinator does the right thing and kicks them out.
They didn't even kick the scammers of PearAI
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
damn right it's diminutive, and why the hell not? these clowns and the idiots who fund their tomfoolery deserve it
We have no idea what the realities of their lives are. We only know the basic facts of the wrongdoing that’s been reported here, which is of course fine to criticize.
* alleged wrongdoing, if you're considering it "reporting" ;-)
Thank you for your service, and welcome to the... uhhh... show!
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
YC is the company that (to this day!) has Yotta - a borderline scam to take advantage of financially-illiterate people - on their website after the whole thing has completely blown up and most customers lost their savings: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/yotta Oh, and now they have their own rendition of the "Aviator" game often advertised by unregulated Eastern-European online casinos: https://members.withyott…
Did you not understand what YC was? They're essentially an investment bank that doesn't accept new clients. They make money, they're not a charity. Quality only matters insofar as it drives sales and doesn't create liabilities.
> doesn't create liabilities
But you'd think that would include doing sufficient due-diligence and steering their companies away from scams or unethical activities no?
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Doing whatever it takes to get the foot in the door may be encouraged, but only to a point and I think out and out cheating is probably crossing a line... As would murder, arson etc. etc. If cheating means asking someone in the company you're interviewing for a peek at what will be asked then great. In my book that's using leverage. Reviewing previously posted interview tests is probably recommended. Hooking up a cop…
> If cheating means asking someone in the company you're interviewing for a peek at what will be asked then great. In my book that's using leverage.
In my book that is unambiguously unethical and should get the contact fired. I am shocked to see this approach promoted in such a blasé manner.
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree its often exploiting.
But presumably people who choose to participate in that relationship are getting something out of it, or they'd stop.
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is closed source the future? No. I don't believe that. I personally want my code to outlast me and help people in the future, but I don't want allow anyone to just scrape it, strip its license and use for whatever. I use (A)GPLv3+, because I believe in "Freedom for the user", not "Freedom for the developer" which permissive licenses provide. My code is not free labor for anyone. It has conditions attached.
This is the problem that AI solves, though: rather than steal our code directly, now the thieves will just ask their favorite AI to generate a new project that does exactly what our (A)GPLv3+ projects did, which it will be able to do only because it read our code. And, even if the result is eerily similar to what we publish -- we might, after all, be one of the few good examples in the training set for this problem -…
Ouch!
I believe in OSS. But damn. I had not really considered this move.
I had a stray thought and that is most SI content I have looked at has watermarks of a sort. Perhaps this could be used?
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that what VCs in general are doing? Hiring for more money, with more expected gains from you, with a different kind of legal arrangement, but still hiring nevertheless.
No, words have meaning. If i order fast food im not hiring the worker because i pay them. Hiring means one thing, investing means something else.
Wait. Were you were investing in that burger?
Re: My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 per…
They were given a chance to admit they were at fault. They instead bullshitted about “sloppy work”. You just don’t accidentally take someone else’s work, strip their name and brand it as your own, and brag about “built in three days” or some shit. And even if they handled it very gracefully afterwards, don’t expect everyone to be happy about it. That’s Mashimo’s problem isn’t it, someone’s gonna criticize regardless.…
> They were given a chance to admit they were at fault. They instead bullshitted about “sloppy work”.
So just to point out, here you're complaining about them not performing step 1 on the redemption path sufficiently well. That's a fair criticism; but I'd point out that the "Just admit you screwed up and don't try to explain because you're just making excuses for yourself" principle is neither so self-evident nor so well-known that it's fair to expect everyone to magically know it.
What Mashimo's problem is that with regard to the "make it right" step, it's really not clear what to do in this case regarding the git history. Do you take it out? People complain you're trying to hide your sins. Do you leave it in? People complain the other way too.
This shows that the right answer is not self-evident; which means we need to cut people slack. It also means that we as a community need to figure out what is the right way to "make it right" when people do a bogus relicensing, so that there's a clear path to redemption.
But your response to Mashimo wasn't trying to help define a clear path to redemption; your response was basically, "If there's no path to redemption, that's your problem, you shouldn't have screwed it up in the first place."
That attitude is only going to harm our community in the long run. If there's no way to redeem yourself, why bother doing anything at all? Just keep claiming rights over the source code and tell the author "so sue me", knowing there's no way he'll get a fraction of his legal fees back. Or, abide by the letter of the law but don't admit fault.
> Btw, I have never ever taken someone else’s work and brand it as my own without credit
So it's, "Some things need a path for redemption and other things don't." And as it happens, the things that don't need a path for redemption are things you've never done.