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My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
- j1elo 1y ago"Since this was our first tax reporting, we didn’t realize at first that we're supposed to declare our income. We’ve now revised it."
- Nextgrid 1y agoYou are joking but that's exactly how it works as long as you are a company (and the bigger/more connected it is the better). Don't pay your debts as a person: you quickly get hit with fees, chased by collections, etc. Don't pay your debts as a company: sorry, it was merely a clerical error by our accounting department. Nothing to see here. Lie and profit from it as an individual: that's called fraud and could land you in jail. Lie and profit from it as a company: sorry, our website/documentation was out of date, our CS clerk was wrong and has since received additional training. Nothing to see here.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neonate 1y agohttps://xcancel.com/soham_btw/status/1940952786491027886 https://xcancel.com/soham_btw/status/1940952786491027886
- sohzm 1y agonot the best project but yeah still something
- bhouston 1y agoHmm... a tool for cheating is stolen and relicensed by another company that specializes in cheating tools. Sort of on brand actually.
- esafak 1y agoI'm having trouble mustering sympathy.
- mustntmumble 1y agoTo 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...
- rswail 1y agoIf you paraphrase, it's still a derivative work under copyright law. /s
- timewizard 1y agoIf our rights are contingent on taste then we have no rights at all.
- 0manrho 1y agoLacking sympathy for someone does not mean you condone them losing/lacking rights.
- timewizard 1y agoSo 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?
- Y-bar 1y agoI initially downvoted you, but on second thought I’m actually a bit sympathetic to your argument. We see a similar pattern happening elsewhere. E.g. US citizens being round up by paramilitary forces and shuttled without due process to places which can almost be described as concentration camps. All for the stated crime of maybe entering the country improperly. The argument goes that they do not deserve anything else because they are ”illegals”. Doing one bad thing does not necessarily justify other bad things done to you. That said, I don’t like this cheating-enabling software either and think the world would be a better place without it.
- InkCanon 1y agoIs this the Soham?
- esafak 1y agoIf 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... For those that missed it: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/who-is-soham-parekh-the-serial-moonlighter-silicon-valley-startups-cant-stop-hiring/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/who-is-soham-parekh-the-se...
- turbofreak 1y agoThe Year of Soham on HN.
- nirui 1y agoSoham the remote work hacker(s)*. * The extended meaning of "hacking" is required to correctly understand this sentence.
- zem 1y agotear him for his bad cheating!
- gg-plz 1y ago[dead]
- rfrey 1y agoIf there's not some backstory that explains this, it's actually disgusting.
- sleepybrett 1y ago[flagged]
- jcgrillo 1y agothe backstory that explains it is the same silly con valley bullshit as always: low quality people doing low quality work and hyping the ever loving fuck out of it for some dumb vc bucks.
- litexlang 1y agoSorry 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 1y ago[dead]
- npsomaratna 1y agoNot the developer, but here is his repo: https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dheerajvs 1y agoAs an interviewer, I'm seeing a huge increase in proportion of candidates cheating surreptitiously during video interviews. And it's becoming difficult to suspect any wrong-doing unless you're very watchful by looking for academic responses to questions. Why would anyone encourage building such a tool, I can't fathom.
- zettabomb 1y agoIt's pretty simple - people need to eat (and fulfill other basic needs, of course), to eat they need jobs, to get jobs they need to pass the interview. The hiring process in a lot of industries is heavily gamed at this point, to the point that not cheating is basically an automatic fail. So, if you want to eat, you cheat.
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y agoDoing whatever it takes to get the foot in the door may be encouraged, but only to a point and I think out and out cheating is probably crossing a line... As would murder, arson etc. etc. 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. Reviewing previously posted interview tests is probably recommended. Hooking up a copilot to answer interview questions for you in real time is probably less so.
- dgellow 1y agoWhat’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.
- supriyo-biswas 1y agohttps://xcancel.com/soham_btw/status/1940952786491027886 https://xcancel.com/soham_btw/status/1940952786491027886
- dgellow 1y agoThanks, that’s great
- rafael09ed 1y ago[flagged]
- VoidWhisperer 1y agoIn 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.
