9 ms·

“Facebook has taken the name of my open source project ”

716 points by capableweb 6y ago

ajharrison 6y ago
But your project is open source. That includes the name right?
nikivi 6y ago
It’s sad. But it’s Facebook way of doing business. https://twitter.com/CixLiv/status/1327360541145194496?s=20 https://twitter.com/CixLiv/status/1327360541145194496?s=20
- ChickeNES 6y ago
  But both of those simply look like the fitness tracker on the Apple Watch?
- jjcon 6y ago
  Anyone claiming facebook horizon is a ripoff of recroom has no credibility in my book unless recroom has a patent on the entire social VR space
iandanforth 6y ago
I suggest removing the Wit.ai stuff from the issue. In this case less is more.
- axaxs 6y ago
  Agreed. What FB did here is really scummy, they are clearly violating your license, so stick it to them on that issue. By bringing up unrelated issues one muddies the original intent.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    If they didn't take any code they probably didn't violate a license. Copyright protects the actual work, not an idea. Ideas are protected with patents or similar legal mechanisms. The name is protected by trademark law. (And to be clear: I agree that FB at least socially behaves wrong, if there is a legal mechanisms however is questionable)
    - kumarm 6y ago
      They did take the code. Here is the proof: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8fcddcb2d2c576c952f2ce7daedda#diff-5d2241a2aa7c8754bda9b7ce7ea952e4e3313afebfedfc40d4274298ba11765e https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8... (Posted in another thread on same discussion).
      - yorwba 6y ago
        That commit doesn't prove any code was taken...
      - xenocratus 6y ago
        How exactly is that proof? That's just replacing the usage of one library with another. You can go and see the original repo here: https://github.com/dessant/label-actions https://github.com/dessant/label-actions And the "copied" one here: https://github.com/hramos/label-actions https://github.com/hramos/label-actions I didn't look too much at the code, but at first glance it doesn't seem copied. The API might be the same or similar, but that's a different discussion, as is for taking the same name.
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    From what I've seen in r/Oculus, complaining in a very public way is the most effective way to get your FB account unbanned
- belval 6y ago
  Yeah that part felt like the listing of grievances and it won't help. It's probably a completely different team that should be contacted by other means. At least the label-actions author is probably on whatever #github channel facebook has internally and as such can be somewhat easliy contacted by the react-native repo maintainers.
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    To be fair, this issue is going to get a lot of traffic. And complaints getting traffic are how issues are solved with Facebook.
- thih9 6y ago
  Agreed, it seems offtopic. At the same time it feels important on its own. I’d be interested in a follow up post that would focus on just that.
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    Yeah, came here to say that. Wit.ai looks interesting but I won't touch it with a 100ft pole as long as they require Facebook login. Unfortunate they have to promote the walled garden. But also agree it was offtopic for the Github issue. Keep that focused on the naming and IP issue.
gpm 6y ago
> @react-native-bot react-native-bot added Needs: Author Feedback Needs: Environment Info and removed Needs: Triage labels 10 minutes ago lol, this is the same bot being discussed in the post right?
capableweb 6y ago
Submitted this here as the issue first got raised in another submission I participated in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100810). Let me guess how this will go 1. This issue will get traction on HN and maybe Twitter 2. Facebook engineers responsible will apologize, tell us they meant no harm 3. Facebook will change the name of the project and give it back to it's rightful owner, maybe even reinstate their Facebook account (although unlikely) 4. In 3-6 months the very same thing will happen and we'll go back to step 1 Hopefully at one point the engineers at Facebook (at least the ones that hang around HN) will realize what their employer does to the open source ecosystem and finally leave the company. This is not the first case, and will not be the last case of similar things happening. But when you're getting a large salary that is hard to get elsewhere, I guess it's really hard to leave. Edit: HNers please! Don't fill the issue with any more comments as it's likely to be locked and not really achieve anything more than that (specifically looking at you " dsignr")
- umvi 6y ago
  Well I'd rather it be like this than the opposite extreme where companies take any (MIT licensed) software they want but never give back or publish FOSS of their own
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Yeah, fuck any type of balance in the world right? It's either stealing software or never give back to FOSS, no middle grounds here.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      This comment is the one that seems to be two extremes with no balance. Those companies make absurd amounts of money and would not be able to be nearly as profitable (or maybe even exist at all!) without FOSS scaffolding to build on. It's a power imbalance. Any giving back they do in terms of money or manpower is peanuts compared to what their top-earners are pocketing. Dear downvoters: I have worked at these companies too. I've been the one doing the pocketing. Is my experience not valid enough to speak?
unfunco 6y ago
Move fast and take things.
- Deinos 6y ago
  I would typically down-vote this kind of statement for being snarky and without much substance; however, in this case, I feel like it really fits the situation. There is a clear need for regulatory action to prevent further abuse from market leaders.
