Trademarks are the usual cudgel of choice to enforce a bad actor claiming to be part of offcial Zig.
The trademark cudgel is used on people who release an incompatible language that they insist on calling Zig, confusing people who want to try Zig. Or people who add malware to the Zig tool chain and try to distribute that.
Trademark can’t be used to control bad actors like zigbook.
Incorrect. Not honoring the attribution requirement in the MIT license is a copyright infringement because it violates the terms of the license, which are legally enforceable conditions.
I wouldn't be so quick with the "incorrect" if I were you. You haven't even taken the trouble to read two sentences.
I wouldn't be so quick with the dismissal if I were you. You haven't even taken the trouble to read the article.
Also, Quad erat demonstrandum - the infringing repo no longer exists.
- preventing someone who hardforked the project from creating an incompatible language while using the same name.
- preventing someone from distributing malware while still using the same name.
Because if you notice, neither of these clash with the MIT license that many languages use. You need to enforce your trademark to stop this kind of behaviour.
Zigbook can argue that they aren’t causing any confusion between themselves and the Zig language. The Zig foundation could argue that the name implies an endorsement by the project and they should call themselves The Unofficial Zig Book instead. I don’t know which way it goes.
Is the zig name or logo trademarked? What about the mascot he's using as his github picture?
They're violating the terms of the MIT license as mentioned in the article, so maybe Zigtools has legal standing.
As for lying about no AI, being an asshole isn't illegal, so no angle there.
Any other ideas I missed?
But copyright infringement is a legal wrong (a civil liability).
Is what they're doing infringing on a copyrighted work? Or does it fail to uphold license terms? Many open source licenses have some amount of attribution as a requirement, so that'd be something to consider.
It's crazy how many people treat MIT as if it were public domain.
Write a snail-mail letter to get the real sources. Repositories are private with a small well-vetted list of contributors. Also avoid slop-PR headaches that away.
Activity on github - must be a productive programmer. Have a thousand issues open - definitely a hire. I'm not talking about the Valley, but in India, as well as some some backwaters in the West that's how it seems to be. Talk about misaligned incentives.
I really love the part where llm.txt has the same notice, something humans will never read, or the fact that llm.txt exists considering that there is distaste for AI in every part of this llm generated book.
https://github.com/Lillecarl/lix/commit/9ac72bbd0c7802ca83a9...
I'm not ashamed to use AI if it improves my output, people draw the line of "acceptable use" differently just like drug addicts talk shit about each other's drugs to justify their own. I think honesty is more important than cleanliness.
The no AI devs will get a "needs improvement" report.
You don't have to. I'm sure there are lots of other communities that welcome low-effort slop with no effort put into it.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A4%E5%9C%B0%E7%84%A1%E...
> WebAssembly portable SIMD intrinsics
https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/src/branch/master/lib/inclu...
Thank you for your educative post, letting the community know.
Don't let it to drag you down in any way. This is emotionally draining and takes away motivation, but keep going.
Just your run off the mill AI grifter.
EDIT: https://lobste.rs/s/pbn3zy/zigbook_learn_zig_programming_lan...
"Quick research - author's actual profile is https://github.com/zk-evm, and he's a potential scammer from crypto spaces, who also happens to be running fake GitHub Organisation of the Cursor editor, along with related BuyMeACoffee claiming it being official page of the "Cursor AI Editor"."
The account is called zig-vm now.
And here's his real github account: https://github.com/gweidart
lists as a donation link: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/Newcomer214
So, gweidart is probably this guy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-newcomer-7275aa228/
100%.
https://docs.github.com/en/communities/maintaining-your-safe...
Edit: It appears that the repo is gone? User removed it or GitHub?
"Our review of the account(s) and/or content named in your report has concluded. We have determined that one or more violations of GitHub’s Terms of Service have occurred and have taken appropriate action in response."
It took 2h40m, genuinely impressed how quick the turnaround was :)
Regardless, for visibility as to maybe-why this happened, here are screenshots of the user editing comments to insult/make them say something they never did;
https://web.archive.org/web/20251130091635/https://github.co...
The tool itself claims "Zero AI" (https://www.zigbook.net/) yet is very obviously A-Lot-AI.
I get why GitHub allows editing comments of other users though for public repos I guess it allows for this kind of abuse
Luckily, every edits are recorded in history, so they can't really hide their abusive behavior, for now. Even if they did, seem like there are often people faster in archiving their posts than they hiding their post.
Either way, ableism or simply abusive behavior, both lacks respect, honestly and responsibility, which is a sign of immature behavior. Mature people can be playful, but they know when to act in the correct time, and definitely not in something that lead to a huge PR disaster.
Thus, being immature is the root cause of all these bad behaviors, including discrimination.
Either way I think it's a pretty stupid feature the way it's implemented; it should show the edit more clearly or indicate that the comment has been written by multiple people (like StackOverflow does), especially if edits change more than e.g. 10% of the original comment.
If you actually use GitHub as a social network of sorts, there are many reasons to do edit comments. All the edits are visible anyway. You're on Git-Hub, you can already edit everything you have write access to.
I use this feature all the time. Users get Markdown wrong, give titles to issues that don't make any sense, have typos, etc. Being able to edit issues helps me keep the issue tracker easier to understand and navigate for maintainers and users.
Every feature can be used. That doesn't mean every feature should not exist. The fact that the edit history is still visible means it's next to impossible to abuse the feature. It works fine.
hmm... isn't this more of a 'personal viewpoint'? why are you stating this like a fact?
moreover, how would it "adding Edited by ~" constitute as a "loss for everyone" ?
I agree on adding "report abuse" button, but if no one notices that edit, how would anyone know what to report in the first place?
Normally, repository maintainers are not self-sabotaging like this.
discourage != prevent all
At a bare minimum, the post should have in big bold lettering: Edited by <user_name>.
I once had someone request a feature and they became quite aggressive after I declined it. I essentially told them to fuck off[1] and that was the end of it. A few months after this he strategically edited and deleted some comments to make it appear I was just insulting them for no reason and then started posting on HN and Lobsters what an asshole I was. Back then, there was no real indication of their manipulation.
[1]: In part because he was already a known troll. Well, maybe troll isn't the right word, but he does have a history of mass-reporting hundreds of feature requests across hundreds of repos, to the point where it's basically just spam. He's been banned from Github many times over this, but just keeps creating new accounts and it all starts over again.
If you did, this is the greatest thing created in 3 ABC ("After Bullshit ChatGPTification"; ChatGPT launched in 2022.).
NB: Since ChatGPT is basically the new Messiah for many, I really think we should now be using dates like 3 ABC or 5 POS. POS stands for "Prior to Overlord Slop/Shit". I suggest we give up AD/BC.
But, please, I'm not the messiah! (hopefully you have watched Life of Brian!)
It seems like it might be in the nature of a language with these goals and this development process to attract people like this, no matter how warm and welcoming the community leaders are.
This is all childish and unacceptable behavior.
They’ve could’ve picked Nim and done this whole spiel there (you’d want to pick a fledgling language that isn’t saturated with documentation, so the stalwarts aren’t usable).
When zigbook first appeared here, I took a cursory scan, and it looked pretty solid and a useful resource. Seems it duped me and got me good. I was even defending the use of AI a little - although the claim needed to go.
Seems they just were just trying to do over a nascent community that I'm interested in seeing growing and wasn't a member of yet.
Good riddance, then.
I quickly found https://ziglang.org/learn/, and the guide is great. For ziglings, make sure you're on the latest dev build (as it says in the README)! (Edit: or get the tagged release for the version you have!)
wavemode•2mo ago