let's not freak out - you can't "steal" open-source code, they used an incompatible license. that was accidentally too free.
people monetizing something you open-source isn't stealing.
AnotherGoodName · 3h ago
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?
I feel like ycombinator leads may want to look more deeply into this one. If they are presenting it as something they've achieved that's an integrity issue right?
rustystump · 3h ago
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.
eddythompson80 · 2h ago
It's baffling why someone would do this tbh. It's not like the base project is some spectacular piece of engineering that would be very costly to replicate.
I'm guessing they just looked at it as a jumping point. It probably went something like:
- We know how to polish an electron app
- here is a barebone electron app with an interesting idea
- Can we build a polished UI around this, and give a demo?
The baffling part is, had they just disclosed that, no one would have given a shit. Plenty of demos begin like that: "here is a cool idea we found, here is that idea on crack". is a very common demo pattern. But of course you can't give a shout out to 'cheating-daddy' at YC demo.
It's like a fine student at a fine college, in a class they are doing fine in, then they decide to copy their friend's cover letter because "eh", then they get caught and now what? wtf would you do this?
seanhunter · 23m ago
Like the frog in the parable,[1] people with integrity often struggle when they attempt to understand the motivations of people who cheat. “Why would they cheat in this particular situation?”, they ask themselves. “It makes no sense!” Well they are cheaters. Cheaters cheat.
The license they used was less free than the GPL license. Laundering GPL code into projects with licenses that aren't as free is classic copyright infringement.
selcuka · 3h ago
> 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.
Incipient · 1h ago
And they've now orphaned that commit, they're a sketchy bunch at best.
Unfortunately, sketchy is generally rewarded.
ValentineC · 1h ago
It looks like they've squashed everything into a single commit, since there's only a commit on their repo right now that was pushed 28 minutes ago (as of this comment).
That's probably the right thing to do Git-wise, because licences might not be retroactive.
Alex4386 · 3h ago
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. If anyone could go just yoink and relicense the GPL code to other permissive license was "legal", the https://gpl-violations.org wouldn't exist in the first place (i.e. you can just take the linux kernel code and rename it something like "mynux", redistribute in bsd-3 clause and "don't distribute the derivative part").
tareqak · 3h ago
From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum (based on what I remember from past discussions of this sort of activity involving different participants).
If someone else has a better idea of what “forking GPL 3 source code and using a different licence” would be, then please let me and others know.
rwmj · 47m ago
If you don't follow the license, then you don't have a license to use, distribute or modify the code. So then you get into copyright violation territory, up to $150,000 per infringement in the US if it's intentional.
anilakar · 39m ago
Sadly in my experience various courts have taken a stance that violating GPL does not cause monetary damages, because the software in question is free.
rwmj · 29m ago
Can you cite some actual cases?
seanhunter · 1m ago
I somewhat doubt they can since in the US the BusyBox lawsuits pretty much all ended with the infringers settling and paying out, and those that didn’t settle, busybox won[1]
>From what I understand, it would be a breach of contract at minimum
Isn't that the minimum bar for a "business model" capable of attracting VC interest these days?
jrflowers · 3h ago
Realistically this will probably just have a reputational cost for Daniel Park/Pickle. Whether he intended to or not, some amount of people will associate “pretends to make things that he did not make” with him because of this entirely unforced error.
They cloned (not forked) the repo, removed the history, claimed it as their own, and changed the license. This is not a mistake
mpol · 3h ago
Is the copyright still attributed to the original developer?
Alex4386 · 2h ago
no. its BOTH attribution AND license violation.
Disposal8433 · 3h ago
And it has the same fake excuse as usual "Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’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.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 9m ago
This incompetence excuse puts YC in a bad spotlight too, because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.
sreekanth850 · 28m ago
YC should put integrity and ethics of founders as a key variable for funding.
No comments yet
litexlang · 4h ago
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.
I wonder if Pear AI is dead or pivoted, their open source repos have not been updated since May.
tombert · 3h ago
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.
rfl890 · 3h ago
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.
tombert · 3h ago
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 still a big project that I contributed to. But after a few minutes it occurred to me that I just did free labor for a for-profit trading company. If they merged in my code then must have thought it had some value, and I decided to dedicate my time to saving this multi million dollar company some money.
