As an aside, I'm starting to get annoyed with the "we moved fast and broke things, we're smol indie hackers" defense that has been popping up more lately in various contexts. The whole incident started because they got venture capital for their fork and were in a startup accelerator for several months: that's not moving fast or being indie.
> I'm starting to get annoyed with the "we moved fast and broke things, we're smol indie hackers" defense
It's worse than that; this whole kerfuffle came to people's attention after the founder posted a brag tweet about leaving a $300k job at Coinbase to go YC. Only to claim ignorance about the license and everything else later.
"Sorry officer I didn't know I couldn't just rewrite a license to whatever I wanted despite having ample access to legal resources. Yes officer I am a CEO. No officer I will not remain silent."
No no who says we're smal indide hackers. It has to be that we're the genius god gifted visionaries fixated on a future for humanity that is invisible to mere mortal peasants hence mistakes are inevitable.
> PearAI evidently forked an OSS code editor, then later got funding from Y Combinator for it.
More specifically PearAI forked the OSS code editor Continue, which was itself funded by YC, and got YC funding for it. Also the editor they forked is itself a fork of VS Code, but is not to be confused with Void Editor, which is a third YC funded VS Code fork with AI features. It's YC funded VS Code forks with AI all the way down.
This is an interesting business model. Continue building on top of YC-funded forks, and you basically end up with a product that was funded by billions, but your own contribution to it was minimal.
I wonder if it's possible to get funding for a fork of an already funded fork that you launched recently.
Might even be an easy money glitch: every couple of years or so you fork your YC funded code editor, get YC funding for the new fork, and cruise on that money for a while.
Seems like YC should pair more of these smaller companies together, I honestly don’t know if that would help or not. Most YC funded projects aren’t really profitable to begin with.
It’s like somewhere in between getting grant funding for a university project and real corporate work.
To that I say “fork yeah”, the old GitHub slogan. I haven’t seen Continue complaining about it. It’s far less toxic than Sentry or Hashicorp which are on the other side of the issue. Pear could have been a bit less blatant I guess, but I think it’s fine that they took advantage of the license.
Edit: I just realized the old t-shirt slogan of GitHub was “Fork you.” Even better.
i agree with your sentiment, and them botching the license was clearly a problem, but at the same time i think a dev waives their right to be indignant about someone forking and commercializing their code when they provide a perpetual, irrevocable, commercial license to do so. if continue was GPL’d or something i would respect the uproar more
They appear to be 2 people. I kinda of think folks should cut two people, one of whom just publicly apologized, a little slack re: how buttoned up they are about licensing. Particularly when they appear to have started sharing source code before YC's investment, and the last time I spoke to an attorney who advises on open source licensing he was expensive.
> They appear to be 2 people. I kinda of think folks should cut two people, one of whom just publicly apologized, a little slack
Reading the room, people are upset about grifters, scams and fakery in general. The outrage is obviously built up over seeing our industry decline to buzzwords, bait and switch, and general enshittification. This is just one particularly clear-cut instance of opportunistic grift caught in the act. It’s like that IoT juice press – it’s not that harmful, but it’s a symbol of what people hate.
imo, the way you first do something + your first responses to serious criticism are the most telling regarding character. because afterwards, you can just play the act of "we're sorry because the backlash was really big and we have to clean up".
They are experienced software developers coming from $300K jobs at Coinbase. As experienced developers they know the requirements in the Apache License 2.0. As former employees at highly regulated Fintech companies like Coinbase they know better than letting ChatGPT make up new legal texts.
They are cynical manipulators hiding behind a made up fictive "careless Gen Z tech bros" image.
This outrage talk is ridiculous, you don’t have the morale high ground to judge people, they didn’t break anything, taking VC money isn’t bad, the incident was caused by sore losers looking for drama, etc etc
If that is indeed what got funded, those changes appear to be extremely minimal and benign and I can understand why people would have an issue with funding this.
I applied to YC in the last batch and got rejected. Not to sound like sour grapes, but it seems like YC loooves students from certain universities, which kinda sucks for us commoners who didn't go to these places.
Not to mention the whole hype around AI is unbearable at this point. Seems very likely that deserving products/ideas are getting rejected because they aren't doing AI, or because their founders didn't go to Stanford. Oh well, that's just how it goes.
