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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]

#521

Post by tombert »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #520
tombert wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make you take the Thomas General Intelligence Assessment. It's not strictly "IQ" but it's still an "intelligence" metric. The entire process is absurd. I wasn't joking when I said that the application required me to write a 9 page essay to even move forward. It took me two hours, and then I'm told I have to do some pop-psychology horseshit to prove my "intelligence" to these assholes. I don't really like insulti…

Some of the smartest and most capable people I’ve ever worked with came from government agencies where you send in your CV, write a max 700-800 word spiel about why you’d be a good fit for the role, and then do a 30-60 minute interview if you look good enough on paper to be shortlisted. It’s a surprisingly efficient and low-bullshit process.

Yeah, I have never worked for the federal government, but I have family that does and they said the interview process wasn’t too bad at all.

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

#522

Post by tomhow »

ohdeargodno wrote: post #406
tomhow wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>They’ll never forget this experience Right. They'll learn to be more discreet about it next time. Do you really believe "I got flamed on the Internet" is a memory that will counterbalance "I can make millions out of selling stolen code if I don't get caught" ? (especially considering that you flag such comments, therefore their shielding their poor egos from seeing mean words.) >these sorts of things are often termi…

> "I can make millions out of selling stolen code if I don't get caught"

This is the opposite of what happens and YC drums this into founders from the start; at least they did in my day, because pg's main startup (Viaweb) was nearly brought undone by an IP dispute, and it scarred him deeply.

What YC tells you is that the more successful you are, the more likely it is that you'll be caught if you mis-use IP, and auditing this is one of the biggest parts of the due diligence that investors, acquirers and commercial partners will undertake.

In fact, pg explicitly addresses this very thing in his 2005 essay How To Start a Startup [1], which was the original inspiration for YC:

One of the worst things that can happen to a startup is to run into intellectual property problems. We did, and it came closer to killing us than any competitor ever did.

As we were in the middle of getting bought, we discovered that one of our people had, early on, been bound by an agreement that said all his ideas belonged to the giant company that was paying for him to go to grad school. In theory, that could have meant someone else owned big chunks of our software. So the acquisition came to a screeching halt while we tried to sort this out. The problem was, since we'd been about to be acquired, we'd allowed ourselves to run low on cash. Now we needed to raise more to keep going. But it's hard to raise money with an IP cloud over your head, because investors can't judge how serious it is.

[1] https://paulgraham.com/start.html

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

#523

Post by jasonm23 »

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.

If it weren't Alan Kay would be a household name and Jobs would've crashed out, Microsoft would've been a never been and amazing Xerox would be the tech juggernaut instead of copier washout.

Truly a strange world.

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

#524

Post by ddingus »

hollerith wrote: post #513
ddingus wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will do the same. I am aligned with ESR basically, as expressed in "The Clue Train Manifesto." Use value of OSS remains high. Because of that, when I can add to the body of OSS, I do. People will do what they do. All I control is me. They do them. We all benefit from the high use value. I do wish those who have made fortunes would contribute more and keep their roots, and the labor of many high quality humans just…

>I am aligned with ESR basically, as expressed in "The Clue Train Manifesto." You mean "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Both were published about the same time, long ago, but Eric had nothing to do with "Clue Train".

Yes, my confusion! Great catch!

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

#526

Post by alganet »

laurencerowe wrote: post #517
alganet wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Python’s built in ConfigParser has an ini like syntax and was widely used.

Fair point. It would have made sense from a python perspective also.

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

#527

Post by Mashimo »

Matthyze wrote: post #441
gwd wrote: post #295

Earlier 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…

There needs to be a path to redemption, yes, but this very clearly isn't it.

My point was, when you not force push then people on hacker news will also say "this clearly is not the path to redemption"

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

#528

Post by account42 »

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…

Your base assumption that humans looking at restricted code bases and then working on competing products is OK is flawed. That has always been something you'd have to be very very careful about to avoid law suits for anything you inadvertently copied. Clean-room design is a thing for this very reason.

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

#529

Post by Gregaros »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #507
Gregaros wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How is it unethical? Say you ask whoever what's being asked and they say you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained... You still need to answer those questions AND know enough to answer the follow up questions. If you're no good you'll be still found out. It just means you'll have a head start over someone without those kinds of contacts. So what level of utilizing your profe…

Presumably the value in knowing "you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained" is that it impacts your answers - for instance, by allowing you to look this up before the interview while appearing to the interviewers to he operating unfer the dame conditions as the other candidates, who did not know to. Your performance then appears as a signal of broader inwoledge and capability than you possess - you have, as is the entire point here and which I should not need to spell out, gained an advantage over other candidates by virtue of the information which was intentionally leaked.

If the point of the interview were "answer those questions AND know enough to answer the follow up questions" _once told what to expect and prep_, they’d be sharing those questions with all candidates. If you feel that saying to the interviewers "by the way, I did know this because [X] told me they’d be here" wouldn’t impact outcomes, then great. If you feel you’d need to hide that, then you’re aware this involves dishonesty - and if you still struggle to see how that’s unethical, lets just make sure we never need to work together.

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

#530

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

Gregaros wrote: post #529
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it unethical? Say you ask whoever what's being asked and they say you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained... You still need to answer those questions AND know enough to answer the follow up questions. If you're no good you'll be still found out. It just means you'll have a head start over someone without those kinds of contacts. So what level of utilizing your profe…

Presumably the value in knowing "you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained" is that it impacts your answers - for instance, by allowing you to look this up before the interview while appearing to the interviewers to he operating unfer the dame conditions as the other candidates, who did not know to. Your performance then appears as a signal of broader inwoledge and capabilit…

> lets just make sure we never need to work together

Seeing as how you seem to prefer to let everyone else steal a march on you in interviews in the interest of "fairness", that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

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