My PR there was pretty simple and only took me like 30 minutes (if that), so I am not going to cry too hard over this, but it’s just something that made me realize that if a company is going to use my work, they should pay me. I don’t think it’s wrong or weird to want to be compensated for my labor.
I am still a hobbyist. Turns out you can still be a hobbyist without sharing everything you’ve ever done on GitHub.
nativeit · 3h ago
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.
tombert · 2h ago
I have had a bunch of jobs. When I have wanted to use open source libraries, I have been told “no” because the repo has no recent updates, because that suggests that whomever built it isn’t working it anymore. Conversely, where there are lots of updates, the project is likely to be used.
Why am I telling this story? Because it suggests to me that companies will only use these libraries if there is a guarantee of ongoing free labor; presumably they could use an old appropriate library and pay people to fix any issues as they come up. Admittedly, I know that some companies do exactly that, and that’s great, but I do not think it’s the majority.
I don’t think the people doing Open Source are bad people at all, far from it, in fact. I think a lot of these people are very smart and hard workers, and I think they should be compensated for their work, even if they are just “hobby projects”. If my project is creating value for a company, then that company can afford to pay me.
I don’t like the gig economy either but I don’t think it’s relevant to my complaints.
bruce511 · 34m ago
There are different actors in play here, and each one has a different perspective. That's OK, there's enough room in the world for different perspectives.
For the company, making use of Open Source code is free labor. That's good for them. You are free to offer that labor or not.
For some developers, it's cool to write code that's used by zillions. That's reward enough.
Other developers release the code for free, but build an eco system around it. They get paid for related work etc.
New developers use it to flex their skills, and demonstrate ability (and then get upset when someone else turns it into something profitable, but that's another story).
Personally I write code, and ship as source, but it's under a commercial license (cause I like to eat.) Other companies have business models around whatever they do.
You are free to act as you wish. Which is great. We live in an economy that allows each his preferred path.
You're right. Many startups open source their products specifically to get free labor, free marketing, or whatever. As payment they release the code they write to you. Whether you think that deal is right for uou or not us up to you.
If you believe you can add value to a company then reach out to them. It's not like they're "making" you work for free.
AnotherGoodName · 3h ago
There’s a million reasons to want to write open source. A lack of attribution in particular is a killer for motivation.
sohzm · 2h ago
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
tombert · 2h ago
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.
sohzm · 1h ago
when i started using computer i jumped to linux ecosystem in a month, and have been using it primarily until very recently
i personally dont feel good using things that are not opensource, yeah i use closed source softwares but i try to limit them
TheChaplain · 2h ago
> 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.
tombert · 2h ago
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.
Imagine I came up with a new algorithm to do Fourier Transforms 10% faster than FFTW (or whatever the current market leader is) and make a library and I release it as GPL. A company could fairly easily just import it to whatever project they’re doing, and it would be extremely difficult for me to prove anything, especially if I don’t have any obvious things like strings in there.
That’s not even taking into account that it would be relatively easy for a corporation to just pay a junior engineer to do a direct “port” of the library to another language and pretending it’s their own independent work.
bruce511 · 27m ago
All completely true. And something you can clearly take into account when you decide what to do with your code.
You may decide its worth people using it, reading it, learning from it, exploiting it, or you may not. It's your choice.
Of course your work may be used outside of the license terms. That's pretty much impossible to enforce. That's true for most-all software, commercial or open or free. If that's your main objection to writing code then I recommend a different career. All good code is pirated. That's just how it is.
qwertyuiop12 · 2h ago
In general, I try to add a fingerprint into the output.
For example, in a project which generates images I usually set a specific set of pixels.
tombert · 2h ago
Sure, but if they have access to your code then a company could pay a junior engineer to look for any kinds of explicit fingerprints and remove it.
ValentineC · 1h ago
Some companies that steal open source code are likely to cheap out on even this.
sohzm · 4h ago
not the best project but yeah still something
VoidWhisperer · 4h ago
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.
noufalibrahim · 17m ago
Two separate issues.
I'd be happy for a platform that encourages and facilities cheating to disappear and not be used anymore. So, on that front, I'd agree. As a side point though, the fact that someone big is funding something like that means, it's not really an issue for, atleast some, people.
