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Comment by rKarpinski | Hacker News Reader

A few months ago I made a free open source extension to speedup youtube ads that I shared here & hit the front page. Within a week a guy (who commented on my show hn thread) copied it and promoted his version on reddit which went viral and has 300k+ Users [1]

But why copy a free open source extension instead of just contributing a pr? Well... a few weeks later he was trying to sell it on multiple sites for 5 figures. Maybe they still own it but I couldn't help but notice that the registered developer for his extension on the chrome store has also changed since it was originally published.

[1] https://github.com/rkk3/ad-accelerator/blob/main/lessons_pos...

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To give some nuance, here is the other side of that story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38463233

Can’t say I understand all the background but really… the extension is 50 lines of trivial js. Claiming someone stole it is quite bold. And as we all know, ideas are worth nothing, can’t really claim this idea is that novel either. Assuming the other party even took inspiration, the timeline of who did what first is not entirely clear.

I said he copied, not stole.

In terms of timeline...

here is him commenting on my the shown HN post I made https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38328305

here is his days later https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38398571

If it's any consolation to you, I have a very oddly specific memory about this. I didn't follow any drama or didn't know that there was drama. But I do remember your original post and then seeing the second post a few days later thinking, “wait, why is this being so highly upvoted when we all front-paged this a few days ago?”

haha thanks. And I documented it all in the blog post I wrote way back when [1] there really isn't any question about timeline or if it was inspired.

At the end of the day, it was a silly project I built and I got 20k users! It didn't feel great to be copied and have them get 15x more traction. Whatever the thoughts are around that... the reason I posted today was the relevancy to the parent extension because within weeks they tried to (or did) sell the extension's user base (presumably to bad actors). I had no idea how shady the extension world was before this, and I'm much more conservative about which ones I'll install now.

[1] https://github.com/rkk3/ad-accelerator/blob/main/lessons_pos...

I also think the right conclusion to take from this is that the validation you've seen in just this one side project of yours should encourage you to be more open and sharing of those ideas. Now you at least know what the next steps are from there, and how aggressively you should pursue those steps.

Ive been ripped off in the past. While it doesn't feel great, it should fuel the irrational confidence part of you.

I totally can see that he copied your idea, and why you're frustrated.

But at the end of the day it's a simple idea and script. Can't really see what you can get from it, if they even wrote the actual code themselves.

Considering your previous post was already months ago and was flagged [1], I'd say let it go.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38452968

I don't know what's worse, acting in such an immoral way or justifying and legitimizing this kind of behavior..

There are many software that have the very same goal/usage. How is it immoral to build something similar of your own?

Are you saying microsoft should have never been allowed to release Microsoft Word because Wordstar (and possibly other similar software) already existed?

Are wheel manufacturers all immoral for making wheels while we should still use the original wheel made of stone or wood[1] from the original author?

[1] I honestly don't know which came first but I would say carved stone

I thought it was relevant to share in this discussion, since they likely sold the extension to someone who turned it into bloat/ad/spy/mal ware.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ad-speedup-skip-vid...

Also you are completely missing the point that it was likely sold and transferred ownership.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ad-speedup-skip-vid...

in addition to that, actually had random people start reaching out to me that it is now bloat ware ...

If you think it's ethically/morally sound to copy someones free code to make financial gain for yourself then I'd imagine corndog is probably your friend and that you two were made for each other.

There's a huge difference between copying an "idea" and code.

> Next time I’ll be more aggressive with promotion.

Why not this time? If you are interested to promote your extension, you can do it now. Your extension is still there.

Another question is for how long YouTube and Chrome will allow it to work. (They may also feel disappointed).

> Why not this time?

The drama killed my enthusiasm and at the end of the day it was a silly side project. Have more important things to do if it is not fun.

> Another question is for how long YouTube and Chrome will allow it to work. (They may also feel disappointed).

It'd probably have to get orders of magnitudes more users for YouTube to do something. But not every streaming site is as laissez faire; Hulu detects it if you set it to the max speed (16x) and Twitch is more obfuscated.

