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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]

#481

Post by bigyabai »

tomhow wrote: post #398
Fraterkes wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy did something very immoral and callous, and will seemingly face no real consequences for it. Roasting him in the comments of the site of the people paying him is somehow overkill?

None of us knows exactly what this specific person did or what their motivation, intention or understanding of the situation was. We only know what was in the company’s code that was published, and we know what they’ve done since to try and address it. “Roasting” is one word for something that can be described in far more serious terms. It’s against the HN guidelines and the guidelines still have to be upheld to some…

Now you are the one making reaching speculation. As far as we know, these people are conspiring to do the exact same thing because the present damages has been $0 in fines/legal fees and a reasonably successful seed round. In terms of game theory, there is zero reason to give them benefit of the doubt until they are sat in a court hearing for the infraction. They ventured nothing and gained everything.

If you want to convince people to steer away from ad-hominem, don't get all touchy-feely from the thought of a business breaking the law.

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

#482

Post by awwright »

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…

Isn't that itself just a variation on the ini syntax, sort of made concrete by PHP, itself adapted from DOS? https://www.php.net/parse_ini_file

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

#483

Post by alganet »

awwright wrote: post #482
alganet wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't that itself just a variation on the ini syntax, sort of made concrete by PHP, itself adapted from DOS? https://www.php.net/parse_ini_file

Yes. I think this also supports my case.

For me, it was obvious to use `parse_ini_file` because it greatly improved performance (I didn't had to parse it by hand) and familiarity (PHP users already know ini).

On the other hand, there is no reason for toml to have chosen ini. Almost no other language had efficient ini parsers at the time, or any culture related to ini files whatsoever. It sounds like a strange choice outside the PHP context.

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

#484

Post by tombert »

Pannoniae wrote: post #462
tombert wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

I'm just not convinced that these licenses are realistically enforceable. A lot of binaries aren't going to show obvious signs in the output. I would have to reverse engineer every binary that might be using my code and look for a sign that they are violating the license so that I might be able to get a discovery request and sue them.

As of right now, I just feel like the best thing to do is not put my code out there, and just binaries. If a company likes what they see then they can pay me for the code.

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

#485

Post by dahart »

xandrius wrote: post #476
dahart wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like your idea of a probationary hire, but you can see this is just an even longer extended interview, right? If companies were to adopt this model en masse, they would over-hire and then drop most people after the first 2 weeks, and you’d be out looking for another job, having wasted even more time than 5 rounds of interviews, and being unable to interview for multiple jobs at the same time. Software inte…

If I was out of work, I'd very willingly accept a 2 weeks probation if that meant getting paid for the opportunity. If these companies are ok to people for people they already know they won't be hiring, that's cool.

Agreed, I would too. Getting paid is the main difference, and while it would be hard if it happened a lot, it’d at least put food on the table. I just know from time spent contracting and from jobs with periodic and/or seasonal layoffs (films & games in my case) that most people in those jobs still don’t like the unpredictability, even when they choose contracting for it’s flexibility, and even when turnover is limited to once every year or so.

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

#486

Post by saurik »

diggan wrote: post #384
ddingus wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I dunno, even after considering that move, I'll continue to publish FOSS like before. I always did it without any expectation of gains from it, and with the intention for people to use it for whatever they want. That calculation hasn't changed, even considering machines will slurp it up now. I do agree that it sucks for people who do care about what the code is used for, and I hope these people migrate to other licen…

We already did migrate to that license: (A)GPLv3+. You can use my code if-and-only-if you won't then hoard your own changes from the world and lock users of your derivative software away from having the same empowerment you did. It isn't about "expectation of gains", and that's a ridiculous way of portraying the situation: it is about a social contract that happens to be enforced by copyright.

And, as such, when your favorite AI generates code similar to my code after having read my code, that's infringement, the same as if a human had done the same thing... only, the AI doesn't bother to consider that angle, and, even if you know to care, you have no way to know what is going on, in the way a human at least usually can know when it is cribbing off of what it knows (though even a human can do this accidentally).

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

#487

Post by nchmy »

gwd wrote: post #470
nchmy wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're either not communicating in good faith, or just a complete fool.

Any sensible person would agree with you in the abstract.

But you're having the conversation in a thread where the person who should be seeking redemption has done the opposite. What you seem to considerinimally redeeming and seemingly even applauding, MANY people consider to be making the situation worse - a disingenuous apology, and only because they got caught. THAT is what we're piling on about, not the initial (egregious) infraction.

Anyway, I'm done here.

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

#488

Post by ksec »

Smeevy wrote: post #427
qualeed wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They make money, they're not a charity. I know it can be shocking to some people to learn this, but you can make money ethically .

Unfortunately, that's not how someone gets that third comma in their net worth. The billionaires that so much of American society worship didn't make all of that money by being smart, kind, honest, or ethical. They made it by being dishonest, morally flexible, and ruthless. Especially now, business ethics are for the "little people." The modern billionaire class no longer cares about even keeping up the appearance of…

>Unfortunately, that's not how someone gets that third comma in their net worth.

I just want to say I really like this "third comma" expression for billionaires.

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

#489

Post by ksec »

gryfft wrote: post #327
reactordev wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be running for the hills if I were YC. This is the kind of attitude that ends up in lawsuits.

I thought tech companies were supposed to move fast and break stuff.

> I thought tech companies were supposed to move fast and break stuff.

This mentality is relatively new. Or more like invented by Facebook and got marketed the heck by PRs and marketing firms.

And now we have people who code before they think.

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

#490

Post by tptacek »

tombert wrote: post #402
bigfatkitten wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submitted a PR to fix a bug in cloud-init a while ago. It was in my interest to do so, because it means I benefit from fixed packages in the Linux distributions I use. This saves me a ton of time in not having to maintain my own packages with my fix included. If it helps Canonical make money, then it’s no skin off my nose because I still got the benefit I wanted. I’m not going around fixing bugs that don’t affect m…

That’s why I made the patch to Disruptor as well, because I needed the change and I didn’t want to maintain it. I’m not saying that that’s valueless but I still think programmers should not be giving free labor to corporations. Canonical is at least a little better since they’re a much more FOSS-first company as opposed to a trading corporation, but my opinion still is the same with them. Also, completely unrelated,…

Does Canonical really make candidates take IQ tests?
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