Yep, thats how they work, there's a ton of data to back it up.
Unless you are from few *US* unis, you have zero to none chance of getting in, unless you have significant traction already, in which case you may as well go to any investor and they will fund you.
And if you are among those lucky few, they will fund you with the most shitty idea you have, or even without any at all.
>unless you have significant traction already, in which case you may as well go to any investor and they will fund you
This is the part that really bothers me unfortunately. I honestly grew up thinking that YC invested in people and ideas more than traction. If I had traction, I could raise money from anywhere. YC does invest in people without traction, but you have to be a certain type of person, from a certain background, and from certain institutions.
I think this comes from Github asking people to choose a license when they first create a repo, they may be just viewing it as some sort of automatic box to check when making a new repo. I think these guys honestly have no idea what a license even does or what copyright is, based on their other statements about it. I bet they don't even have any idea of the differences between GPL vs Apache/MIT/et al vs AGPL, SSPL, etc. and that's been discussed to death on here and all over the open source world.
His apology would sound more authentic and consistent with his previous communications if it were in all lower case with lots of kewl words like "dawg" and abbreviations like "lol" and missing punctuation like kids these days use in their text messages.
Those capital letters and correctly spelled words and full stops come off as so passive aggressive.
Otherwise it painfully looks like he tasked ChatGPT to generate his apology as well as his license.
this says more about YC than this particular founder (lots of these types nowadays): i.e. their process, their due diligence, who is advanced from 1000's of applications.
People look at the top 5 YC success stories and think every company they fund is of that standard. In reality they "graduate" 500-1000 startups every year. They aren't all winners. In fact I'd wager Pear AI is a lot closer to the norm in terms of quality and competency than, say, Stripe or Airbnb.
there is a culture of "gaming" that is in fact promoted by YC.
one of the questions they had was to show an instance where the founders "hacked" or "gamed" a system.
ie, game the test, game the admission, game everything.
and some folks see this as "hustle".
eventually their own process gets gamed.
gaming incentivises a culture of "pretension" - you dont know sh* but you fake it. fake it til you make it. copy code-repos, trample over licenses, whatever, who cares as long as you are getting ahead.
I think it speaks to beginner mistakes on the part of the founders.
There are some exceptions but the typical demo day is absolutely stitched together from other peoples’ work. The difference is most hide this fact, instead of working in the clear on “open source” without understanding that it is meant to be a contribution from you to the community, because to finance bros that sounds like a joke.
The whole thing has gotten so washed out that they either thought that this is what people actually do, or they thought no one was going to look at their repo (for a coding product!).
i really used to be wowed by their products and see their immediately utility like stripe and dropbox. now everyone is going founder mode, become an influencer type first and be a (mostl likely AI) guru people might want to follow
Maybe, as a prerequisite for VC funding in the modern world, tech founders should have to show a functional knowledge of open source licensing. It seems to be the cause of a lot of grief in recent years.
This apology is well done. It's humane, humble, acknowledges specific wrongs that were social failures and technical/legal failures, and explains the fixes going forward.
Whatever you may think of Pear AI, or startups playing too fast and loose, IMHO this apology sounds sincere and worthwhile.
I disagree, here's a line which rubs me the wrong way: "We tried to be transparent about what we’d done as much as possible since the beginning of our journey, but that wasn’t good enough." Couple this to "talking about it so publicly online, made it look like we were stealing the work of others as our own."
Contrast that to their comment about "100+ contributors".
It feels like typical deflection.
Also egregious is "We thought the license in the root repo wasn’t that important, so we just generated one that we thought was open."
It's hard to trust someone who would think this in the first place.
They're manipulating the reader into thinking it's their unachievably high moral standards that is to blame here: "...but that wasn’t good enough".
You can't "tried to be transparent about what we’d done" and "made it look like we were stealing the work" at the same time.
Either you announce yourself as "Pear, the VS Code Fork that will change the way you code", or you try to be very low key about it yet hope to retain plausible deniability when people call you on your BS.
