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.
> In summary, the apology appears mostly sincere but is tinged with some defensiveness and rationalization, which might affect how it's received, especially by those who were most upset by the initial actions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mistakes are made without intent. That's not the case here.
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.