None of us knows exactly what this specific person did or what their motivation, intention or understanding of the situation was. We only know what was in the company’s code that was published, and we know what they’ve done since to try and address it.
“Roasting” is one word for something that can be described in far more serious terms. It’s against the HN guidelines and the guidelines still have to be upheld to some degree.
It’s also false that they will face no real consequences. They’ll never forget this experience and these sorts of things are often terminal for a company.
Now you are the one making reaching speculation. As far as we know, these people are conspiring to do the exact same thing because the present damages has been $0 in fines/legal fees and a reasonably successful seed round. In terms of game theory, there is zero reason to give them benefit of the doubt until they are sat in a court hearing for the infraction. They ventured nothing and gained everything.
If you want to convince people to steer away from ad-hominem, don't get all touchy-feely from the thought of a business breaking the law.
My speculation is based on well-established heuristics like Hanlon’s Razor and the presumption that people act in line with their incentives.
From the earliest time I became involved with YC (nearly 17 years ago) it was drummed into us that you don’t mess around with IP, because it kills funding rounds, acquisitions and commercial deals, and harms one’s reputation and stirs up unwelcome attention just like this.
I’ve been subjected to suspected theft of my IP by a client and I can absolutely empathize with the feeling of outrage from people who’ve been subjected to this; it was one of the very worst things I’ve experienced in my career.
But there are well-established conventions for how to deal with it, which begins with a demand to stop doing it and not do it again (“cease and desist”).
Of course this company should stop and not do it again and it’s completely reasonable for them to be held to account on that.
But if HN commenters are demanding someone else be honest and honorable, they need to be willing to hold themselves to the same standard, and it’s a basic societal norm that we allow legal processes to progress and not take matters into their own hands with personal vilification/mockery or exaggerated/unfounded allegations.
Right. They'll learn to be more discreet about it next time. Do you really believe "I got flamed on the Internet" is a memory that will counterbalance "I can make millions out of selling stolen code if I don't get caught" ? (especially considering that you flag such comments, therefore their shielding their poor egos from seeing mean words.)
>these sorts of things are often terminal for a company.
Starting a company is not hard. Thousands are created, and destroyed each day. If they're smart, under someone else's name. Maybe, maybe one person will see <generic AI company name> and think to look at the CEO, remember what he did and potentially try to warn people about it, and they'll be promptly ignored. Helped by people like you, under the guise of muh guidelines
>“Roasting” is one word for something that can be described in far more serious terms
I'd love to hear those terms. Because the worst that comes to mind that could apply is "disparaging", and unfortunately for them, "being mean on the internet" isn't something they can or will sue over.
> "I can make millions out of selling stolen code if I don't get caught"
This is the opposite of what happens and YC drums this into founders from the start; at least they did in my day, because pg's main startup (Viaweb) was nearly brought undone by an IP dispute, and it scarred him deeply.
What YC tells you is that the more successful you are, the more likely it is that you'll be caught if you mis-use IP, and auditing this is one of the biggest parts of the due diligence that investors, acquirers and commercial partners will undertake.
In fact, pg explicitly addresses this very thing in his 2005 essay How To Start a Startup [1], which was the original inspiration for YC:
One of the worst things that can happen to a startup is to run into intellectual property problems. We did, and it came closer to killing us than any competitor ever did.
As we were in the middle of getting bought, we discovered that one of our people had, early on, been bound by an agreement that said all his ideas belonged to the giant company that was paying for him to go to grad school. In theory, that could have meant someone else owned big chunks of our software. So the acquisition came to a screeching halt while we tried to sort this out. The problem was, since we'd been about to be acquired, we'd allowed ourselves to run low on cash. Now we needed to raise more to keep going. But it's hard to raise money with an IP cloud over your head, because investors can't judge how serious it is.
“Roasting” is one word for something that can be described in far more serious terms. It’s against the HN guidelines and the guidelines still have to be upheld to some degree.
It’s also false that they will face no real consequences. They’ll never forget this experience and these sorts of things are often terminal for a company.