I can't wait until this trend of reaction video goes away. The constant repetition and setup. It's like an unedited first draft of America's Funniest Home Videos
I'm not really getting that vibe from it, stylistically. I especially feel like ChatGPT (for all its unending shortcomings) would have gone with something more tactful than "that wasn't good enough" -- but this is precisely the kind of thing an undersocialized Computer Guy would actually say with good intentions. In conclusion, while the motivations of the original poster and the provenance of the apology letter text may be debatable, it is important to rem--
Maybe they should do a startup that offers apologies for screwing up fundamentals of a business project instead. That seems to be the tangible thing they can deliver.
I don't think it reflects well on the founders. The explanation about the license is either a lazy lie, or it shows they're incompetent.
> Our intention was to use the Apache 2.0 license like Continue does.
So why didn't they copy the license like they copied the rest of the code?
> We thought the license in the root repo wasn’t that important, so we just generated one that we thought was open.
Why would the license not be important? And why would they think that the one they generated was open? If they were going to blindly copy and paste from chatgpt, why wouldn't they blindly copy and paste from the original codebase instead, which is already known to be open.
Software licenses are a core part of any software company's business model, so I don't believe for a second that these YC-backed founders didn't realize what they were doing.
... With that said, Apache and all other "OSI approved" licenses are open to being exploited like this, so I don't think they're necessarily in the wrong. The apology, however, is 100% bullshit and I wouldn't trust these people with anything.
Meh. Just another variant of the standard corporate "we did everything 100% intentionally but are now backtracking because of public outcry". It isn't a "humane, humble" apology but a PR statement.
Eh, I hadn’t heard about this and now have. Which is wild since I was asked by someone considering trying them just yesterday and I said I frankly had no opinion. Revising that to a negative—I’m not bullish on founders more interested in tweeting than building.
yeah exactly. mistakes happen, they were definitely too influencer-brained in the launch, but its how you handle the feedback that shows your mettle.
still doesnt make pear an investable idea, but the founders showed some humility/ability to read the room here.
conversely, people who dunked on -them- too much showed either their lack of knowledge on open source/startup norms, or their ability to disingenuously ignore that for internet points, and provided many opportunities to be muted.
Here is a clear as day example of a startup who were completely reckless and indifferent to (a) the principles of open source and (b) the concerns of the developer community.
And instead of criticising them you've turned the tables and now the fault is with people like me who are doing this for internet points. Instead of defending what underpins the entire software industry and has contributed so much value to the world.
Readit News
As an aside, I'm starting to get annoyed with the "we moved fast and broke things, we're smol indie hackers" defense that has been popping up more lately in various contexts. The whole incident started because they got venture capital for their fork and were in a startup accelerator for several months: that's not moving fast or being indie.
It's worse than that; this whole kerfuffle came to people's attention after the founder posted a brag tweet about leaving a $300k job at Coinbase to go YC. Only to claim ignorance about the license and everything else later.
That's in general not specific to any situation.
More specifically PearAI forked the OSS code editor Continue, which was itself funded by YC, and got YC funding for it. Also the editor they forked is itself a fork of VS Code, but is not to be confused with Void Editor, which is a third YC funded VS Code fork with AI features. It's YC funded VS Code forks with AI all the way down.
Are you talking about continue.dev?
That's not an editor itself, nor is if a fork of VS Code; it's an extension for VS Code (and JetBrains).
I wonder if it's possible to get funding for a fork of an already funded fork that you launched recently.
Might even be an easy money glitch: every couple of years or so you fork your YC funded code editor, get YC funding for the new fork, and cruise on that money for a while.
(all of the above is said tongue in cheek)
It’s like somewhere in between getting grant funding for a university project and real corporate work.
Edit: I just realized the old t-shirt slogan of GitHub was “Fork you.” Even better.
Reading the room, people are upset about grifters, scams and fakery in general. The outrage is obviously built up over seeing our industry decline to buzzwords, bait and switch, and general enshittification. This is just one particularly clear-cut instance of opportunistic grift caught in the act. It’s like that IoT juice press – it’s not that harmful, but it’s a symbol of what people hate.
Dead Comment
They are experienced software developers coming from $300K jobs at Coinbase. As experienced developers they know the requirements in the Apache License 2.0. As former employees at highly regulated Fintech companies like Coinbase they know better than letting ChatGPT make up new legal texts.
They are cynical manipulators hiding behind a made up fictive "careless Gen Z tech bros" image.