- roncesvalles 1y agoA GPL violation is a GPL violation.
- stitched2gethr 1y agoI 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.
- weird-eye-issue 1y agoGoogle search and the internet can help you with all of those. Maybe we should ban the internet.
- Thorrez 1y agoSo 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 1y agoWhat 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
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- an0malous 1y agoThere’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 1y agoThere is no "grey area" here, and this isn't "hacking".
- rincebrain 1y agoThere'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 1y agoThis isn't "hacking the system", though - this is an open-and-shut violation of a license with a strong legal pedigree.
- timeon 1y agoWhich could be only resolved by lawsuit that cost money. Startup can just fold and the original creator still needs to pay lawyers. So with this in mind, that startup is kind of hacking the system.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- niggerowner 1y ago[flagged]
- mock-possum 1y agoYeah I don’t think anyone here is going to find your schtick funny either
- nativeit 1y ago[flagged]
- zero-sharp 1y agoIf 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.
- fastball 1y agoHe 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 1y agoits 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
- nativeit 1y agoYeah, 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 1y agoThe appropriate thing would be to revise your initial comment.
- nativeit 1y agoWhat 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 original moralizing. The irony is…well pretty mundane in this case, really.
- jwilber 1y agoOver 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.
- _345 1y agowhere are we headed...
- matsemann 1y agoYeah, 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.
- rswail 1y agoBecause I loath Nouning Verbs and Verbing Nouns, I'd really like "learnings" to always have an implied or explicit set of quotes and mean vaguely defined and not necessarily ethical stuff. There's a perfectly good noun, "lessons" and a verb, "to learn" that, when combined, provide everything "learnings" does, without the pretension of using a verbed noun. It's like "diarize" and other even worse monstrosities. Sorry to this poster, no personal attack intended, you just pushed one of my pedant buttons.
- matsemann 1y agoAs you might guess from my language, I'm not a native speaker. And in Norwegian, the two words could be "å lære" and "lærdom", hence why it "sounds right" in my ear to use learn and learnings.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThat’s not the only corrupt stuff that yc does. There’s dreamworld. https://www.pcgamer.com/dreamworld-infinite-world-mmo-kickstarter-fiasco/ 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.
- kratoskr221 1y agoIs there a way to file lawsuits for such cases? These incidents lead to death of open-source and crush hearts of open-source developers.
- 0manrho 1y agoIt'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"
- 20after4 1y agoAbsolutely. The lawsuit probably wouldn't get very far when it comes to damages, however...
- tombert 1y agoI believe that BusyBox sued over violations like 17 years ago. I am not aware of any other instances.
- bawolff 1y agoWikipedia has a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation
- pabs3 1y agoSoftware Freedom Conservancy is currently suing Vizio. The interesting thing about this lawsuit is that it aims to make it possible for any recipient of GPL code sue for compliance, instead of requiring the copyright holder to sue. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
- bawolff 1y agoSeems like this would be a pretty open and shut case of copyright infringement.
- alberth 1y agoMaybe I’m looking at the wrong repos but both appear to be GPL-3 (or maybe it was relicensed back to original GPL-3?) https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy https://github.com/pickle-com/glass https://github.com/pickle-com/glass
- sohzm 1y agoyeah he changed it rn https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889e869c015e910781d9f749be https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889...
- gnabgib 1y agoHe=you? What's the game here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44460855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44460855
- AnotherGoodName 1y agoThat's the author of this post talking about the other person changing their licensing to match.
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y ago[flagged]
- breakingcups 1y agoThen rewrote the history and force-pushed so it never happened.
- slouch 1y ago11 minutes ago "licensed fixed" https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889e869c015e910781d9f749be https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889...
- moeffju 1y ago
- fargle 1y agolooks like they fixed it: https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889e869c015e910781d9f749be https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889... 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 1y agoIf 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 1y agoThis 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 1y agoIt'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?
- yahoozoo 1y agojeers busted, everyone wins
- kevbin 1y agoThese two guys seem like they should get together.
- tombert 1y agoThings 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 1y agoWell, 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 1y agoSure 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 1y agoIt 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Disposal8433 1y agoAnd 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.