The license violation is a problem independent of this. If this becomes acceptable for any reason (including the one that your post seemed to suggest - original work is unethical), it will have detrimental effects on a lot of good players as well.
roncesvalles · 4h ago
A GPL violation is a GPL violation.
stitched2gethr · 3h ago
I made an OSS tool to help you cheat on your taxes, screw your business partner, or ensure your ex wife cannot see the children. Someone stole the source and is backed by a major VC firm. Is the thought different at all or exactly the same? Just raising the question.
eddythompson80 · 2h ago
It's exactly the same of course? Why would it be different?
stitched2gethr · 1h ago
Maybe it's not.
weird-eye-issue · 3h ago
Google search and the internet can help you with all of those. Maybe we should ban the internet.
Thorrez · 2h ago
So can electricity.
The difference is that the tool "cheating daddy" was specifically created for the purpose of cheating. Electricity, the Internet, and Google were not created for that purpose.
Cheating daddy's tagline is "If you're gonna cheat, cheat better".
Not that I'm in any way defending Cluely/Glass. Cluely's X bio is "cheat (noun) – an advantage so good it's unfair; rewrites the balance between effort and outcome."
Disclosure: I work at Google by my thoughts are my own.
worik · 3h ago
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.
We are not little children in the playground. Two wrongs do not make a right, and rights are most important for bad people
Incipient · 1h ago
A new product with four wheels that is used to transport people from A to B is a amazing new development! Some new 4 wheeled death machine to drive through crowds of people is an detriment to society.
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.
kratoskr221 · 4h ago
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.
tombert · 3h ago
I believe that BusyBox sued over violations like 17 years ago. I am not aware of any other instances.
20after4 · 3h ago
Absolutely. The lawsuit probably wouldn't get very far when it comes to damages, however...
0manrho · 3h ago
It's always possible to try, especially as it seems there was a technical violation here, but whether it's worth it or likely to gain enough legal traction to yield results is another story, especially in instances of "your AI generated boiler plate looks like my AI generated boilerplate, and therefore is theft"
InkCanon · 4h ago
Is this the Soham?
esafak · 4h ago
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...
* The extended meaning of "hacking" is required to correctly understand this sentence.
sebmellen · 1h ago
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.
> 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?
tomhow · 1h ago
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].
That said, it doesn't mean we avoid moderation at all and it doesn't mean the guidelines all go out the window.
Different factors influence the story's rank and visibility on the front page: upvotes, flags, the flamewar detector, and settings to turn these penalties on/off. I'm actively watching the thread to keep it on the front page, as per the rule.
That said, the guidelines ask us to avoid fulmination and assume good faith. Whilst it's fair enough to criticize and question a company when they do something like this, we can also be adult enough to look the evidence before us and recognize that this was most likely a dumb mistake that they've moved quickly to correct.
> 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.
Unless you have transparency on flagging and mod actions, these are just your words. And as these events keep happening, your credibility erodes.
michaelmrose · 56m ago
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.
tomhow · 50m ago
> It seems more likely that they didn't think anyone would notice.
Maybe, but if that's what they thought (and I have no idea, I haven't spoken to them or anyone else about it), it's very foolish, because this kind of thing will always get noticed eventually, especially if the project becomes successful.
The evidence clearly shows it was not a 'dumb mistake'
They claim they wrote the whole thing in 4 days. They did not attribute the original author in ANY way.
They clearly showed they intended to steal the authors work and sell it as if they wrote it. YC has just become such a dumpster fire if that kind behaviour is even remotely accepted or called a 'dumb mistake'
paradite · 23m ago
As dang said, presume good faith. It's part of the HN guideline.
Also, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
Lionga · 1h ago
YC doing typical YC things
an0malous · 4h ago
There’s a reason they ask the question about describing a time you “hacked a system to your advantage” 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.
mindcrime · 4h ago
There is no "grey area" here, and this isn't "hacking".
rincebrain · 2h ago
There's an argument to be made that, even if it's an open and shut violation, if enforcement is nontrivial and a vanishingly low risk, it still pattern matches as "grey area" in terms of risk.
