Comment by Disposal8433
6 months 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.
Because this is how the current corporate world works. It's all about appearances, someone can do whatever bad thing, will go on and say "upsie, I didn't realise that X is bad, it was an honest mistake" and then all is good, the person actually reporting it or signalling it out will be the bad one, for being critical, aggressive, not constructive or open minded.
It'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"
> 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
That'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...
I 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.
This happens literally all the time.
It's usually never a blatant "I didn't realise taxes exist" but more like "I didn't know I couldn't add haircuts to my company's tax deducts".
I do not know what is wrong with software engineers. This is theft (or whatever the lawyers says in the IP law) and now stating: Ooops we did not know, our bad, we keep it till we have found a replacement. Mistakes happen also in real life, but libraries is a common thing, like cars standing on a street. You do not accidently steal a car.
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.
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> Playing with daddy's money
Personal attacks like this are not ok.
Sure, criticize their actions, but don't parlay that into this kind of personal swipe at the individuals and their families; that's when the line is crossed from valid critique of actions to nasty mob pile-on, and that's never ok here.
Not that it should matter but as far as I can tell, the Pickle founder/CEO grew up and studied in Korea, and we have no idea what their family circumstances were.
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> Basic license management incl. library vetting is part of it.
This depends on whether you consider Compliance to be part of software engineering or a separate discipline. At least in most companies the compliance department is different from the software development/IT department, because the necessary skills are very different and barely transfer.
I also have a different department for architecture or testing. Still part of software engineering.
GPL vs. MIT is basics!
I mean it's basic human ethics, but I guess we are in an era where taking everything is fair game.
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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.
Isn't YC supposed to offer guidance and sage advice, not just be a cash machine for naive young developers?
They're also supposed to do their due diligence before investing.
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No. YC just throws money at the wall and sees what sticks. They fund some trash, and trash people.
Aren't VCs based on the principle of throwing money in as many directions as possible and hoping something turns out to be a unicorn?
That's what they do in practice, but not what they claim to do.
This is what happens when you have people without sufficient domain experience making decisions.
TBH, I know plenty of people with software development experience, who I think are genuinely pretty good at converting ideas to code, but who wouldn't have any idea what Apache or GPL mean.
Every init-command requires you to define or at least review a license for your project, so I would refrain from calling that one "software development experience".
> because it makes them look like they are funding people with exact zero software development experience.
Being a great software developer does not make you a lawyer (not even a bad lawyer).
You don't need to be a lawyer to understand you can't just copy others' IP without checking if you're allowed to.
By your argument, I can just torrent moviez and appz because I'm not a lawyer and can't be bothered with minutae of copyright law.
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Forking an open source repo and claiming you built something in 4 days does not make you a great software developer either though.
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