- RobotToaster 1y agoIt's funny these "founders" only use this hollow excuse with open source licensing, you never see "since this was my first company, we didn't realize taxes exist"
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> you never see "since this was my first company, we didn't realize taxes exist" Taxes are a nitpicky example, but indeed in Germany where everything is full of regulations and red tape that only some bureaucrats understand, there indeed exist founders who argue this way for these convoluted laws: For example have a look at the popular videos of the following channel (in German): https://www.youtube.com/@Nordwolle/videos https://www.youtube.com/@Nordwolle/videos
- tormeh 1y agoThat's different. Last time I checked he's not arguing that he didn't know, but that the regulations are ridiculous and should be changed. Which I think is completely legit. The German economy and everyone who works in it would benefit from this. Moreover, I consider euclidean zoning to be a colossal mistake...
- raincole 1y agoI missed revenue reporting[0] for my one-man studio once. This was exactly what I told the authority. I got fined anyway. [0]: Not in the US.
- matthewmacleod 1y agoThis happens literally all the time.
- ipsum2 1y agoThis 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". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707495 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.
- crystaln 1y agoProbably just went closed source.
- re-thc 1y ago> I wonder if Pear AI is dead or pivoted, their open source repos have not been updated since May. They went pear-shaped.
- zelphirkalt 1y agoMaybe a kind of hall of shame is needed, where these companies are listed, and perhaps a link to a history of how the issue was dealt with.
- thro1 1y agoanother one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846663 HN seems to be fine with that (!).
- danielpkl 1y agoHi 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.
- icar 1y agoNice try
- sebmellen 1y agoThe correct approach is to license your code as GPL v3 with Soham as the author. It's a simple fix.
- ayongpm 1y agoYou won’t be forgiven unless you restore the license to GPL v3.
- ayongpm 1y agoYou restored the license to GPL v3: https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889e869c015e910781d9f749be https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/5c462179acface889... You won't be forgiven unless you credited sohzm and state that cheating-daddy is a direct inspiration
- sam1r 1y agoI love comments like this ^. It provides a solution to the table, rather than conversing the problem over dinner. IMO This sounds pretty fair to me. Publicly apologize somewhere, and link OP to it. I like that. Or come on, at least Venmo "the kid" $1000 -- "a kid" who saved you time, and is putting food on your table. "A kid" whose idea you took and profited on. Wow, just realizing upon writing this -- what if Pickle CEO has kids, and one your kid reads this?
- sebmellen 1y agoThis 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?
- Lionga 1y agoYC doing typical YC things
- tomhow 1y agoThe 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. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20pg%20chair&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- michaelmrose 1y agoSetting 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.
- sreekanth850 1y agoYC should put integrity and ethics of founders as a key variable for funding.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 3D30497420 1y agoUnfortunately, that would probably get in the way of making money.
- lynx97 1y ago> integrity and ethics How do you evaluate that?
- close04 1y agoThe easiest way to check for integrity and ethics is if the startups YC finances routinely run afoul of YC's ethics code or the law. If YC has no ethics code, that's your answer right there. If they do but it fails to mention basic things like lying, cheating, deceiving especially when done intentionally, bingo again. If breaking the law isn't an automatic termination of the collaboration, it takes you to the same conclusion. If YC explicitly supports the startups when knowing about these problems, or implicitly by skirting due diligence and turning a blind eye, or accepts startups having no commitment to an ethics code, then ethics or integrity are not core values, or even are completely absent. There are more nuanced topics and methods but if it doesn't pass the smell test with the basic ones, it won't pass it with any.
- sokoloff 1y agoGGP was clearly in the context of “how would YC evaluate this pre-funding?” rather than “how would outsiders evaluate YC?” but 15 seconds of search turned up: https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics
- 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- diimdeep 1y agoHere 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.
