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by embedding-shape6 hours ago |
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upvoteby giancarlostoro6 hours ago|
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That's fair, and a bit ridiculous considering the license allows them to do what they are doing, minus lacking the attribution. People are too illiterate on software licenses. If you're going to use open source software, learn the licenses you're using! I'm pretty sure GitHub literally shows you what you can and cannot do with specific licenses.

Edit: Yeah they do. There's no excuse for goofing this up.

https://github.com/simstudioai/sim/blob/main/LICENSE

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upvoteby i_am_jl5 hours ago|
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I think you're missing the crux of the problem here.

"We didn't understand the licensing!" isnt usually an incredible claim, but it becomes so when it's being made by a company that manages software licensing compliance.

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upvoteby bawolff3 hours ago|
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> license allows them to do what they are doing, minus lacking the attribution.

That's a hell of a caveat though. That is basically the entire license.

Its like saying you are allowed to kill people minus that whole law about murder. Well like obviously. You are allowed to do anything minus the rules that forbid you from doing the thing.

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upvoteby embedding-shape6 hours ago|
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I barely finished high school and I can understand them, not sure why some find it so hard to, even the license texts themselves are relatively easy to read, understand and reason about, and there is tons of further reading material all over the web, some from actual law-firms that can help you understand how it applies in your country too.
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upvoteby mghackerlady5 hours ago|
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I can maybe understand not fully grasping how the GPLs work (I sometimes have to look at GNUs page of compatible and incompatible licenses myself) but something as simple as apache or MIT should be so dead simple it hurts
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upvoteby balamatom1 hours ago|
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The uncomfortable truth is that people aren't half as dumb as they give themselves credit for. Not being able to understand something is rarely, if ever, a skill issue.
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upvoteby swingboy6 hours ago|
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They assume if people knew it was just a fork of an open source tool then they would use the free, open source version instead of paying for the fork.
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upvoteby giancarlostoro6 hours ago|
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I don't disagree, but actively lying about it is still a violation of the license.
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upvoteby 53 minutes ago|
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upvoteby gzread3 hours ago|
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And if you're releasing open source software, learn the licenses you're using! You probably didn't intend a multimillion dollar AI startup to be able to just take your thing and call it their own.
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upvoteby evanjrowley6 hours ago|
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It's possible their spokesperson was not informed about SimStudio being the basis for Delve. Lots of people in sales and marketing do not know little about how open source software works.
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upvoteby embedding-shape6 hours ago|
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I'm not sure "Person who answered a question didn't actually know the answer" is such a good defense, almost worse than "We didn't understand the license", because the implications of having such people in your company seems way wider then.
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upvoteby evanjrowley5 hours ago|
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That is very much true. Lack of knowledge in a legal context is a very weak defense.

Generally speaking, open source ecosystem knowledge is not something that shows up in job descriptions, interviews, or regular training for non-technical staff in most software companies. Hopefully that will one day be the case but until then there is a high likelihood that misleading statements can be made accidentally.

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upvoteby buremba4 hours ago|
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Compliance tech company who doesn't know about open-source. Interesting.
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upvoteby echoangle5 hours ago|
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Then maybe say „I don’t know, let me get back to you“ instead of „no, we built it ourselves“?
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upvoteby forgotaccount33 hours ago|
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Yes, great response. But is the failing here an individual one 'This person is bad at their job and needs more training/be replaced' or a company one 'This company only hires bad people and we shouldn't use them'

Every company of non-trivial sizes will eventually hire someone who is a bad hire.

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upvoteby 9rx5 hours ago|
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Understandably it can be difficult for the machines of HN to truly understand, but humans don't normally have that kind of exacting control over what comes out of their mouth. Those who have carefully developed the skill of having that control don't waste their time working at struggling startups.
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upvoteby echoangle4 hours ago|
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If you’re the spokesperson, I kind of expect you to think before you speak. I don’t think that’s a HN machine thing.
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upvoteby 9rx4 hours ago|
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No, it is. Humans understand that to err is human and thus have compassion for other humans. Human expectations are placed on full timelines, not instants in time. A human saying the wrong thing simply doesn't matter to other humans as they know that words are part of a larger dialog and surrounded by a vast array of other context.
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upvoteby CodingJeebus5 hours ago|
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I'd be more concerned about a shareholder lawsuit if Delve told their investors that they owned the IP of said platform.
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