So, I created this open-source project called Outstatic (https://outstatic.com), it's been my pet project for a while. But here's the twist: I just found out someone on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hoofhearted) took my entire project, renamed it, and has been showing it off all over the internet as their own thing.
I'm not usually one to call people out, but this is just too much. The only reason I found out was because this person was asking for help with my project on our Discord server, and I got curious.
Turns out, they've been pretending to develop this 'new' project since April and have even been warned by the mods here for spamming about it. When I casually mentioned that I stumbled upon their project and that it looked cool, they went on and on about their 'original vision' and even had the nerve to ask me to join them as a co-founder!
I understand that open source means people can use and modify the work, but claiming total credit and denying any connection to the original project? That's a bit much. I did bring up the issue of giving credit and licensing, and the response was a vague promise of 'eventually' doing it.
Just wanted to get this off my chest and see what you all think. It's a weird spot to be in, for sure.
He's fooled a bunch of people into joining and contributing to “his project”. So I feel like I should at least warn them that they are making contributions to a "stolen” project.
Here's a list of posts where this person claims they built everything and intentionally mention all the tech stack but leaves “Outstatic” out of it: https://dub.sh/code-theft
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/17wujjc/my_open_sou...
Claiming that the project is "a copy of a copy" because the author forgot to switch the license from the template MIT which had "Vercel" in it - https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/17wujjc/comment/k9j...
Claiming code (!) contributions to the project, while there is only a single commit by him (fixing typos) and he has an unresolved conversation in a single GH issue - https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/17wujjc/comment/k9j... (the commit is https://github.com/avitorio/outstatic/commit/442a3189697540e..., issue https://github.com/avitorio/outstatic/issues/73)
I appreciate and understand your feelings.
What changes or updates can I make based on your feedback?
This is exactly the intent of a MIT license. The only unfair aspect is that they seem to have removed the original license notice, which is a requirement.
Their project is MIT licensed too, so if you like what they’re doing you can play your Uno reverse card!
What I'm exposing here is an attempt at making people believe he is the author of said code. Not someone who took 90% of a project and is building something with it, but that he wrote the entirety of the code.
In the scrollbars on the right, blue is modified, green is new, black is equal. Only a handful of hooks, helpers and simple components are still the same. 90% sounds quite far from reality.
Not that I think the lack of credit given to the original project isn’t scummy, but… it’s just someone being an asshole, not much you can do about that.
'With the MIT license, you should really also put your copyright and license notices at the top of each source file in a comment in addition to the license file in the repo. This way if someone uses one or more files but not entire repo, your copyright notice and license declaration stays with your code, unless they deliberately remove it. With only a license file you risk someone who only needs one of your source files separating those notices from your code accidentally with no ill-intention toward you or your work.'
And the risk of copy&pasting just the code someone needs (it's not always/mostly at a file level) doesn't disappear
As far as a tax on the reader, the reader is free to scan past the copyright section.
Your argument is vacuous.
So, I read comments and few surface details. What I note:
1. Original project is MIT licensed. MIT only forcing, IF you use it, to make special page with mentions of all MIT licensed code used in project and nothing more.
2. ANY software project could being divided to separate independent parts, which will be then rewritten based on clean room methodology, and after this you could just remove ANY mentions of MIT licensed code which was used earlier. As I understand, person who copied your project, rewritten all your code himself and NOW he have not any your code in project.
Unfortunately, now you only can do something much exceed properties of your tween, so he will have to race with you or you'll win.
https://github.com/avitorio/outstatic/blob/canary/license.md
We didn’t grow up with a lot of money, so I didn’t get to play with fancy systems until school.
The things that I got in trouble for in school are now the same things that I make a living on; protecting apps from younger versions of me lol.
Some colleagues asked me before “but who would be dumb enough to try and log into a sensitive system?”.
My reply would be a naive 16 year old high schooler who doesn’t realize what they are doing, or the skill set that they may harness.
OP actually agreed, and then blocked me on Twitter lol..
No where am I impersonating OP. I am my own person, and will never claim to be someone else.
100% authentic Brandon Owens. I’ve been an ADHD disrupter all my life, ever since I was in grade school. Why would I stop now?
https://brandonowens.me/
I gave you credit, did everything you asked, kissed your butt, asked you to let me join your project.
You are just scorn over something and have decided to come to the internet and spread lies and slander our name.
It’s reassuring though to see the large majority of comments on this thread say that I didn’t do anything wrong, and tough shit on your part.
Get over it already, and work on fixing your bugs and user friction so that I can use your code directly in my project without having to rewrite it unit tests and solid design principals.
The next.js mods review his claims and said that he didn’t have any grounds for a claim because he used an open mit license.
They locked the thread and said the matter was over.
OP blew it up and tried to take it further to other subreddits, and this stupid drama even pulled in Lee Robinson from Vercel.
I am making updates to my project based off the communities feedback.
Is there anything else you can recommend?
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/17wujjc/my_open_sou...
I’m sorry for any miscommunications or misunderstandings, and I would be more than happy to take this offline and resolve this without continuing to pull in the development community.
However, the MIT license does not dictate how Outstatic should be mentioned in Elegant-cli's marketing materials (like their website or README file).
Though poor etiquette, it is permissible for Elegant-cli to not mention you or Outstatic anywhere else, so long as full-text license copy with your name is included in the repository.
If you needed that kind of attribution, you should have picked something like the BSD-4-Clause (https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause) or MIT-advertising (https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT-advertising.html) licenses, instead of the MIT license.