- hcfman 1y agoDoesn't this happen all the time with Ultralytics yolo code? They use an AGPL license, which to my understand means that anything that links with this code also becomes AGPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but is the license also viral if there's a network connection involved? i.e. I run the code in a container with a little network interface added ? And yet Microsoft have release code with different licenses that make's use of Ultralytics code. I potentially would be interested in using these wildlife detection models in a commercial (Not open source) context but simply don't trust the claim that it would be okay to do so, sounds like a big business risk to me. What is the opinion of the community of the MIT licenses associated with PyTorch wildlife from Microsoft okay to use in a closed source commercial context? Microsoft have put an MIT license on this, but their code does imports of ultralytics libraries, which I thought were AGPL. Note: The GPL 3 license from the official yolov9 differs in this, it must be possible to run the same code on the platform, but your usage may be closed source.
- hcfman 1y agoI really like the work that Microsoft did with Pytorch Wildlife but not brave enough to trust the MIT license they put on their code that uses Ultralytics code and all attempts to check if it was okay for them to change the licenses seem to indicate that they may not do this. Love to know for sure. Maybe someone from Ultralytics can point out their view on this?
- joshuaissac 1y ago> their code that uses Ultralytics code [...] if it was okay for them to change the licenses Did they copy Ultralytics code and change the licence from AGPL to MIT? Or does their code rely on AGPL code without copying it? The first is not allowed but the second is, because the combined work can still be used under the terms of the AGPL.
- ahtihn 1y ago> They use an AGPL license, which to my understand means that anything that links with this code also becomes AGPL. It doesn't work like that. The code linking with AGPL code needs to be AGPL (or compatible license) to comply with the license. That doesn't mean that if you link some code with AGPL code it automatically becomes AGPL. It just means it doesn't comply with the license and therefore does not have the right to use the AGPL code. The remedy to a license violation is not necessarily complying with it. In fact, I've never seen a case where a company using (A)GPL code in such a way was ordered to release their own code with that license. Generally, they have to simply remove the (A)GPL code, pay some damages and that's it. If they want to keep using the AGPL code, then they of course would have to comply with it, but that's their decision at that point.
- bborud 1y agoReal life Jian Yang?
- bjord 1y agoexcept this is a vc-funded american company stealing from an indian solo dev
- sam1r 1y agoThis situation truly enrages me and is likely the reason (IMO) why talented programmers (today, in 2025 versus, 2008-2013 where small founder startups thrived at places like 500 + YC). Quite ironic how YC touts technical founders > "non-tech" ones -- when acts such as this strip ones chances of wanting to become one, or even continue showcasing their talent publicly on platforms like GH.
- exiguus 1y agoDoes YC audit and evaluate the source code of the projects they fund?
- exiguus 1y agoSorry, I don't want to be offensive. I'm just curious about how the YC quality check for founders works and what kind of experience and support they offer besides the obvious like money and publicity, particularly for open-source software projects.
- HacklesRaised 1y agoOne 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?
- xoralkindi 1y agoI 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?
- bayindirh 1y ago> Is closed source the future? No. I don't believe that. I personally want my code to outlast me and help people in the future, but I don't want allow anyone to just scrape it, strip its license and use for whatever. I use (A)GPLv3+, because I believe in "Freedom for the user", not "Freedom for the developer" which permissive licenses provide. My code is not free labor for anyone. It has conditions attached.
- acedTrex 1y agoThis will not stop the AI companies from using it in their training data.
- saurik 1y agoThis is the problem that AI solves, though: rather than steal our code directly, now the thieves will just ask their favorite AI to generate a new project that does exactly what our (A)GPLv3+ projects did, which it will be able to do only because it read our code. And, even if the result is eerily similar to what we publish -- we might, after all, be one of the few good examples in the training set for this problem -- it will be difficult to demonstrate, as the AI is more effective at the process of laundering licenses than a human (and no one seems to want to admit that, the same way that a human can be tainted by reading the source code of a project they want to reimplement -- making them have to walk a tightrope if they later want to develop anything similar -- an AI might be similarly tainted). In this shitty new world, our code, is, in fact, free labor for people who are using Cursor to rip it off.
- m0sa 1y agoMaybe they "just vibe coded" it... /s
- piker 1y agoCouldn't have happened to a nicer project.
