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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]

#431

Post by tombert »

rfl890 wrote: post #426
tombert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it sort of devalues labor. If a corporation is stealing your OSS code (and violating a license) then that implies that they think your code has value, they might have paid a person to write that code but instead some hobbyist built it for free and a corporation steals it. A few months ago, I made a pull request to LMAX Disruptor, which was merged. I was initially excited because even if my PR was simple it’s…

That's the caveat, the contract you sign when you start an open source project. You have to have the mindset of simply not giving a fuck about who does what with your code and how much they make from it. Then you can be at peace. If you don't want to (or can't) adopt that mindset for a particular project or at all, that's completely fine and normal. OSS is not for you. As soon as you want compensation for your work,…

That’s exactly my point though, it’s exploitative. Companies will abuse the fact that you “don’t give a fuck” and make money from it without compensating you for your labor.

I am not trying to really convince anyone of anything, do whatever you want. I am just explaining why I have become disillusioned with FOSS.

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

#432

Post by paulryanrogers »

imwillofficial wrote: post #318
ibz wrote: post #282

Earlier 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.

VC's can force the company to pivot or double down on things not (yet) working. You don't tell the fast food worker to build houses.

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

#433

Post by tombert »

bawolff wrote: post #145
tombert wrote: post #60

Things like this are why I have become disillusioned with Open Source, and why latest projects have been closed source. The GPL is a good enough idea but it is basically impossible for anyone to realistically enforce. If a corporation is selling an optimized binary, then it can be almost impossible to prove that there was any violation of the GPL without viewing the source.

> If a corporation is selling an optimized binary, then it can be almost impossible to prove that there was any violation of the GPL without viewing the source. I think you can notice that output looks similar, error messages are similar, etc. If the program is non-trivial its usually pretty obvious if its a copy or a reimplementation. If it sounds plausible, presumably you could sue and read the source in discovery…

There plenty of things that won’t make a noticeable difference in the output, especially in libraries.

Let’s suppose I make a slight more efficient implementation of green threads, for example. I do not see how that would affect the output in a way that would be obvious, even if the library is non-trivial. Even if I slapped it with a GPL, I don’t see how I would realistically be able to check if they broke the license without first auditing the code, which I couldn’t do without a discovery request, which I likely wouldn’t have grounds for even if I could afford the lawyers for a lawsuit.

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

#434

Post by nativeit »

sebmellen wrote: post #96
nativeit wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, once someone posted a link I could read, I saw that. Bummer, looks like they ripped it off and sounds like they're currently doing the usual backpedal. Sorry your project got the wrong kind of attention in this way, I also (eventually) read into your tone while reading through your repo, and I understand much of it is tongue-in-cheek. It softened my position a bit. Hope you enjoy better luck in your future ende…

The appropriate thing would be to revise your initial comment.

What about my initial comment is incorrect?

Edit: Fun fact, I cannot edit my original comment. But over-zealous flaggers seem to have taken care of it on my behalf. Unclear as to what about that comment deserved flagging, I guess raising concerns for the OPs admittedly problematic project is broadly the same behavior as the racist troll account who was previously active in this thread. Well done moralizing my original moralizing. The irony is…well pretty mundane in this case, really.

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

#435

Post by leoh »

asenchi wrote: post #284
mezod wrote: post #243

We are in a crisis of morals. There has always been trashy people but since 2020 it feels like a lack of morals is rewarded more than ever.

A natural consequence of a system that promotes radical individuality, false scarcity, fear of missing out, greed, and violence. Win at all costs.

Amen. Well said.

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

#436

Post by pxc »

buremba wrote: post #304

The clone now has more stars on GitHub than the original work, CheatingDaddy. What's funny is that in a week, most likely nobody will remember that the code was stolen, thus Pickle will probably be fine with their new, shiny, popular project, which will be featured in GitHub Trends. It's the same with another Soham, who was moonlighting for years. I would not be surprised if he starts a company soon, given the fame h…

I've seen this kind of thing happen even with very small projects, where there's no marketing department or business goal attached. I've seen attempts to erase the history of forks, projects repurposed from others in order to retain GitHub stars unrelated to the repo's new purpose... not for a supply chain attack or something like that, but out of sheer vanity. Sometimes I see people talk about those projects on HN, and if you weren't there when it happened and very interested in some very niche software at the time, you'd never know.

It's a wild world.

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

#438

Post by pxc »

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.

This isn't just a license compliance issue! Even if it were compliant with the license, like if the license has been a permissive license with no attribution requirement, this is still sleazy and plagiaristic behavior. Sometimes (often!) what is right exceeds the legal bare minimum.

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

#440

Post by Velorivox »

qualeed wrote: post #422
Velorivox wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t surprised by the pushback. This isn’t like responding to a pseudonymous HN comment opting into a discussion, they are talking about specific people and posting pointedly mean-spirited remarks towards a party that has not opted to discuss their provenance. The response could’ve been better worded but you can see how no one would want to moderate a community that makes it a habit to disparage specific people o…

> I wasn’t surprised by the pushback. This comment broke the guidelines. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been moderated. I made a meta comment on the overall moderation on HN, which sometimes surprises me in which comments get reprimanded and which ones don't (and with what amount of vigor the reprimand is delivered with).

You should temper that observation with the realization that this particular thread is under a microscope. The HN mods moderate less when YC companies are involved, but somewhat ironically that actually requires more of their attention, since they need to counteract some automations. So they are more likely to spot comments here.
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