Not at all in favor of the person stealing someone else's code and slapping a new name on it in violation of the license, just that I think I see why people might list that as matching the same intent as a question like that.
colonial · 4h ago
This isn't "hacking the system", though - this is an open-and-shut violation of a license with a strong legal pedigree.
bhouston · 4h ago
Hmm... a tool for cheating is stolen and relicensed by another company that specializes in cheating tools. Sort of on brand actually.
esafak · 4h ago
I'm having trouble mustering sympathy.
mustntmumble · 4h ago
To paraphrase Voltaire, I mean, Tallentyre, I mean, Hall, I may not agree with what you publish under the GPL but I defend to the death your right to assert the GPL...
timewizard · 4h ago
If our rights are contingent on taste then we have no rights at all.
0manrho · 3h ago
Lacking sympathy for someone does not mean you condone them losing/lacking rights.
timewizard · 2h ago
So when someone is actively losing their rights you feel the need to go out of your way to say you're unsympathetic. What did you /intend/ to convey with this? You support them, but at this dark moment, you felt the need to kick their shins also?
diimdeep · 12m ago
Here you are OP, a little closer to idiocracy by your own actions and by HN zealots here, and all you SV tech bro wannabes who participate in this day by day ever more fake economy.
Propel and fund into the world the product with sole purpose to pretend, to cheat, to fraud everyone, then to make "open source" version on this, and then to complain that someone stole it from you, to fund and sell even more sophisticated product with sole purpose to pretend, to cheat, to fraud everyone.
This maliciously deliberate hustling behavior, fake it till you make it, feel good, superiority complex, reality distorted, this version of society, a bubble, a community, open source, call it, or wrap it too sell whatever you want it, this all post-post-modern obscenery will be ruin of you all.
rfrey · 4h ago
If there's not some backstory that explains this, it's actually disgusting.
sleepybrett · 4h ago
disgusting behavior by an 'ai' company, say it isn't so.
jwilber · 4h ago
Over the last decade or two, the builder/hacker ethos has seemed to shift towards this grifter, money-over-everything attitude. I’m sure there’s a lot at play (crypto culture, VC self-selection, the attraction of ‘easy’ high salaries), but I’m sure it’ll get markedly worse with ai tooling and the any-publicity-is-good fomo marketing that’s taken over the startup scene.
My take is both OP’s tool and the blatant plagiarism of it are examples.
matsemann · 22m ago
Yeah, most VC founders on twitter are annoying and not worth following anymore. It used to be inspiring to follow some of them many years ago, see them build a cool product and sharing learnings. Now it's all just promotion, straight up lies, and their personal brand comes across as more important than actually building something. The "learnings" shared are now more tailored to go viral than actually help others etc.
_345 · 2h ago
where are we headed...
kevbin · 3h ago
These two guys seem like they should get together.
ninetyninenine · 4h ago
That’s not the only corrupt stuff that yc does. There’s dreamworld.
I’m sure there’s much more we don’t know about. They just didn’t get caught. Yc used to have this reputation of being one of the good guys but I guess nothing is really immune to corruption.
yahoozoo · 3h ago
jeers busted, everyone wins
dgellow · 4h ago
What’s the context? Elon’s Twitter is really a pain, without using an account you only see the linked tweet, without the replies or anything else.
OP is the author, who clearly doesn't work at the company.
The company changed the license after this post blew up in their faces.
AnotherGoodName · 3h ago
That's the author of this post talking about the other person changing their licensing to match.
fastball · 3h ago
They committed the (presumably ripped off) repo yesterday, changed the license from GPL to Apache, and now have changed it back (presumably in response to this thread).
You might have better luck if you provide a link to your code, but I rather suspect you left that out because you would probably struggle to gain sympathy from alleging the theft of https://cheatingdaddy.com/.
Honestly, I looked through both repos and while I didn't find any direct evidence for/against your assertion, it's a very boilerplate approach to connecting with LLM APIs, I don't imagine it would look much different if you both simply had similar ideas, and then used an agent to help write the code.
zero-sharp · 4h ago
If you scroll down in the xcancel link (posted in the same thread), you'll find side-by-side picture comparisons of the code, comments, libraries.
nirui · 3h ago
There's actual good reason for that. the X Formally Known As Twitter company has a content weighting system that punishes external links, regardless where the link is pointed to. So apparently Mr. Soham did the smartest thing to give that post the best chance to spread.