  - briandear 6y ago
    What kind of regulatory action in this context exactly? We have patent law, copyright law, and trademark law. We also have contract law, licensing, etc. What is a specific regulatory remedy that would solve the situation under discussion? Generic “more regulation” is not helpful. Do we actually want more regulation around open source? Because I don’t see that ending well.
kmfrk 6y ago
As someone once said, Mark Zuckerberg's superpower is his ability to completely shred any moral conscience in the pursuit of money and power.
garaetjjte 6y ago
It is not nice, but I think Facebook is legally clear here. That's very obvious generic name, and bot features are rather obvious too.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
njkleiner 6y ago
DMCA takedowns seem to be quite popular these days, I'd love to see how this would play out here...
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  Hmm. It does seem like a better case than some of the ones seen by the RIAA anyway.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Facebook would file a counter-claim, project would be reinstated by GitHub (in 10-14 days as required by law) and OP would have to sue Facebook to escalate. DMCA is of little use to smaller entities without money for litigation.
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    The counter-claim has to be made under penalty of perjury, so Facebook and its lawyers may not do it if they are actually violating the licence.
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      That only applies if they get sued by OP, otherwise there is no risk to them.
Lammy 6y ago
> possibly not complying with the MIT license Regardless of the validity of this claim, the past decade of watching Big Tech Companies make tons of money on the back of Free Software has pushed me away from the X/MIT-style licenses and back to the (A)GPLv3. For a while I was swayed by the arguments that they're "more free" due to fewer individual restrictions, but I've since realized how many definitions of the word "free" we're operating under and that I have a different one than many of the MIT License advocates. I would prefer a smaller user base comprised of people each willing to make a small sacrifice (GPL requirements) for the overall benefit of collectively-singular Humanity.
- agilob 6y ago
  I remember seeing similar post about amazon and Microsoft taking over names of projects and publishing as their projects. I remember the MS one was worse as they forked the repo, didn't credit original author and when confronted, people working in MS, tried to cover it up by reformatting code, changing var and function names.
- jiofih 6y ago
  AGPL basically kills any commercial use of the code, which is where 95% of real breakthroughs happen.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > 95% of real breakthroughs happen Is it? What hat are you pulling this number from? You don't have to search for very long before you realize how much government-funded research and code has improved our life. Department of Energy labs, National Science Foundation, DARPA, Apollo Space Program, Human Genome Project and more are all publicly funded and responsible for some of the biggest "real breakthroughs" in human history, and that's just projects from the US.
    - mark-r 6y ago
      Didn't you know that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot?
sneak 6y ago
How much does it matter that any of this stuff is open source when it’s just designed to a) interact with a closed source, proprietary platform (GitHub API/GitHub Issues) by b) running within that closed source, proprietary platform (GitHub Actions)? It’s not like this is some widely useful tool, it’s just donated additional GitHub sharecropper functionality. Why is it that important that he receive credit for doing free work for Microsoft to improve their bug tracker SaaS?
belval 6y ago
Not to be rude (not a fan of Facebook), but what exactly are you alleging by them drawing strong inspiration from your code? You repository does not seem that popular and I see little actual code overlap between the two. I would assume that the dev simply had a similar idea and put it on GitHub actions before you did? Edit: Actually looking at your repo it hasn't seen any update since 2019, GitHub actions were released about a month later. Why did you expect this developer to hold off from publishing if you hadn't done it already?
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  The article states that Facebook was using the author's implementation at first and only then created their own solution under the same name.
  - belval 6y ago
    Look we can argue about it all we want, but this is a 3-files <1000 LOC project which they seem to have rewritten internally. I am not saying that this is a nice move but I fail to see what FB should have done differently here? Register their new actions under a new name even though the original project maintainer was not actually using the name on the marketplace?
    - that_guy_iain 6y ago
      > I am not saying that this is a nice move but I fail to see what FB should have done differently here? Use a different name than the project you're taking inspiration from. I would have thought that was open source 101.
      - belval 6y ago
        I am the maintainer of a library called "pdf2image" on GitHub, I've been maintaining it for well over 3 years now. At some point in the past a few other projects with the same name appeared for different languages. I didn't go on a long rant on HN about how other people where taking my "IP" because it's a generic name. On top of that, GitHub Actions have been up since November 2019 and as such, OP had around 11 months to register his project. The name being generic it's only expected that someone ended up taking it. Now the only thing that makes people all up in arms is that FB is the employer of the dev that did this. Since we all hate Facebook, we support the underdog in this. Repost the exact same post while removing the name of the company and it would not even be close to trending.
