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.
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.
Why would anyone encourage building such a tool, I can't fathom.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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) I once was in a position where I had root on the linux boxes at a large corporation because I had been a sysadmin there and even when I changed roles, I was never removed from sudoers. Years later there was an accusation that someone had stolen source code and taken it with them to a new job. On its face this made absolutely no sense whatsoever - the system they were accused of stealing was a complete pos in the middle of a complex ecosystem so even if you had it, you couldn’t use it without all the other pieces and in any case, it was old and outdated and just total garbage. Anyway this accusation was somewhat hush—hush so the cto came to me and asked me to just look into whether or not it could be true. Sure enough, there in his bash history I could see him checking out the code and pushing it to an external repo. It made absolutely no sense, but he had indeed stolen the source code to a system that was a total piece of junk. He ended up with a criminal conviction, he lost his shiny new job, his wife left him etc. It was very said and baffling.
2)Second example, fast forward some years and I was working for a saas provider. We had won an initial proof of concept and were negotiating a 5-year, multi-million dollar contract. At the same time, our client asked us to just do a free two-week spike on something unrelated. We had to sign a (different) zero dollar contract to cover licenses, liability etc for the free spike. The same purchasing lawyer was working on both contracts. The usual contracting process is you send the contract over to the other side with some markup and comments, they make some markup and comments, you propose language, they amend it, they propose language, you amend it, eventually everyone agrees and you make a clean copy and both sides sign. While we were doing this for the big contract, we got to the point of signing the zero dollar contract. At the last moment with everything agreed, the other side said they would make the clean copy. They sent it over to us and when we did our final check before signing we found the guy on the other side had meticulously gone through and made a version which accepted all their changes and backed out all of our changes. This required a lot of extra work and could not have been an accident (think cherrypicking commits and fixing all the merge conflicts using only MS Word revision history), and it was on the zero dollar contract so there was no conceivable upside except he could say he “won” somehow by tricking us. All this while we were negotiating the multi-million dollar multiyear contract. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever to do what he did. There is no way to understand why he decided to do it, but he did it.
So yeah, don’t even try to understand why some people do the things they do. Scorpions gotta sting. It’s just what they do.
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.
Isn't that the minimum bar for a "business model" capable of attracting VC interest these days?
> "Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice."
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.
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").
Unfortunately, sketchy is generally rewarded.
That's probably the right thing to do Git-wise, because licences might not be retroactive.
They've squashed the history to hide their earlier "error". This isn't compliant with section 5a of the GPLv3[1].
"sketchy at best" is a polite description of this pattern of behaviour.
Not fixed, covered up.
> let's not freak out - you can't "steal" open-source code, they used an incompatible license. that was accidentally too free.
What a poetic formulation? In reality, they deleted history and they put a license that allows the "freedom" to let them monetize the code. I wonder how's the original author more free with this license? How is anyone more free? Sounds like the license was "accidentally" "too free" in a way that only made themselves more free.
> people monetizing something you open-source isn't stealing.
It's, in fact, the precise definition when the open-source project uses the GPLv3 license.
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.
It was in my interest to do so, because it means I benefit from fixed packages in the Linux distributions I use. This saves me a ton of time in not having to maintain my own packages with my fix included.
If it helps Canonical make money, then it’s no skin off my nose because I still got the benefit I wanted.
I’m not going around fixing bugs that don’t affect me, or adding features I don’t need.
If you're not ok with that possibility than you probably shouldn't be participating in open source.
And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with that. Its up to each individual to decide how they want to spend there time. There are pros and cons to open source, and you have to weigh how you feel about them yourself.
However, its not like this is some secret trick. Its the central tenant of Open Source (esp. When using that name instead of Free software). It should be very clear that this is happening. Its the entire point.
It kind of feels a bit like someone who doesn't like oranges, eats oranges, and then are surprised that they taste like oranges. By all means if you don't like oranges don't eat them, but if you knew you didn't like them why did you eat it in the first place?
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.
If you're doing something algorithmically different and unique, presumably that would show up in the assembly.
> 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.
Important to keep in mind that copyright is not patents. If they are just stealing the "idea" of your algorithmic improvement, that probably isn't even a GPL violation. (This isn't fully right as they would probably have to use a clean-room design to avoid copyright infringement. My point is more that such a situation is pretty muddy and might actually be allowed)
For example, in a project which generates images I usually set a specific set of pixels.
I think you can notice that output looks similar, error messages are similar, etc. If the program is non-trivial its usually pretty obvious if its a copy or a reimplementation.
If it sounds plausible, presumably you could sue and read the source in discovery (ianal, not sure precisely how that works)
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.
Software Engineering is more than coding. Basic license management incl. library vetting is part of it. If you decide to ignore that, you do not run a business enterprise, you run a criminal enterprise.
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.
You won't be forgiven unless you credited sohzm and state that cheating-daddy is a direct inspiration
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?
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.
[1] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commits/5c462179acface88...
[2] https://github.com/pickle-com/glass/commit/4c51d5133c4987fa1...
Cut the grandoise talk. You stole someone's work and now you just shrug it off as "incorrectly attributed as Apache". That's not a mistake, that's a deliberate action plan. The force push others have mentioned is the proof. Atleast be honest in your apology.
I hope YC takes serious action and eliminates you guys from their cohort if you're still in one. This reflects very poorly on them otherwise.
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...
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'
Unless you have transparency on flagging and mod actions, these are just your words. And as these events keep happening, your credibility erodes.
Also, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
How do you evaluate that?
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.
I guess that's the game, but they do seem a lot more cavalier about it of late. Increasingly resembles the crypto 'community' (derogatory).
I am not sure that they weigh it in the direction you are thinking of, though.
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.
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.
Love to know for sure. Maybe someone from Ultralytics can point out their view on this?
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.
> Distribution isn’t the moat; velocity is.
Such an arrogant take. When you steal someone else's work it's nothing to brag about.
sohzm•6h ago