Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 536 posts

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

#461

Post by nchmy »

gwd wrote: post #380
oefrha wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Whatever the path is - could even be paying or even hiring the original dev - they haven't done ANYTHING in that direction.

You're just having some abstract, theoretical conversation that has no basis in what has happened

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

#462

Post by Pannoniae »

tombert wrote: post #82
sohzm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i love open source because it feels like a kind of donation i can't make financially, so in a way, i'm trying to make up for that but yeah someone claiming it all falsely isnt good for the motivation

Wouldn’t this still be accomplished with a freeware model? That way hobbyists could still get your stuff for free but a corporation would have a slightly more difficult time directly stealing it.

yeah, 100%. although there's strong propaganda to specifically make it open source (capital O and capital S)... the conspiracy-minded part of my brain thinks that it's probably because they can then use it.

But yeah, I've pretty much come to the same conclusion myself too - ship source, but ship it under ARR.

I think there's another innovation which hasn't really been explored yet - an "anti-copyright" cartel-style licencing, where you only have permission to use the product to make something dependant on the original product itself, and whatever you make can freely be used by the original creators and all the other participants in the cartel

The effect would basically be creating a "closed" ecosystem encouraging innovation inside it but protecting it from people stealing shit from the outside...

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

#463

Post by sebmellen »

nativeit wrote: post #434
sebmellen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 origina…

You could name a project any number of completely weird and absurd and offensive names, and it would have no bearing on the matter at hand, which is that code was illegally stolen and relicensed without the consent of the author. This is not a moral issue.

You yourself admitted that your original comment was harsh after the author responded to you.

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

#464

Post by alganet »

tom_m wrote: post #409
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…

It's all about marketing sadly. Marketing and connections. This industry has been full of theft for years.

Some 15 years ago, I made a small configuration language:

https://github.com/Respect/Config/blob/master/docs/README.md

Then, two years later, toml (by a GitHub founder) appeared. It is almost an exact clone of it.

https://github.com/toml-lang/toml

--

You could say that is just a coincidence, and it's an obvious idea that anyone could have had.

But then again, also around that time, a sibling component for the configuration language was featured on "The Changelog" (then, a very popular website featuring interesting projects).

https://changelog.com/posts/validation-the-most-awesome-vali...

It stayed on trending PHP repositories for months.

--

So, either toml was stolen or I independently invented it years prior.

Don't do easy to implement DSLs kids, there's no way of licensing them.

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

#465

Post by alganet »

alganet wrote: post #464
tom_m wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about marketing sadly. Marketing and connections. This industry has been full of theft for years.

Some 15 years ago, I made a small configuration language: https://github.com/Respect/Config/blob/master/docs/README.md Then, two years later, toml (by a GitHub founder) appeared. It is almost an exact clone of it. https://github.com/toml-lang/toml -- You could say that is just a coincidence, and it's an obvious idea that anyone could have had. But then again, also around that time, a sibling component for the configu…

By the way, no hard feelings.

The best thing that happened with my early projects was the local community I was able to help build here in Brazil.

I've seen many local contributors that helped with my early projects do things well beyond what their dreamt of at the time, and I'm sure I had a positive influence on the careers of many people. All with honest, simple hard work.

I am sure many people remember I did some things first, and without any investment or marketing attached to it. Just a kid, making things.

To me, that is worth a lot more than VC money.

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

#466

Post by iJohnDoe »

We actually have a real enterprise application we developed ourselves. We are ramen profitable. Getting a boost from YC would be amazing to take us to the next level.

How does this trash get supported by YC so easily and real stuff doesn’t get a chance?

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

#467

Post by mopenstein »

XenophileJKO wrote: post #310
xoralkindi wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will push opensource/ free software hackers to close source their code because it is being used to feed LLMs. Similar to how allot of hardcore free software proponents don't use Github. Is closed source the future?

From an open source software perspective, I don't understand the feelings around LLM ingestion. The models isn't generally recreating your software, but might be spreading your way of thinking in pieces. I get it from the artists and to a lesser degree, writers. I just don't understand it from software projects. I guess if you think of it as something to replace you, but since you are already a creator, it is also a…

[flagged]

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

#468

Post by mopenstein »

hopelite wrote: post #275
HacklesRaised wrote: post #160

One starts to wonder whether the LLM vendors laissez-faire approach to the legality of ingesting copyrighted / licensed material will start to infect the industry in general?

I have yet to hear a convincing case for why what the LLM vendors did/do is different than what humans do to learn and become proficient in producing their own work. Do you owe everyone you have ever read a royalty for influencing your writing style or voice? How about for all the other things you have leaned and become competent in? There is a bigger issue here that is related to what humanity actually is and how we…

The only difference is that the people getting upset about this stuff is money. They hate the idea that someone is making money off their work. Even if the sum of their work amounts to a penny. They're just angry.

In 50 years they'll be useless anyway when computers are just plotting every iteration and combination of 1's and 0's that might be.

I too see no difference in machines learning from the works of others than man standing on the shoulders of those before them to reach higher plateaus.

It's all a big to-do about nothing.

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

#469

Post by samtheprogram »

bigyabai wrote: post #453
samtheprogram wrote: post #396

What a joke. Nearly as many upvotes as tmux-rs in half the time, ~50% more comments, and this is just shy of the front page / twice as far from #1. Doesn’t seem to match the natural algorithm.

If anything, the statistics actually suggest these articles were weighted the other way around . tmux-rs stayed on the frontpage much longer than it logically should have, especially compared to this thread. https://hnrankings.info/44455787/ https://hnrankings.info/44460552/ ...in any case, what's the "joke" about this? GPL violation is very serious, Tesla was forced to publish a substantial amount of proprietary cod…

That was my point / what the joke is: it appears to be down ranked (or it’s a comment thing as your sibling points out), it’s serious, and it’s a YC company.

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

#470

Post by gwd »

nchmy wrote: post #461
gwd wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Whatever the path is - could even be paying or even hiring the original dev - they haven't done ANYTHING in that direction. You're just having some abstract, theoretical conversation that has no basis in what has happened

> You're just having some abstract, theoretical conversation that has no basis in what has happened

I'm having a conversation about principles; and my principle is that there should be a path to redemption. When people screw up, instead of just knee-jerk piling on because we can, we should ask, "What would be a reasonable thing to expect them to do to make it right?"

> Whatever the path is - could even be paying or even hiring the original dev

Sure, this would be a strong action on the "making it right" direction.

> they haven't done ANYTHING in that direction.

This just isn't true. They said they said they were in the wrong. They changed the license, removing all traces of the illegal license. That's not nothing.

Yes, they also downplayed their mistake, which kind of undermines the "admit fault" step. Yes, they could have gone much further to make things right, by for instance hiring the original dev.

They could have done better, but they also could have done worse.

Post reply on HN