drrotmos 6y ago
Is this really Facebook taking that name, or just an engineer working at Facebook who did an open source project in his free time? The hramos/label-actions repo doesn't seem to mention Facebook at all? It's kind of a weird move to open the issue at facebook/react-native rather than hramos/label-actions.
- chrisan 6y ago
  He linked the commit where FB swapped it out: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8fcddcb2d2c576c952f2ce7daedda#diff-5d2241a2aa7c8754bda9b7ce7ea952e4e3313afebfedfc40d4274298ba11765e https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8...
  - drrotmos 6y ago
    Surely the complaint isn't that facebook/react-native switched out which action they're using though, but that the author of hramos/label-actions (presumably hramos) published his action to the marketplace, specifically under the name label-actions? It seems to me that the connection to facebook/react-native is tenous at best. Even the connection to Facebook at all seems pretty weak; yes the engineer works at Facebook, but if this had been an official Facebook OSS project that they wanted to publish themselves, surely they would have done so under the facebook org? It looks to me like this is just something an engineer at Facebook did as a side project.
    - that_guy_iain 6y ago
      > It looks to me like this is just something an engineer at Facebook did as a side project. Facebook Engineer works on something and then uses it on a Facebook project. To me I would take that as something that came up during Facebook meetings and that Engineer actioned it. If they talked and planned a robbery during work time and did the robbery on a weekend and Facebook got all the goodies from the robbery. Would that not implicate Facebook in the robbery?
      - drrotmos 6y ago
rubiquity 6y ago
This author has no empathy, which as we all know is a core value of Facebook’s culture[0]. Can’t he see that the thief in question needed this open source to make impact[0] to get promoted by showing Facebook is a desirable place to work by creating social value[0] through open source? By stealing the creator’s work without attribution the Facebook employee was just being bold[0]. 0 - https://www.facebook.com/careers/facebook-life/ https://www.facebook.com/careers/facebook-life/
otterley 6y ago
(IAAL but this is not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice.) This is interesting. GitHub has an Actions marketplace but it doesn't seem to be namespaced like the rest of GH is. This sets up a potential for a naming conflict where first-to-register wins, much like Internet domain name capture in the early days before registrations could be challenged by trademark holders. For the time being, it looks like developers should come up with creative names for their Marketplace add-ons to help avoid conflicts. With sufficient creativity, these may be subject to trademark protection; and creators might be able to leverage laws including DMCA to prevent such squatting. OTOH, "label-actions" is pretty generic and IMO it was only a matter of time before someone registered it in the Marketplace -- if not by Facebook, then by someone else.
- swyx 6y ago
  regarding jurisdiction - would it be where OP is (which could be anywhere in the world) or where FB is (Menlo Park or Delaware)? because if the former... that seems like FB is liable to being sued in every jurisdiction on earth
Kosirich 6y ago
Can someone enlighten me to the possible motivations behind a facebook employee doing such a thing. Since I don't much experience in open source, from my humble understanding it could be to hijack the project and nudge or explicitly steer the project and open source contributions in the more favorable direction.(?)
- Master_Odin 6y ago
  The original project was a GH app. The new codebase is a GH action. My guess is FB wants to consolidate what they can to GH actions, which are easier to manage and such.
- kodah 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Usually these kind of scenarios boil down to the fact that a lot of corporate devs (even ones that participate in open source) do not really understand open source from a community perspective. They understand it from a corporate perspective and it's this that causes some rub. Where big, multi-million dollar companies think, "A fork is a fork and that's part of open source ethos!" they lack the relative introspection to see how Amazon's fork is relatively different from kodah's, especially if you put a business case behind it. This lack of mindfulness largely gets perceived as an affront on the open source community and it's values. This was a GitHub issue bot, I doubt this is an instance of Facebook trying to strong-arm competition. It's more likely that Facebook had a need for this, this engineer wanted the code in GitHub actions for some reason and quickly wrote it. Seems reasonable and fully within his rights working in FOSS. What was missed by corporate governance is attribution for where the code was inspired by. Sure, you likely can't get in legal trouble here, but ethics say you should document where your inspiration came from.
- elliot07 6y ago
  My guess is that the Facebook employee thought it was simply not worth using an untrusted (22 stars) library like this for the project. Maybe there was some additional feature where they just didn't want to deal with asking the original author of the idea and wanted to build themselves, but I'm guessing because the project is going to have significant usage of this (and probably growing as more complicated use cases come up), in house control is easier to manage (eg. imagine the case where the repo goes offline or something). Also, it doesn't look like this was 'Facebook inspired', but done on the developer's own time. Likely some weekend project because they were bored. I really don't think this is done in malice like some other comments hint at.