Here are the commits from the founders:
* https://github.com/trypear/pearai-submodule/commits?author=n... (71 commits)
* https://github.com/trypear/pearai-submodule/commits?author=F... (21 commits)
This is what got funded... I leave it to folks to decide if the changes to date are meaningful.
If someone builds an electron app and gets VC funded, is that somehow unethical?
Lines of code is irrelevant. Only issue is if they are building on top of a codebase whose license they have violated.
Not to mention the whole hype around AI is unbearable at this point. Seems very likely that deserving products/ideas are getting rejected because they aren't doing AI, or because their founders didn't go to Stanford. Oh well, that's just how it goes.
Unless you are from few *US* unis, you have zero to none chance of getting in, unless you have significant traction already, in which case you may as well go to any investor and they will fund you.
And if you are among those lucky few, they will fund you with the most shitty idea you have, or even without any at all.
This is the part that really bothers me unfortunately. I honestly grew up thinking that YC invested in people and ideas more than traction. If I had traction, I could raise money from anywhere. YC does invest in people without traction, but you have to be a certain type of person, from a certain background, and from certain institutions.
> We thought the license in the root repo wasn’t that important, so we just generated one that we thought was open.
The root repo already had an Apache license in it. If you thought it wasn't important, why replace it in the first place?
Dead Comment
Those capital letters and correctly spelled words and full stops come off as so passive aggressive.
Otherwise it painfully looks like he tasked ChatGPT to generate his apology as well as his license.
ie, game the test, game the admission, game everything. and some folks see this as "hustle".
eventually their own process gets gamed.
gaming incentivises a culture of "pretension" - you dont know sh* but you fake it. fake it til you make it. copy code-repos, trample over licenses, whatever, who cares as long as you are getting ahead.
There are some exceptions but the typical demo day is absolutely stitched together from other peoples’ work. The difference is most hide this fact, instead of working in the clear on “open source” without understanding that it is meant to be a contribution from you to the community, because to finance bros that sounds like a joke.
The whole thing has gotten so washed out that they either thought that this is what people actually do, or they thought no one was going to look at their repo (for a coding product!).
Where it's all about the hustle, founder mode, the scene and whatever you can get away with to make money and take advantage of people.
Whatever you may think of Pear AI, or startups playing too fast and loose, IMHO this apology sounds sincere and worthwhile.
Contrast that to their comment about "100+ contributors".
It feels like typical deflection.
Also egregious is "We thought the license in the root repo wasn’t that important, so we just generated one that we thought was open." It's hard to trust someone who would think this in the first place.
Really makes you wonder what YC even looks for in a business these days. They're certainly neglecting their due diligence.
You can't "tried to be transparent about what we’d done" and "made it look like we were stealing the work" at the same time.
Either you announce yourself as "Pear, the VS Code Fork that will change the way you code", or you try to be very low key about it yet hope to retain plausible deniability when people call you on your BS.
Clearly they are using “moving fast” as an excuse because they have no moral compass
Smug self entitled YC people thing they are doing amazing things because YC says so.
I Ranked the Worst Influencer Apology Videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYeR7hvpTfw
> Our intention was to use the Apache 2.0 license like Continue does.
So why didn't they copy the license like they copied the rest of the code?
> We thought the license in the root repo wasn’t that important, so we just generated one that we thought was open.
Why would the license not be important? And why would they think that the one they generated was open? If they were going to blindly copy and paste from chatgpt, why wouldn't they blindly copy and paste from the original codebase instead, which is already known to be open.
Software licenses are a core part of any software company's business model, so I don't believe for a second that these YC-backed founders didn't realize what they were doing.
... With that said, Apache and all other "OSI approved" licenses are open to being exploited like this, so I don't think they're necessarily in the wrong. The apology, however, is 100% bullshit and I wouldn't trust these people with anything.
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still doesnt make pear an investable idea, but the founders showed some humility/ability to read the room here.
conversely, people who dunked on -them- too much showed either their lack of knowledge on open source/startup norms, or their ability to disingenuously ignore that for internet points, and provided many opportunities to be muted.
Here is a clear as day example of a startup who were completely reckless and indifferent to (a) the principles of open source and (b) the concerns of the developer community.
And instead of criticising them you've turned the tables and now the fault is with people like me who are doing this for internet points. Instead of defending what underpins the entire software industry and has contributed so much value to the world.
Mistakes are made without intent. That's not the case here.
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