BTW, the X Formally Known As Twitter company is not the only one who conduced the world to this, all big names do link restriction. Look what we've become, such nice world :)
fastball · 4h ago
He includes screenshots which (to me) do indicate a certain amount of lifting.
Also the project is open source and the website is at the end of the thread. The website has a GH link in the header.
What more do you want really?
sohzm · 3h ago
its not the best name tbh, i just made it as a meme but people take the name seriously and that hurts the case
ive posted the evidence in twitter thread link
eddythompson80 · 2h ago
> its not the best name tbh
lol, I'll bet you $10 that the name is exactly why they got themselves into this mess. Had the name been something like "meeting-agent" or some corporate friendly name like that, they probably wouldn't have tried to hide it so much.
nativeit · 3h ago
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 endeavors.
sebmellen · 1h ago
The appropriate thing would be to revise your initial comment.
xeromal · 3h ago
If you read the post, it has examples
nativeit · 3h ago
Today I learned about xcancel.
rafael09ed · 4h ago
You gave everyone permission with the license & the incentives are there. Thanks for highlighting Pickle ai's behavior.
Edit: I am wrong about the license
geoffpado · 4h ago
But… he didn’t? He used the GPLv3 license, which has other requirements. Requirements that aren’t being met by the people who forked the codebase.
Semaphor · 4h ago
But they didn’t. The company violated the GPL by re-publishing it illegally as Apache.
danielpkl · 2h ago
Hi everyone, this is Daniel from the Pickle team. Glass is a new open source project from us that we plan to build on and improve. We built several original features for it like live summaries, real-time STT Transcript and one-click "Ask" from summary that we're very excited about. 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. We made a quick fix and are working right now to do a proper fix that addresses the issues fully and cleanly. We are sorry to the original author of the project, Soham (CheatingDaddy), and thank him for pointing this out. We are also sorry to the open source community for messing up here. Thanks everyone for caring about this.
oefrha · 42m ago
Hiding the entire history of this incident[1] behind a force push[2] to make it seem as if credit was given and proper license was chosen from the start really displays a lack of integrity, and tells me it’s definitely malicious (which should be quite clear from zero mention of the original project to begin with, but this act reinforces that) rather an inadvertent screwup.
I don’t think the rebase is malicious. Would they even be allowed to continue distributing the older commits (where they claim an Apache license) or would that be to perpetuate the license violation?
oefrha · 4m ago
I'm too jaded to pointlessly debate all the misunderstandings about copyright and licenses. Bottom line is, this case is clearly not going to court, so there's no entity allowing or not allowing them to do anything, the only thing that matters is does this act of hiding enrages the original author even more? My answer to that is yes. Plus that old commit is still there, accessible after a couple of rather obscure clicks, so it's not even taken down if you want to debate technicalities.
csomar · 44m ago
> This was incorrect and sloppy work on our end. We made a quick fix and are working right now to do a proper fix that addresses the issues fully and cleanly.
There is no fix. Your work is derived and should be/will be licensed as GPL. You do not want to accidentally succeed and then find you have nothing. You are being a smart-ass here.
sebmellen · 1h ago
The correct approach is to license your code as GPL v3 with Soham as the author. It's a simple fix.
ayongpm · 52m ago
You won’t be forgiven unless you restore the license to GPL v3.
let's not freak out - you can't "steal" open-source code, they used an incompatible license. that was accidentally too free.
people monetizing something you open-source isn't stealing.
I feel like ycombinator leads may want to look more deeply into this one. If they are presenting it as something they've achieved that's an integrity issue right?
I'm guessing they just looked at it as a jumping point. It probably went something like:
- We know how to polish an electron app
- here is a barebone electron app with an interesting idea
- Can we build a polished UI around this, and give a demo?
The baffling part is, had they just disclosed that, no one would have given a shit. Plenty of demos begin like that: "here is a cool idea we found, here is that idea on crack". is a very common demo pattern. But of course you can't give a shout out to 'cheating-daddy' at YC demo.