creddit 6y ago
Facebook did or a developer at Facebook did? These are very obviously different concepts. Given that the aforementioned repo sits clearly under that developer’s Github Account and NOT Facebook’s, it seems fairly likely that this is a developer doing this in his own time.
- agilob 6y ago
  >Facebook did or a developer at Facebook did? These are very obviously different concepts When you work for a company, they own your code and anything and everything you do, so it doesn't matter. Facebook is responsible for it.
  - whoisjuan 6y ago
    This is simply not true. Companies reserve the right to own any IP you create when you’re in contract, but that doesn’t mean they automatically own/are responsible for everything you do. Those clauses exist to give the upper hand to companies when it comes to claiming rights over the creation of potentially competing IP. Not to become liable of everything an individual does. That would be nuts.
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      As I understand it, large tech companies explicitly require corporate approval for any open source projects you release on your own time or their time.
    - agilob 6y ago
      > This is simply not true. Companies reserve the right to own any IP you create when you’re in contract, but that doesn’t mean they automatically own/are responsible for everything you do. Depends on a contract. I worked in once place that specifically said every line of code you write during employment belongs to the company. Even on own PC, during non-working hours on bank holiday during personal holiday. One guy ended up in troubles after the contributed a bug fix to Eclipse STS, which we were using at work.
  - 6y ago
glenda 6y ago
In my experience working with Facebook developers has been a total pain in the ass when it comes to open source. They request all kinds of features with no intention of helping and are quite aggressive about it. That kind of behavior puts a serious burden on open source maintainers. Facebook employees should be ashamed of the way they treat other developers.
Lammy 6y ago
> The action has been published on the GitHub Marketplace using the same name as my open source project, preventing me from publishing my project as a GitHub action using the project name. Aside from just criticizing the actions of Facebook here it seems strange to me that GitHub so famously (due to its 'Fork' button imo) has a "user/repository"-style namespace for code but that their "Marketplace" has a flat namespace of only your app[0] name. According to its front page they are "tools to improve your workflow", but I just feel out of the loop and honestly slightly confused about what this is or why I would want to use it. I guess I'm officially old now. Oh well, back to neovim :) [0] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/developers/github-marketplace/requirements-for-listing-an-app https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/developers/g...
- asddubs 6y ago
  I guess they were trying to preempt copycat projects trying to siphon inattentive people by having names be unique
willhoyle 6y ago
Is there a license that basically says: MIT License unless you’re FANG? Is that what people mean when they say a code base is dual-license?
- gpm 6y ago
  Dual license means that you are offering two separate licenses to the code, and that people can use the code under either license. So if you wanted "MIT unless you're FANG, in which case you get an even more liberal license", you could do that with dual licensing. On the other hand if you want "MIT unless you're FANG, in which case all rights reserved" you're going to have to come up with some custom license.
- randy408 6y ago
  Dual-license typically means (A)GPLv3 with the option for a commercial license.
krick 6y ago
I won't comment on the subject, but bots interjecting with some random and completely irrelevant stuff were funny in a Kafkaesque way.
ship_it 6y ago
BTW. @Armin is really generous developer who is behind the Buster[1] project (an extension that solves captchas for you) Shame on Facebook, again! [1] https://github.com/dessant/buster https://github.com/dessant/buster
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
offtop5 6y ago
This stuff will be the end of the MIT license. I really like MIT, but the idea a billion dollar company can take my project and actually impede me is too much.
- Master_Odin 6y ago
  Take your project idea and implement it to run under a different framework (GH app vs GH actions) and use the same super generic name. I'm not sure how the license matters here.
antonf 6y ago
I think this is just engineer that works at Facebook created project with same name in their free time, not Facebook the company made such a naming decision. Here's why I think so: commits coming from Facebook in facebook and facebook-experimental github orgs have additional metadata fields like "Reviewed By:", "Differential Revision:", "fbshipit-source-id:": https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/864cdf3383695ec43d22da457de19952a6d86e21 https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/864cdf338369... Commits in hramos/label-actions repo don't follow this pattern: https://github.com/hramos/label-actions/commit/28c4884562c2a0a581123d5e19ba1bbd39043890 https://github.com/hramos/label-actions/commit/28c4884562c2a...
- cmiles74 6y ago
  At the very least, they took the time to replicate the YAML format of the other tool. Clearly they were aware of the other tool's of my existence. If you look at the Facebook React Native project, you can see the commit where they switched from the OP's tool to their own version.
f6v 6y ago
Everyone is so quick to assume malice.
- cmiles74 6y ago
  There's a commit in the React Native project where they switch from the OP's tool to their own, which has the same name. I'm not sure there's any other way to see it.
  - ris 6y ago
    To see it as someone just trying to get work done, and wanting to continue to call this fairly trivial tool something obvious?