- noname120 1y agoThe thing that disgusts me the most is this: > Distribution isn’t the moat; velocity is. Such an arrogant take. When you steal someone else's work it's nothing to brag about.
- sugarangela 1y ago[dead]
- jekwoooooe 1y agoTitle should be updated to make it clear this is an interview cheating project. It’s quite ironic
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> It’s quite ironic Or rather consequential? ;-)
- cmsj 1y agoA license violation is still a license violation even if the software in question is ethically dubious.
- ozgrakkurt 1y ago[flagged]
- Takennickname 1y agoDoesn't matter at all according to who?
- ozgrakkurt 1y agoNo matter the license someone can just take the source code and use it however they like unless you have a concrete plan to stop them. I used to feel like licenses actually meant more but seeing a lot of examples of it made me realise this
- _pdp_ 1y agoThe classic playbook: copy an open-source project (or just vibe-code something similar), slap an open-source label on it, and toss in an unproven design system / framework (like Liquid Glass) to give it a shiny veneer. Less about building something meaningful - more about manufacturing hype in hopes of catching a trend before it crashes!
- WolfOliver 1y agoAn app which is build for cheating complains about cheating ...
- bigyabai 1y agoIt wouldn't matter if they wrote a program to automate stealing other people's content. If you strip a GPL license off a program you redistribute, you're breaking the law.
- aleph_minus_one 1y agoThe founders who built Glass don't complain about cheating. Rather, the developer of https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy https://github.com/sohzm/cheating-daddy complained of copyright infringement of his code by the developers of Glass.
- singpolyma3 1y agoWorse than copyright infringement, they pretended the code was theirs
- tomsmeding 1y agoWhile copyright infringement is clealy legally wrong and developing general software is not, I do agree with GP that one should, morally, perhaps not complain about "cheating" the legal system when the infringed application itself is meant for cheating. Legal correctness does not necessarily imply moral correctness.
- dahart 1y agoThey complained of license violation, not copyright infringement. There’s a big difference. The original license already granted the rights for anyone to copy the code, so the question of copyright infringement isn’t really on the table.
- pbhjpbhj 1y agoIf you don't abide by the license terms then you don't get to copy something under the license. So breech of license means corresponding copyright infringement.
- scirob 1y agoIs this from the same Soham that is doing the "job stacking" scam to many companies? These people make the tech HR a nightmare for all others and a big reason for the back to office drive https://www.theverge.com/news/697846/soham-parekh-startups-multiple-jobs-founders https://www.theverge.com/news/697846/soham-parekh-startups-m...
- gsky 1y agoGood Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal <-- Steve Jobs I know need to check on my Open source projects :)
- asadotzler 1y agoStolen from Pablo Picasso.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoHey I was having an interview the other day, and they had me show my task manager. Is your thing able to bypass that? (just curious)
- harvey9 1y agoIt will just show a process named cheating-daddy. I doubt any interviewers will think that's suspicious. Half serious: why do you think a free tool focused on real time gen ai would also have a faked task manager feature?
- koakuma-chan 1y ago> why do you think a free tool focused on real time gen ai would also have a faked task manager feature? So that you don't get caught?
- harvey9 1y agoI'm assuming it's a solo dev and it's my job to obtain a separate tool to fake task manager, not expecting a full multifunctional product.
- Havoc 1y agoTo a casual outside observer the quality of the companies YC invests in seems to have absolutely cratered. Have they just given up on vetting and switched to a throw money at everything approach?
- seunosewa 1y agoMy feeling is that they are investing in founders who they find impressive who are working in AI. Not so much in the uniqueness of their ideas.
- LudwigNagasena 1y agoThey expect you to come up with an idea or a business and explain it to them and show your progress. Of course one may say that those things reflect you as a person but so does stealing and relicensing code.
- giantg2 1y agoYeah, this is the vibe I have been getting for some time - investing in the person and not the idea.
- juped 1y agoThis sort of thing reflects poorly precisely on the people doing it, not on "ideas".
- diggan 1y agoIsn't that a very outspoken objective of YC, to fund people, not ideas? Long time ago I caught up to what YC is doing, but even when I first joined HN back in like 2013 I think the whole "Fund people, not ideas" shtick was already explicitly what they were doing, unless I remember wrong.
