HN Distilled

Essential insights from Hacker News discussions

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

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

Here's a summary of the themes discussed in the Hacker News thread:

The Original Project's Nature and Sympathy

There's a recurring sentiment that while the actions of the company that allegedly copied the code are wrong, there's little sympathy for the original project due to its intended purpose.

  • "Hmm... a tool for cheating is stolen and relicensed by another company that specializes in cheating tools. Sort of on brand actually." - bhouston
  • "I'm having trouble mustering sympathy." - esafak
  • "Lacking sympathy for someone does not mean you condone them losing/lacking rights." - 0manrho
  • "VoidWhisperer: In a general sense, open source theft is bad, obviously. I have trouble feeling bad for this specific case though, given that it is a tool for cheating in interviews and tests." - VoidWhisperer
  • "The original product actually sounds kinda cool, but selling it as a cheating aid is incredibly low-value, and we'd be better off without it." - Incipient
  • "sohzm: its not the best name tbh, i just made it as a meme but people take the name seriously and that hurts the case" - sohzm

GPL Violations and Open Source Licensing Integrity

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the perceived violation of the GPL license. Users debate the specifics of GPL enforcement, the implications of relicensing, and the general health of the open-source ecosystem when such violations occur.

  • "Semaphor: But they didnā€™t. The company violated the GPL by re-publishing it illegally as Apache." - Semaphor
  • "geoffpado: Butā€¦ he didnā€™t? He used the GPLv3 license, which has other requirements. Requirements that arenā€™t being met by the people who forked the codebase." - geoffpado
  • "roncesvalles: A GPL violation is a GPL violation." - roncesvalles
  • "stitched2gethr: Is the thought different at all or exactly the same? Just raising the question." - stitched2gethr (referring to a hypothetical scenario of a malicious OSS tool being stolen)
  • "worik: What about weapons? The point is being "GPL evil" is GPL. Taking the code, not obtaining the copyright, and re-licensing it is a clear violation of copyright law and immoral." - worik
  • "tombert: 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." - tombert
  • "TheChaplain: > The GPL is a good enough idea but it is basically impossible for anyone to realistically enforce. Really? If you find a piece of proprietary software does basically the same thing as yours, and the binaries contains the same strings/artwork, then it's reasonable to make a legal case of it. You can even contact FSF and they'll take it further." - TheChaplain
  • "tombert: If you can directly prove a violation dead to rights (or have enough cause for a discovery request) and you have money for legal defense, sure. A lot of open source stuff is libraries and utilities though that is pretty entrenched in the code. It is hard to even find out about a violation, let alone prove anything." - tombert
  • "Alex4386: yes, but sublicensing to even permissive ("free-er") license (GPLv3+ to Apache2.0) is a violation of license. GPL is supposed to viral, if you are using project adopted that, you are taking the risk with it. If you are just changing the license and took the code, that's wrong and need to get an attention." - Alex4386
  • "selcuka: > that was accidentally too free. You are ignoring the fact that they claimed that they 'built it in just 72 hours', accidentally omitting to mention that it's a fork of another repo." - selcuka
  • "Disposal8433: And it has the same fake excuse as usual 'Since this was our first OSS project, we didnā€™t realize at first.' He sure discovered this new open source thing and it's very confusing. It's not like it's almost 40 years old at that point. I'll never understand people who lie like toddlers." - Disposal8433
  • "michaelmrose: Setting the license text is an explicit act and it seems fairly unlikely for anyone who creates software to think they can relicence GPL code or to think they didn't need to Google it first. Doing something that you meant to do isn't a mistake it's a choice. It seems more likely that they didn't think anyone would notice." - michaelmrose

The "Soham" Pattern and Startup Culture

The discussion highlights a perceived pattern or trend within the startup ecosystem, particularly with projects associated with the name "Soham" and affiliations like Y Combinator (YC). Users draw parallels to other controversial YC-backed companies and question the ethical boundaries being pushed by founders aiming for rapid growth.

