Comment by kibwen
1 year ago
The problem here is not that they stole the idea, it's that they literally just took an open-source codebase and filed off the serial numbers to claim it as their own proprietary work, and they did so in the most comically inept way possible.
From the OP:
PearAI offers an AI coding editor. The startup’s founder Duke Pan has openly said that it’s a cloned copy of another AI editor called Continue, which was covered under the Apache open source license. But PearAI made a major misstep: PearAI originally slapped its own made-up closed license on it, called the Pear Enterprise License, which Pan admitted was written by ChatGPT.
> PearAI made a major misstep: PearAI originally slapped its own made-up closed license on it
This is comical but not the core fuck-up: PearAI failed to attribute, thereby violating Community’s license.
It might be salvageable if they can convince customers they aren’t dragging everyone who uses them into a legal morass. But that will likely take more funding, and “help me pay lawyers” isn’t a great pitch.
Good artist copy, great artists steal. PearAI tried and failed to copy. Y Combinator's value-adding play is in striking a licensing and indemnification deal between PearAI and Community. (If Community is smart, they'll demand an arm and a leg. They're owed it.)
The funny? thing is, this isn't the only YC company I've seen do this.
There's a really great Radiolab podcast Dealing with Doubt[0] that talks about how high level competitive poker has evolved over the years.
Any VC is making a bet of the same nature. Because there is some intangible in the team itself, it makes sense for the VC to bet on multiples if they believe that there is a valuable problem to be solved here. Some team(s) will be more successful than others, but it's really difficult to tell at the outset.
(The podcast is a great listen!)
[0] https://radiolab.org/podcast/278173-dealing-doubt/transcript
aka “expected value” in statistical terms.
I don't know anything about YC's due diligence. Is it strange they didn't catch this before infesting?
YC is putting through 200+ companies per batch and making a tiny investment. It’s far more efficient to swallow the occasional bad bet than to do a lot due diligence… Now the VCs that came in after… that’s another story.
Isn't the whole point of VC just throw money at the wall and see what sticks?
It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses.
Where the product starts and where it ends will be two totally different endpoints that are sure to diverge once they find their domain and business model.
If you are so inept that copying someone else's codebase wholesale is what makes you a viable company, then perhaps you aren't worthy of investing in.
Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people, which as I type this seems like a sad but unsurprising move.
This is exactly what VCs are looking for. They are going to hand you a check worth several hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. They are not doing this because it's a charity; they are doing this because they are making a bet that they'll get some return on that investment.
This is the purpose of a VC: to deploy capital in a way that is likely to yield the greatest returns for the investors.
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Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people
Just, Devil's Advocate. But isn't that kind of a smart strategy?
Not saying it's "nice", nor even how I would do things. But I'd imagine many, many people get excessively wealthy investing in this fashion.
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Copying everything EXCEPT the license - they knew THAT needed to change at least.
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> Unless, the investor is just trying to fund the most ruthless, least ethical, win-at-all-costs type of people
This was probably the hardest realization I came to in business/startup world.
That's precisely what most investors (at least the ones with any large amount of money) look for. They could care less if your product is good, or if you developed it ethically, or if you treat employees or customers well.
Most would invest in the next Oracle and sleep like babies if given the chance to get in early - even if they had a crystal ball to see how badly it will impact the industry and social fabric as a whole down the road 20 years later.
Especially VCs. They exist to make money. Full stop. The rest is marketing fluff for the naive masses.
> doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses
They copied without attribution. Not okay under Apache.
Starting off by making an obviously hamfisted move matters. It's a headwind to overcome.
Is it possible to overcome? Sure.
Yes, you can heal after shooting yourself in the foot.
(And, of course, removing attribution is violating licenses). However, they're unlikely to face litigation for this. The possible legal consequences aren't the actual consequences they're likely to face.
I can all but promise you these "headwinds" that they are facing in terms of negative PR are in fact a net positive. At their stage, any press is good press.
AFAICT, the attribution's been there since the beginning on their GitHub? (see: About section)[1].
I agree adding their own license was hamfisted, but honestly, if I'm funding a company I hope they would spend less than <$1 on legal and licensing initially. The first order of business is almost always proving whether your business should even exist.
https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app?tab=readme-ov-file
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> It doesn't matter so long as they didn't violate any licenses.
It appears that they did violate the license:
https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html
4. Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions:
a. You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License;
c. You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works;
That's a problem to be resolved by their legal counsel and often not even a fatal problem (e.g. work out some licensing agreement).
The first job of a startup is to understand how to solve a valuable problem. If the team is solving a valuable problem, they can figure out how they want to navigate even violation of licenses.
Everything else can be negotiated.
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There’s legality, and bad taste.
Except they did blatantly violate the license of the code they stole and only fixed it after being called out.
From: https://fossa.com/blog/open-source-licenses-101-apache-licen...
[...]
I bet they ate their own dogfood by having ChatGPT file the serial numbers off for them.
> which Pan admitted was written by ChatGPT.
What morons
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