- danybittel 1y agoIsn't "fund people" just hiring without the extra steps?
- mezod 1y agoWe are in a crisis of morals. There has always been trashy people but since 2020 it feels like a lack of morals is rewarded more than ever.
- fullstackchris 1y agoWell, there are no consequences are there? Or at least no precident of consequences of such behaviour. My hope is that folks like this always lose out in the long run but I'm not so sure anymore...
- asenchi 1y agoA natural consequence of a system that promotes radical individuality, false scarcity, fear of missing out, greed, and violence. Win at all costs.
- munchler 1y agoSurely this graph also trended way up in late 2016.
- heisenbit 1y agoThe highest jobs require these days a proven track-record of corruption. You can‘t blame young startups wanting to take the first step on that ladder. At the end of the day we are living in a merdeitocracy.
- rbinv 1y ago> merdeitocracy Not sure if typo or intentional (likely?), but that's an amazing new word.
- JonChesterfield 1y ago"Fair enough. Since this was our first OSS project, we didn’t realize at first. We’ve now revised it. Thanks for your contribution." We didn't notice that we copied your codebase, changed the name then pretended to have built it in four days? Good grief.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoIt does seem really shady to not even offer a sincere apology.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> It does seem really shady to not even offer a sincere apology. At least they attempted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44461271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44461271
- gpderetta 1y ago"we are sorry we got caught"
- reactordev 1y agoI would be running for the hills if I were YC. This is the kind of attitude that ends up in lawsuits.
- gryfft 1y agoI thought tech companies were supposed to move fast and break stuff.
- whilenot-dev 1y agoI think that phrase was coined in an era when the tech sector moved so fast that the prevailing law couldn't keep up. It caught up somewhat, but obviously there's still much leeway for improvement. Break all the wrong habits, rigid conventions and old traditions you want, just play along with the governing laws.
- richardw 1y agoSurely you can’t be too surprised. The market is pushing for move-fast high polish, speed over substance. You can just do things, move fast and break things, etc. Velocity is the moat, indeed. This is the market YC is breeding. When these guys float to the surface, what did you think would happen? YC, you’re one of the greatest generators of value ever. Do better.
- LucidLynx 1y agoIs it me, or "founders" are actually FREAKING dumb? Why people continue to give them money, and praise their "work"? Instead of making (indirect) ads for them we should publish their name and the company's name into shame publicly, and let their reputation die slowly... I have no respect for them, and you should not too (if you care about justice).
- nicce 1y agoMost of the time ROI is still bigger. You would think that some ”evil”companies would be dead but stock price just keeps increasing. Imagine what Facebook would be if they had good morals?
- LucidLynx 1y agoUnfortunately you're right... Microsoft's stocks hit big again despite its evil background. It is depressing to be a software developer now. Especially if you have a good heart. I really hope the founder to have his career f**ed now, and other "founders (of nothing)" as well.
- p0nce 1y agoEven if this was Apache in the first place, you're not supposed to remove Copyright lines in source code.
- pxc 1y agoThat's not the kind of thing you can reasonably say "Gee, I didn't know!" about, either.
- buremba 1y agoThe 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 he has gained. Marketing wins.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tom_m 1y agoIt's all about marketing sadly. Marketing and connections. This industry has been full of theft for years.
- alganet 1y agoSome 15 years ago, I made a small configuration language: https://github.com/Respect/Config/blob/master/docs/README.md 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 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-validation-engine-ever-creat 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.
- alganet 1y agoBy 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.
- freehorse 1y agoIsn't this the company/founders whose whole sales pitch is about cheating/deceiving others? I guess I am not that surprised then.
- normie3000 1y agoIs there a way to validate this?
- sitkack 1y agoStartup founders just hack the value gradient. Putting a screen door lock on a resource is just inviting resource extraction.
- freehorse 1y agoThe company is called "cluely". Go to their twitter page and see the posts and promo videos to get an idea of how they market their product https://x.com/cluely https://x.com/cluely
- znpy 1y agoThe author could bring the company to court for license infringement, it's an easy case, they (the original author) could easily bring home some of those sweet sweet YC vc money.