Truly sorry for your experience. Hopefully it ends well, but if not you may find use of the philosophy of Jeff Tweedy:

  …And if the whole world's singing your songs
  And all of your paintings have been hung
  Just remember what was yours is everyone's from now on
  And that's not wrong or right
  But you can struggle with it all you like
  You'll only get uptight…”

    - “What Light” by Wilco

Curious why you are careful to never mention the handle of the HN user in text, only in images. What is the perceived threat model of stating clearly (in this comment, or in your blog post) the name of the HN user who copied you etc?

100%. Is someone is going to be shitty they deserve to be called out front and centre. If they just copied the program and shipped it as their own that speaks volume as to being a bad person and I would not want to collaborate with a person like that. If they took the open source program and truly made some great additions to it and improved it then that would be a different matter. Pretty sad to not give credit to the creator of the program. Call this guy out in my opinion as well.

sometimes the beef ain't worth it, man

Maybe he's afraid of getting sued.

There he is: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=corn-dog

Let's tar and feather the scoundrel.

Brigading users is probably a bad idea.

Reading their comment history does yield some interesting rebuttals though, would recommend.

Not probably. brigading is a bad idea.

My whole point was "hey thats not cool" that you copied me especially since you run a thousand+ person dev community. His rebuttal about wether or not it was legal, or violating the license etc. sort of misses the substance of the argument. To me it was a moral issue not a legal issue [1].

[1] https://github.com/rkk3/ad-accelerator/blob/main/lessons_pos...

I believe that is called getting "zuckered".

Are there FOSS licenses which can mandate some kind of "non-commercial" open source use or ethical-use clauses of some type? Seem to recall this being something that some folks were either trying to make happen after the Palantir / ICE boycots.

(cue someone getting upset about "politicizing" licensing or cancel culture or whatever, as if the entire concept of intellectual property isnt political at its core)

The pedantic answer you'll probably get here is that there's no such thing because that wouldn't be trve FOSS, but that would be missing the point of the question, so:

There's the Business Source License[1] used by MariaDB, which allows for any "non-production" usage and automatically converts to fully open source 4 years after publication.

There's also the Commons Clause[2] which is supposed to be appended to any other open source license to add a restriction against the "right to Sell the Software".

And there's also Creative Commons NonCommercial license[3], but that one's not specifically meant for software.

All of these are interesting licenses, but honestly I haven't fully read them yet and I don't know if they have any issues or ambiguities or loopholes.

[1] https://mariadb.com/bsl11/

[2] https://commonsclause.com/

[3] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Contrary the sibling comment, the answer is no, and it isn't pedantry at all. The people who established the free software and open source movements care deeply about the standards embodied in the licenses those movements use. It disrespects their work and vision to conflate other licenses with FOSS licenses, and it pollutes the commons. We use words to communicate things, and having a clear definition of what is and isn't open source is important.

There are certainly licenses which meet those goals, and in my opinion at least, there's nothing wrong with using them. I'm not opposed to proprietary software, or source-available licenses which come with certain restrictions. But by definition, it isn't open source or free software.

> The people who established the free software and open source movements care deeply about the standards embodied in the licenses those movements use. It disrespects their work and vision to conflate other licenses with FOSS licenses, and it pollutes the commons.

You know that the term 'open source' was coined because someone disagreed with the vision of the 'free software' people? It's fine to have a different vision. Thought you might want to come up with a different term, of course.

that must feel crappy, sorry to hear that happened

And this is how you end up with the IP laws we have today.

This sucks man, at least this only cost you potential earnings (that it sounds like you weren’t pursuing) vs any actual money.

I wonder if in theory, should you want to, there’d be any legal recourse.

He copied OP's idea, not their code AFAIK.

Even if they copied OP's code, depending on the FOSS license it might not be illegal.

As someone who grew up in India, this practice is actually quite common and not exactly frowned up. When you have multiple products that perform similar functions, whoever can sell them the best will gain market dominance.

OP did not pursue the monetization path chosen by his competitor and lost out only on potential income, this might be a good lesson in entrepreneurship and IP management.

Sorry to hear. That really sucks.

Is there a license that prevents direct resale but keeps it open source?

No such license can exist, if it did it wouldn't be open source.

Open Source, as defined by the Free Software Foundation or Open Source Initiative, requires the right to create a modified version of a piece of software and sell it. It doesn't matter if the modification is nothing.