It's like a fine student at a fine college, in a class they are doing fine in, then they decide to copy their friend's cover letter because "eh", then they get caught and now what? wtf would you do this?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
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.
Unfortunately, sketchy is generally rewarded.
That's probably the right thing to do Git-wise, because licences might not be retroactive.
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. If anyone could go just yoink and relicense the GPL code to other permissive license was "legal", the https://gpl-violations.org wouldn't exist in the first place (i.e. you can just take the linux kernel code and rename it something like "mynux", redistribute in bsd-3 clause and "don't distribute the derivative part").
If someone else has a better idea of what “forking GPL 3 source code and using a different licence” would be, then please let me and others know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits
Isn't that the minimum bar for a "business model" capable of attracting VC interest these days?
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.
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https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy
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Previously, a different YC company (Pear AI) copied Continue, changed the licenses, and "launched".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495
I wonder if Pear AI is dead or pivoted, their open source repos have not been updated since May.
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 still a big project that I contributed to. But after a few minutes it occurred to me that I just did free labor for a for-profit trading company. If they merged in my code then must have thought it had some value, and I decided to dedicate my time to saving this multi million dollar company some money.
My PR there was pretty simple and only took me like 30 minutes (if that), so I am not going to cry too hard over this, but it’s just something that made me realize that if a company is going to use my work, they should pay me. I don’t think it’s wrong or weird to want to be compensated for my labor.
I am still a hobbyist. Turns out you can still be a hobbyist without sharing everything you’ve ever done on GitHub.
Why am I telling this story? Because it suggests to me that companies will only use these libraries if there is a guarantee of ongoing free labor; presumably they could use an old appropriate library and pay people to fix any issues as they come up. Admittedly, I know that some companies do exactly that, and that’s great, but I do not think it’s the majority.
I don’t think the people doing Open Source are bad people at all, far from it, in fact. I think a lot of these people are very smart and hard workers, and I think they should be compensated for their work, even if they are just “hobby projects”. If my project is creating value for a company, then that company can afford to pay me.
I don’t like the gig economy either but I don’t think it’s relevant to my complaints.
For the company, making use of Open Source code is free labor. That's good for them. You are free to offer that labor or not.
For some developers, it's cool to write code that's used by zillions. That's reward enough.
Other developers release the code for free, but build an eco system around it. They get paid for related work etc.
New developers use it to flex their skills, and demonstrate ability (and then get upset when someone else turns it into something profitable, but that's another story).
Personally I write code, and ship as source, but it's under a commercial license (cause I like to eat.) Other companies have business models around whatever they do.
You are free to act as you wish. Which is great. We live in an economy that allows each his preferred path.
You're right. Many startups open source their products specifically to get free labor, free marketing, or whatever. As payment they release the code they write to you. Whether you think that deal is right for uou or not us up to you.
If you believe you can add value to a company then reach out to them. It's not like they're "making" you work for free.
but yeah someone claiming it all falsely isnt good for the motivation
i personally dont feel good using things that are not opensource, yeah i use closed source softwares but i try to limit them
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.
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.
Imagine I came up with a new algorithm to do Fourier Transforms 10% faster than FFTW (or whatever the current market leader is) and make a library and I release it as GPL. A company could fairly easily just import it to whatever project they’re doing, and it would be extremely difficult for me to prove anything, especially if I don’t have any obvious things like strings in there.
That’s not even taking into account that it would be relatively easy for a corporation to just pay a junior engineer to do a direct “port” of the library to another language and pretending it’s their own independent work.
You may decide its worth people using it, reading it, learning from it, exploiting it, or you may not. It's your choice.
Of course your work may be used outside of the license terms. That's pretty much impossible to enforce. That's true for most-all software, commercial or open or free. If that's your main objection to writing code then I recommend a different career. All good code is pirated. That's just how it is.
For example, in a project which generates images I usually set a specific set of pixels.
I'd be happy for a platform that encourages and facilities cheating to disappear and not be used anymore. So, on that front, I'd agree. As a side point though, the fact that someone big is funding something like that means, it's not really an issue for, atleast some, people.
The license violation is a problem independent of this. If this becomes acceptable for any reason (including the one that your post seemed to suggest - original work is unethical), it will have detrimental effects on a lot of good players as well.