- Reelix 1y agoThey spend a hundred grand on getting a lawyer, the company instantly declares insolvency, and then Glasss (With 3 s's - Completely unrelated to the previous one) does the exact same thing.
- rsp1984 1y agoThis was of course a calculated move. The founders of Glass are not that stupid. They knew the original author would complain in the loudest way possible and cause a viral outrage, which would give them a ton of eyeballs and exposure. Engagement hacks, outrage, eyeballs, distribution, attention at all cost. Welcome to tech in 2025.
- timeon 1y agoNot really on topic, but since service of startup is free and it has investment - what is monetization model here?
- victorbjorklund 1y agoI really hope y-combinator does the right thing and kicks them out.
- precompute 1y agoI don't know what's worse - the fact that the original project encourages cheating or that someone managed to wrangle funding to cheat the cheaters.
- KingOfCoders 1y agoFrom my experience in 10+ tech companies, the biggest difference between bootstrapped and VC financed is, with money you can do illegal things and pay the lawyer.
- samtheprogram 1y agoWhat 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.
- bigyabai 1y agoIf 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/44455787/ https://hnrankings.info/44460552/ 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 code after a similar infraction.
- samtheprogram 1y agoThat 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.
- pabs3 1y agoGot a link about the Tesla thing?
- praash 1y agoMy observation is that HN intentionally downranks highly commented threads. I used to think of it as unfair, but now it truly makes sense, considering: - Posts with high comment-to-vote ratio often have political, scandalous or other kinds of heated themes - Highly popular/engaging posts already act as self-amplifying snowballs - High-volume discussion triggered by emotions is hard to navigate, is repetitive, and attracts the dumbest trolls even in HN - The truly important topics tend to become visible anyway
- samtheprogram 1y agoThis was informative. Thanks for the analysis.
- novoreorx 1y agoVCs invest in marketing resources and skills, not in code. Take Cluely, for example.
- 9283409232 1y agoPeople begging YC to "do the right thing" don't understand that this is the exact behavior that VCs love and reward.
- ykpramodh 1y agoyes, they prefer iconoclasts
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ashoeafoot 1y agoAs OC i would do that giant rewrite and add vulnerabilities - either they do a funny portation rodeo and get zero dayed all day every day, or they are at least cut off from free work.
- jerlendds 1y agoI've had similar happen to me by company out of Paris, France lol. They yoinked the backend out of my OSINTBuddy project which is AGPL licensed then tried to get me to work with them where they were going to sell access without also providing the source code
- iJohnDoe 1y agoWe 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?
- 6thbit 1y agoSome shady stuff. They seem to have "re-created" the main branch, and force pushed an "Initial Commit" with GPLv3.... https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commits/main/ https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commits/main/ Maybe they don't know that the history is still there? https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/activity?ref=main https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/activity?ref=main https://web.archive.org/web/20250704222510/https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/activity?ref=main https://web.archive.org/web/20250704222510/https://github.co...
- IsaacKing 1y agoGuy who builds software to lie and cheat on everything gets his software stolen by a lying and cheating company? https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/oh-no-anyway-gif-19022587 https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/oh-no-anyway-gif-19022587
- ternaus 1y agoNot directly related but still. A couple weeks ago I: 1. forked repository of the Albumentations library (15k stars, 5 Million monthly downloads, MIT license) and called it AlbumentationsX 2. changed the license of the fork to the Dual (restrictive AGPL to be used for free and permissive commercial if you buy license) => it is unlikely that it is legal to use it in your project as noone wants AGPL project in the list of dependencies 3. Arhived albumentations repo --- People use albumentationsx (I can see pypi download stats + telemetry), but zero licenses were bought. ---- Coming back to the original post - what surprises me that they forked, but did not try to rewrite with LLMs. LLMs may not be that good writing complex functionality, but in rewriting something they are quite good. In this sense, all open-source licensing is not as useful anymore as rewriting the code so that there is no way to proof the plagiarism is the new reality. --- Looks like the future is: - closed source code - open source developed by companies that want to use it for lead generation