    - zeusflight 6y ago
      Does wilfully omitting the original copyright statement (as required by MIT license) and removing any reference to the original author count as someone 'just trying to get work done'? However trivial the code may be, denying credit is as bad as stealing.
      - warkdarrior 6y ago
        Copyright (as in the MIT license) covers only the actual contents of the work, not a generic name like "label-actions".
        zeusflight 6y ago
        I was referring to attribution, not trademark claims. They can reuse the name (though unethical), but they can't avoid this part of the License: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Where do you see the original copyright statement in this obvious derivative? Edit: The FB developer has since replied and has agreed to attribution. I guess this complaint is resolved.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CaptArmchair 6y ago
Sounds to me that this is branding or trademark problem rather then a copyleft licensing problem. [1] [1] https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/ https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/
fsociety 6y ago
“Engineer who works at Facebook has taken the name of my open source project”, corrected that for you. This feels like using HN to brigade an individual at best, and people might accept it because they opened the issue against Facebook and not the individual.
jrochkind1 6y ago
> possibly not complying with the MIT license. I think this author is trying to make the MIT license do something it was not designed to do and is not generally understood to do. I think he chose the wrong license if he wanted his work to legally require his permission to be copied. I'm not even sure what parts of the license he thinks have been broken. (The idea that it's even possible to violate terms of the MIT license is I admit somewhat new to me). Elsewhere in the thread, commenters suggest the violated clause is: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." But I have never before seen it suggested that the MIT License is in fact "viral" like the GPL, that it requires derivative works to also be licensed MIT. The license is usually understood as quite the opposite, and often used intentionally because of that. If that's what you wanted, you chose wrong with MIT license. Generally when I personally see code with an MIT License, I understand that I am able to copy whatever I want from that project to my own projects, I thought that was the point of it. Do y'all not do the same? Copying ideas or a name does not seem to me to be "a copy or substantial portion of the Software"; but even aside from the particular license terms, the worse part for this argument is they are generally not protected by copyright at all. > has reimplemented the app with almost the same features and configuration syntax using GitHub actions Reimplementation? So nobody is alleging actual code got copied? "Features" are not generally even copyrightable at all, it doesn't matter what license you use. Whether "configuration syntax" is copyrightable or not... I guess the author is taking the Oracle side in Google v. Oracle, on copyright protection of APIs. But if you believed your "configuration syntax" was copyrightable and you wanted to require people to ask your permission before copying it -- you really ought not to release it under an MIT License. Even apart from licensing, in general I don't think "features" or "configuration syntax" are or ought to be protected by copyright at all. I'm sorry, yes, people can copy them from you. If the David and Goliath roles were reversed, I have a hard time believing a large corporation alleging someone had violated copyright for cloning "features and configuration syntax" -- for something released under the MIT license in the first place -- would get any sympathy at all. We (software devs) have generally supported the right to clone software, for good reason. Re-using the name is certainly rude. I am not sure if it is actionable. The rest of it... it's not even about open source, its about that cloning software has always been allowed (although Oracle v. Google may be about to change that, which will be a disaster).
thih9 6y ago
I wish there was a better way to discuss this, ideally without 1. focusing on actions of individuals and 2. assuming bad faith. Doing both of these when there are still some unknowns can cause unnecessary harm.
baby 6y ago
People wanted open source to be a thing, and now people are not happy anymore. Smh
- zeusflight 6y ago
  Open source != unpaid, uncredited work. That is just what corporations want it to be. In this case, it's a violation of the open source MIT license to remove the original copyright statement.
  - enneff 6y ago
    It’s a reimplementation that the guy wrote in a few hours. It is not a derived work.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
Comments on the linked page are being deleted.
enneff 6y ago
I don’t get it. The original label-actions is <500 LoC, and that code hasn’t been touched for a year. Why does this person expect to make money from this tiny project? Open source can be weird sometimes.
Johnyma22 6y ago
https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395 https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395 @facebook facebook locked and limited conversation to collaborators 3 minutes ago ruh roh..
lloydatkinson 6y ago
Facebook have closed the issue and blocked comments as they are cowards
wil93 6y ago
Response by the Facebook developer: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395#issuecomment-727640067 https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395#issuec...
- lol768 6y ago
  Seems like an entirely reasonable response. > I haven't seen a reach out from you so far but my apologies if I missed it. Sounds like the GitHub issue OP didn't try to contact the engineer directly first.. might've been an easier way to resolve this?