A trademark on the name will require a reseller to rename it to avoid trademark infringement.

A patent on some part of it is a scummy way to do it, but that violates the spirit of open source.

You could have a license that's open source in all respects but this one.

However, someone could make a change, redistribute under the same term, and then someone else could undo the change, and redistribute, essentially redistributing the original without modification.

“Open source” is when sources are open, i.e. available to anyone. That’s literally in the name. FSF/OSI traditionally reassign the meaning in their own scope and have a process of approval, probably for a good reason. Also some people will resist and blame you for being “misleading” with your “open source”. But you definitely can have an open source non-free non-modifyable project. There’s no law of physics which could stop you, nor legal laws which prohibit combining words into meaningful sentences. Just make a proprietary app with all legal remarks and open the sources by publishing them somewhere.

> FSF/OSI traditionally reassign the meaning in their own scope and have a process of approval, probably for a good reason. Also some people will resist and blame you for being “misleading” with your “open source”. But you definitely can have an open source non-free non-modifyable project.

They did not "reassign the meaning". They created the term, it did not exist before their usage. They created it to mean the thing you're now saying it doesn't mean.

There’s more to the story, afaik. But my main point is that it’s unreasonable to take two existing words and claim it’s impossible to combine them directly. Not gonna argue or flamebait though, please just tell the correct term for projects with open source but non-free-software license and I’ll be happy to use it from now on.

> But my main point is that it’s unreasonable to take two existing words and claim it’s impossible to combine them directly.

There's terms that if you attempt to use the literal meaning of the component words, you'll confuse people. This is one. It's like a trademark or an idiom, it has extra meaning beyond the literal due to cultural association.

> Not gonna argue or flamebait though, please just tell the correct term for projects with open source but non-free-software license and I’ll be happy to use it from now on.

I've seen "source available" used and that always seemed fine to me.

Looks fine to me, thanks!

It’s not possible to reserve terms which are made up from generic words. That’s neither true in trademark law (for good reason), nor anywhere else. Saying “free software” or “open-source software” doesn’t require any upfront definition, both phrases can be understood perfectly intuitively: “free” as in “free of charge” and “open-source” as in “the source code is openly available”.

OSI/FSF decided to use generic words as label to promote their specific ideas. The ambiguity of that unspecific wording choice is on them, not on the rest of the world.

The definition of short phrases is not some intuitive prescriptive "the components mean this", but rather it is what we have collectively agreed on the meaning to be. Open Source and Free Software are widely collectively agreed upon terms of art, so they're not ambiguous.

Just because "gravy boat" has the word boat in it does not mean it is actually a real boat. "Whisky on the rocks" has ice in it, not actual rocks.

Free Software and Open Source Software have widely agreed upon meanings, and just because you think intuitively it would make more sense for "whisky on the rocks" to be served over actual rocks doesn't mean you're better at understanding english words than the rest of us.

> but rather it is what we have collectively agreed on the meaning to be.

Who is “we”?

My point is that I don’t think that your premise of “collective agreement” is true for “open source” or “free software”. I don’t agree with it, and I know a bunch of other people that don’t do either.

> Who is “we”?

Language is cultural and context-specific. Not everyone has to agree, but if you talk to software people about "open source" and don't mean what everybody else means, you're just going to confuse and annoy people instead of communicating.

> Language is cultural and context-specific.

Language is not set in stone either, and the perception of what terms mean may change over time, even within one and the same cultural context. That’s why we are having debates and discussions. The world of computer people is no exception of this phenomenon – the etymology of the word “computer” is a literal example for that.

Doesn't certain licenses (like MIT) prevent exactly that?

MIT only requires attribution. A fork can still monetize the original work with minimal changes. A trademark could help at least protect the name.

Or if they stripped all attribution then a legal case could be made.

But I thought his was FOSS too (according to him)

the buyer is buying the users, not the software.

Not to mention, the other app has open webpages and other scummy, unsolicited behaviour. Whereas yours just does what it's supposed to.

Yep then it likely changed ownership to exploit the user base, which their recent reviews seem to point to

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ad-speedup-skip-vid...

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