The difference is that the tool "cheating daddy" was specifically created for the purpose of cheating. Electricity, the Internet, and Google were not created for that purpose.
Cheating daddy's tagline is "If you're gonna cheat, cheat better".
Not that I'm in any way defending Cluely/Glass. Cluely's X bio is "cheat (noun) – an advantage so good it's unfair; rewrites the balance between effort and outcome."
Disclosure: I work at Google by my thoughts are my own.
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.
We are not little children in the playground. Two wrongs do not make a right, and rights are most important for bad people
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.
For those that missed it: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/who-is-soham-parekh-the-se...
* The extended meaning of "hacking" is required to correctly understand this sentence.
It's pretty spineless for the Pickle team to come out and pretend they mistakenly re-licensed GPL code. Hilarious.
> 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?
This principle goes right back to pg days, and was the first thing he taught dang [1].
That said, it doesn't mean we avoid moderation at all and it doesn't mean the guidelines all go out the window.
Different factors influence the story's rank and visibility on the front page: upvotes, flags, the flamewar detector, and settings to turn these penalties on/off. I'm actively watching the thread to keep it on the front page, as per the rule.
That said, the guidelines ask us to avoid fulmination and assume good faith. Whilst it's fair enough to criticize and question a company when they do something like this, we can also be adult enough to look the evidence before us and recognize that this was most likely a dumb mistake that they've moved quickly to correct.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Unless you have transparency on flagging and mod actions, these are just your words. And as these events keep happening, your credibility erodes.
It seems more likely that they didn't think anyone would notice.
Maybe, but if that's what they thought (and I have no idea, I haven't spoken to them or anyone else about it), it's very foolish, because this kind of thing will always get noticed eventually, especially if the project becomes successful.
They claim they wrote the whole thing in 4 days. They did not attribute the original author in ANY way.
They clearly showed they intended to steal the authors work and sell it as if they wrote it. YC has just become such a dumpster fire if that kind behaviour is even remotely accepted or called a 'dumb mistake'
Also, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
Not at all in favor of the person stealing someone else's code and slapping a new name on it in violation of the license, just that I think I see why people might list that as matching the same intent as a question like that.
Propel and fund into the world the product with sole purpose to pretend, to cheat, to fraud everyone, then to make "open source" version on this, and then to complain that someone stole it from you, to fund and sell even more sophisticated product with sole purpose to pretend, to cheat, to fraud everyone.
This maliciously deliberate hustling behavior, fake it till you make it, feel good, superiority complex, reality distorted, this version of society, a bubble, a community, open source, call it, or wrap it too sell whatever you want it, this all post-post-modern obscenery will be ruin of you all.
My take is both OP’s tool and the blatant plagiarism of it are examples.
https://www.pcgamer.com/dreamworld-infinite-world-mmo-kickst...
I’m sure there’s much more we don’t know about. They just didn’t get caught. Yc used to have this reputation of being one of the good guys but I guess nothing is really immune to corruption.
https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy
https://github.com/pickle-com/glass
OP is the author, who clearly doesn't work at the company.
The company changed the license after this post blew up in their faces.
https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commits/main/LICENSE
Honestly, I looked through both repos and while I didn't find any direct evidence for/against your assertion, it's a very boilerplate approach to connecting with LLM APIs, I don't imagine it would look much different if you both simply had similar ideas, and then used an agent to help write the code.
BTW, the X Formally Known As Twitter company is not the only one who conduced the world to this, all big names do link restriction. Look what we've become, such nice world :)
Also the project is open source and the website is at the end of the thread. The website has a GH link in the header.
What more do you want really?
ive posted the evidence in twitter thread link
lol, I'll bet you $10 that the name is exactly why they got themselves into this mess. Had the name been something like "meeting-agent" or some corporate friendly name like that, they probably wouldn't have tried to hide it so much.
Edit: I am wrong about the license
[1] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commits/5c462179acface88...
[2] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/4c51d5133c4987fa1...
There is no fix. Your work is derived and should be/will be licensed as GPL. You do not want to accidentally succeed and then find you have nothing. You are being a smart-ass here.
You won't be forgiven unless you credited sohzm and state that cheating-daddy is a direct inspiration