  • "esafak: If you're talking about the remote work scammer in the news today, that's Soham Parekh. This is Soham Bharambe. Both are into cheating, apparently..." - esafak
  • "turbofreak: The Year of Soham on HN." - turbofreak
  • "nirui: Soham the remote work hacker(s)." - nirui*
  • "an0malous: Thereā€™s a reason they ask the question about describing a time you ā€œhacked a system to your advantageā€ in the YC application. They have always selected for founders who are willing to take advantage of legal and ethical gray areas. Reddit created fake users and farmed content from Digg, Airbnb scraped listings from Craigslist." - an0malous
  • "mindcrime: There is no "grey area" here, and this isn't "hacking"." - mindcrime
  • "jwilber: Over the last decade or two, the builder/hacker ethos has seemed to shift towards this grifter, money-over-everything attitude. Iā€™m sure thereā€™s a lot at play (crypto culture, VC self-selection, the attraction of ā€˜easyā€™ high salaries), but Iā€™m sure itā€™ll get markedly worse with ai tooling and the any-publicity-is-good fomo marketing thatā€™s taken over the startup scene. My take is both OPā€™s tool and the blatant plagiarism of it are examples." - jwilber
  • "ninetyninenine: Thatā€™s not the only corrupt stuff that yc does. Thereā€™s dreamworld." - ninetyninenine
  • "ipsum2: This is the second time in less than a year something similar has happened. Previously, a different YC company (Pear AI) copied Continue, changed the licenses, and "launched"." - ipsum2
  • "Lionga: YC doing typical YC things" - Lionga
  • "tomhow: The first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate (i.e., intervene) less if a story reflects negatively on a YC company or YC itself. This principle goes right back to pg days, and was the first thing he taught dang [1]." - tomhow

Defense of Open Source Labor and Compensation

Several users express concern about the devaluation of labor in open source, especially when for-profit companies benefit from the work of individual developers without proper compensation or attribution.

  • "litexlang: Sorry for your story. In those days open source is REALLY HARD. Put your github link here and we will support your project by starring you and spreading your project. You definitely need to fight back." - litexlang
  • "kratoskr221: Is there a way to file lawsuits for such cases? These incidents lead to death of open source and crush hearts of open-source developers." - kratoskr221
  • "tombert: 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." - tombert
  • "rfl890: Well, if you're writing open source because you want to write open source, then none of this matters. If you are worried about corporations stealing your work, that should drive you away from OSS. OSS should stay "hobbyist" for the individual developer." - rfl890
  • "tombert: 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." - tombert
  • "nativeit: It only devalues labor if it's leveraged specifically to do so. You could make this argument about literally any volunteer activity, software related or otherwise. The real devaluation of labor comes from things like the "gig economy" where costs and compensation are abstracted such that companies can exploit the naivete of workers who, generally speaking, are not accustomed to things like amortization and accounting for external costs, thus significantly driving down their own labor, operational expenses, and risks by passing them directly to the workers. At least open source projects are up-front about what's to be expected, and tend not to engage in exploitative practices." - nativeit
  • "sohzm: 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" - sohzm

The "Mistake" Defense and Integrity

The responses from the accused party, attempting to frame the license violation as an accidental oversight, are met with skepticism. Users question the plausibility of such a mistake given the nature of software development and licensing.

  • "Daniel Park (Pickle team): However in initially building it we included code from a GPL-licensed project that we incorrectly attributed as Apache. This was incorrect and sloppy work on our end." - danielpkl
  • "icar: Nice try" - icar
  • "sebmellen: This being on page 2 with 247 upvotes in the three hour time period this post has been up is surprising to me. I wouldn't be surprised if @dang is suppressing it (but I'd also be happy to hear that it's not being suppressed). It's pretty spineless for the Pickle team to come out and pretend they mistakenly re-licensed GPL code. Hilarious." - sebmellen
  • "sebmellen: > in initially building it we included code from a GPL-licensed project that we incorrectly attributed as Apache How can you write a sentence like that in good faith?" - sebmellen
  • "michaelmrose: Setting the license text is an explicit act and it seems fairly unlikely for anyone who creates software to think they can relicence GPL code or to think they didn't need to Google it first. Doing something that you meant to do isn't a mistake it's a choice. It seems more likely that they didn't think anyone would notice." - michaelmrose
  • "AnotherGoodName: If it was 'just' a licensing slip up sure, but there's still a lot of integrity issues here despite that. The presentation of 'we created an open source library to do X in just days' comes across as a lie right?" - AnotherGoodName
  • "rustystump: This is the crux of it all to me. Anyone in the industry knows mistakes happen all the time but the braggadocios nature rubs me the wrong way and spits in the face to those of YC who do indeed have integrity." - rustystump