716 points by capableweb 6y ago

But your project is open source. That includes the name right?

It’s sad. But it’s Facebook way of doing business. https://twitter.com/CixLiv/status/1327360541145194496?s=20 https://twitter.com/CixLiv/status/1327360541145194496?s=20

ChickeNES 6y ago
But both of those simply look like the fitness tracker on the Apple Watch?
jjcon 6y ago
Anyone claiming facebook horizon is a ripoff of recroom has no credibility in my book unless recroom has a patent on the entire social VR space

iandanforth 6y ago

I suggest removing the Wit.ai stuff from the issue. In this case less is more.

axaxs 6y ago
Agreed. What FB did here is really scummy, they are clearly violating your license, so stick it to them on that issue. By bringing up unrelated issues one muddies the original intent.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  If they didn't take any code they probably didn't violate a license. Copyright protects the actual work, not an idea. Ideas are protected with patents or similar legal mechanisms. The name is protected by trademark law. (And to be clear: I agree that FB at least socially behaves wrong, if there is a legal mechanisms however is questionable)
  - kumarm 6y ago
    They did take the code. Here is the proof: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8fcddcb2d2c576c952f2ce7daedda#diff-5d2241a2aa7c8754bda9b7ce7ea952e4e3313afebfedfc40d4274298ba11765e https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8... (Posted in another thread on same discussion).
    - yorwba 6y ago
      That commit doesn't prove any code was taken...
    - xenocratus 6y ago
      How exactly is that proof? That's just replacing the usage of one library with another. You can go and see the original repo here: https://github.com/dessant/label-actions https://github.com/dessant/label-actions And the "copied" one here: https://github.com/hramos/label-actions https://github.com/hramos/label-actions I didn't look too much at the code, but at first glance it doesn't seem copied. The API might be the same or similar, but that's a different discussion, as is for taking the same name.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  From what I've seen in r/Oculus, complaining in a very public way is the most effective way to get your FB account unbanned
belval 6y ago
Yeah that part felt like the listing of grievances and it won't help. It's probably a completely different team that should be contacted by other means. At least the label-actions author is probably on whatever #github channel facebook has internally and as such can be somewhat easliy contacted by the react-native repo maintainers.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  To be fair, this issue is going to get a lot of traffic. And complaints getting traffic are how issues are solved with Facebook.
thih9 6y ago
Agreed, it seems offtopic. At the same time it feels important on its own. I’d be interested in a follow up post that would focus on just that.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  Yeah, came here to say that. Wit.ai looks interesting but I won't touch it with a 100ft pole as long as they require Facebook login. Unfortunate they have to promote the walled garden. But also agree it was offtopic for the Github issue. Keep that focused on the naming and IP issue.

gpm 6y ago

> @react-native-bot react-native-bot added Needs: Author Feedback Needs: Environment Info and removed Needs: Triage labels 10 minutes ago lol, this is the same bot being discussed in the post right?

capableweb 6y ago

Submitted this here as the issue first got raised in another submission I participated in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100810). Let me guess how this will go 1. This issue will get traction on HN and maybe Twitter 2. Facebook engineers responsible will apologize, tell us they meant no harm 3. Facebook will change the name of the project and give it back to it's rightful owner, maybe even reinstate their Facebook account (although unlikely) 4. In 3-6 months the very same thing will happen and we'll go back to step 1 Hopefully at one point the engineers at Facebook (at least the ones that hang around HN) will realize what their employer does to the open source ecosystem and finally leave the company. This is not the first case, and will not be the last case of similar things happening. But when you're getting a large salary that is hard to get elsewhere, I guess it's really hard to leave. Edit: HNers please! Don't fill the issue with any more comments as it's likely to be locked and not really achieve anything more than that (specifically looking at you " dsignr")

umvi 6y ago
Well I'd rather it be like this than the opposite extreme where companies take any (MIT licensed) software they want but never give back or publish FOSS of their own
- capableweb 6y ago
  Yeah, fuck any type of balance in the world right? It's either stealing software or never give back to FOSS, no middle grounds here.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    This comment is the one that seems to be two extremes with no balance. Those companies make absurd amounts of money and would not be able to be nearly as profitable (or maybe even exist at all!) without FOSS scaffolding to build on. It's a power imbalance. Any giving back they do in terms of money or manpower is peanuts compared to what their top-earners are pocketing. Dear downvoters: I have worked at these companies too. I've been the one doing the pocketing. Is my experience not valid enough to speak?

unfunco 6y ago

Move fast and take things.

