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I think the problem is more that they weren't honest about the origins, even if we disregard the point where they themselves break the license terms.

> DeepDelver recognized that Pathways looked a lot like Sim.ai’s open source agent-building product called SimStudio and asked Delve if it was based on SimStudio. The Delve folks said they built it themselves, the whistleblower contends.

If they were upfront about that it was a fork, and attributed it, sounds like there wouldn't have been any issues here at all.

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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

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.

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

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.

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.

I don't disagree, but actively lying about it is still a violation of the license.

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.

> 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.

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.

I'd be more concerned about a shareholder lawsuit if Delve told their investors that they owned the IP of said platform.

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.

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.

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.

Compliance tech company who doesn't know about open-source. Interesting.

Then maybe say „I don’t know, let me get back to you“ instead of „no, we built it ourselves“?

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.

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.

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.

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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