Deinos 6y ago
I would typically down-vote this kind of statement for being snarky and without much substance; however, in this case, I feel like it really fits the situation. There is a clear need for regulatory action to prevent further abuse from market leaders.
- briandear 6y ago
  What kind of regulatory action in this context exactly? We have patent law, copyright law, and trademark law. We also have contract law, licensing, etc. What is a specific regulatory remedy that would solve the situation under discussion? Generic “more regulation” is not helpful. Do we actually want more regulation around open source? Because I don’t see that ending well.

kmfrk 6y ago

As someone once said, Mark Zuckerberg's superpower is his ability to completely shred any moral conscience in the pursuit of money and power.

garaetjjte 6y ago

It is not nice, but I think Facebook is legally clear here. That's very obvious generic name, and bot features are rather obvious too.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

njkleiner 6y ago

DMCA takedowns seem to be quite popular these days, I'd love to see how this would play out here...

ViViDboarder 6y ago
Hmm. It does seem like a better case than some of the ones seen by the RIAA anyway.
marcinzm 6y ago
Facebook would file a counter-claim, project would be reinstated by GitHub (in 10-14 days as required by law) and OP would have to sue Facebook to escalate. DMCA is of little use to smaller entities without money for litigation.
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  The counter-claim has to be made under penalty of perjury, so Facebook and its lawyers may not do it if they are actually violating the licence.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    That only applies if they get sued by OP, otherwise there is no risk to them.

Lammy 6y ago

> possibly not complying with the MIT license Regardless of the validity of this claim, the past decade of watching Big Tech Companies make tons of money on the back of Free Software has pushed me away from the X/MIT-style licenses and back to the (A)GPLv3. For a while I was swayed by the arguments that they're "more free" due to fewer individual restrictions, but I've since realized how many definitions of the word "free" we're operating under and that I have a different one than many of the MIT License advocates. I would prefer a smaller user base comprised of people each willing to make a small sacrifice (GPL requirements) for the overall benefit of collectively-singular Humanity.

agilob 6y ago
I remember seeing similar post about amazon and Microsoft taking over names of projects and publishing as their projects. I remember the MS one was worse as they forked the repo, didn't credit original author and when confronted, people working in MS, tried to cover it up by reformatting code, changing var and function names.
jiofih 6y ago
AGPL basically kills any commercial use of the code, which is where 95% of real breakthroughs happen.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > 95% of real breakthroughs happen Is it? What hat are you pulling this number from? You don't have to search for very long before you realize how much government-funded research and code has improved our life. Department of Energy labs, National Science Foundation, DARPA, Apollo Space Program, Human Genome Project and more are all publicly funded and responsible for some of the biggest "real breakthroughs" in human history, and that's just projects from the US.
  - mark-r 6y ago
    Didn't you know that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot?

sneak 6y ago

How much does it matter that any of this stuff is open source when it’s just designed to a) interact with a closed source, proprietary platform (GitHub API/GitHub Issues) by b) running within that closed source, proprietary platform (GitHub Actions)? It’s not like this is some widely useful tool, it’s just donated additional GitHub sharecropper functionality. Why is it that important that he receive credit for doing free work for Microsoft to improve their bug tracker SaaS?

belval 6y ago

Not to be rude (not a fan of Facebook), but what exactly are you alleging by them drawing strong inspiration from your code? You repository does not seem that popular and I see little actual code overlap between the two. I would assume that the dev simply had a similar idea and put it on GitHub actions before you did? Edit: Actually looking at your repo it hasn't seen any update since 2019, GitHub actions were released about a month later. Why did you expect this developer to hold off from publishing if you hadn't done it already?

johannes1234321 6y ago
The article states that Facebook was using the author's implementation at first and only then created their own solution under the same name.
- belval 6y ago
  Look we can argue about it all we want, but this is a 3-files <1000 LOC project which they seem to have rewritten internally. I am not saying that this is a nice move but I fail to see what FB should have done differently here? Register their new actions under a new name even though the original project maintainer was not actually using the name on the marketplace?
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    > I am not saying that this is a nice move but I fail to see what FB should have done differently here? Use a different name than the project you're taking inspiration from. I would have thought that was open source 101.
    - belval 6y ago
      I am the maintainer of a library called "pdf2image" on GitHub, I've been maintaining it for well over 3 years now. At some point in the past a few other projects with the same name appeared for different languages. I didn't go on a long rant on HN about how other people where taking my "IP" because it's a generic name. On top of that, GitHub Actions have been up since November 2019 and as such, OP had around 11 months to register his project. The name being generic it's only expected that someone ended up taking it. Now the only thing that makes people all up in arms is that FB is the employer of the dev that did this. Since we all hate Facebook, we support the underdog in this. Repost the exact same post while removing the name of the company and it would not even be close to trending.

drrotmos 6y ago

Is this really Facebook taking that name, or just an engineer working at Facebook who did an open source project in his free time? The hramos/label-actions repo doesn't seem to mention Facebook at all? It's kind of a weird move to open the issue at facebook/react-native rather than hramos/label-actions.

chrisan 6y ago
He linked the commit where FB swapped it out: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8fcddcb2d2c576c952f2ce7daedda#diff-5d2241a2aa7c8754bda9b7ce7ea952e4e3313afebfedfc40d4274298ba11765e https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8...
- drrotmos 6y ago
  Surely the complaint isn't that facebook/react-native switched out which action they're using though, but that the author of hramos/label-actions (presumably hramos) published his action to the marketplace, specifically under the name label-actions? It seems to me that the connection to facebook/react-native is tenous at best. Even the connection to Facebook at all seems pretty weak; yes the engineer works at Facebook, but if this had been an official Facebook OSS project that they wanted to publish themselves, surely they would have done so under the facebook org? It looks to me like this is just something an engineer at Facebook did as a side project.
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    > It looks to me like this is just something an engineer at Facebook did as a side project. Facebook Engineer works on something and then uses it on a Facebook project. To me I would take that as something that came up during Facebook meetings and that Engineer actioned it. If they talked and planned a robbery during work time and did the robbery on a weekend and Facebook got all the goodies from the robbery. Would that not implicate Facebook in the robbery?
    - drrotmos 6y ago

rubiquity 6y ago

This author has no empathy, which as we all know is a core value of Facebook’s culture[0]. Can’t he see that the thief in question needed this open source to make impact[0] to get promoted by showing Facebook is a desirable place to work by creating social value[0] through open source? By stealing the creator’s work without attribution the Facebook employee was just being bold[0]. 0 - https://www.facebook.com/careers/facebook-life/ https://www.facebook.com/careers/facebook-life/

otterley 6y ago

(IAAL but this is not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice.) This is interesting. GitHub has an Actions marketplace but it doesn't seem to be namespaced like the rest of GH is. This sets up a potential for a naming conflict where first-to-register wins, much like Internet domain name capture in the early days before registrations could be challenged by trademark holders. For the time being, it looks like developers should come up with creative names for their Marketplace add-ons to help avoid conflicts. With sufficient creativity, these may be subject to trademark protection; and creators might be able to leverage laws including DMCA to prevent such squatting. OTOH, "label-actions" is pretty generic and IMO it was only a matter of time before someone registered it in the Marketplace -- if not by Facebook, then by someone else.

swyx 6y ago
regarding jurisdiction - would it be where OP is (which could be anywhere in the world) or where FB is (Menlo Park or Delaware)? because if the former... that seems like FB is liable to being sued in every jurisdiction on earth

Kosirich 6y ago

Can someone enlighten me to the possible motivations behind a facebook employee doing such a thing. Since I don't much experience in open source, from my humble understanding it could be to hijack the project and nudge or explicitly steer the project and open source contributions in the more favorable direction.(?)

Master_Odin 6y ago
The original project was a GH app. The new codebase is a GH action. My guess is FB wants to consolidate what they can to GH actions, which are easier to manage and such.
kodah 6y ago
Not necessarily. Usually these kind of scenarios boil down to the fact that a lot of corporate devs (even ones that participate in open source) do not really understand open source from a community perspective. They understand it from a corporate perspective and it's this that causes some rub. Where big, multi-million dollar companies think, "A fork is a fork and that's part of open source ethos!" they lack the relative introspection to see how Amazon's fork is relatively different from kodah's, especially if you put a business case behind it. This lack of mindfulness largely gets perceived as an affront on the open source community and it's values. This was a GitHub issue bot, I doubt this is an instance of Facebook trying to strong-arm competition. It's more likely that Facebook had a need for this, this engineer wanted the code in GitHub actions for some reason and quickly wrote it. Seems reasonable and fully within his rights working in FOSS. What was missed by corporate governance is attribution for where the code was inspired by. Sure, you likely can't get in legal trouble here, but ethics say you should document where your inspiration came from.
elliot07 6y ago
My guess is that the Facebook employee thought it was simply not worth using an untrusted (22 stars) library like this for the project. Maybe there was some additional feature where they just didn't want to deal with asking the original author of the idea and wanted to build themselves, but I'm guessing because the project is going to have significant usage of this (and probably growing as more complicated use cases come up), in house control is easier to manage (eg. imagine the case where the repo goes offline or something). Also, it doesn't look like this was 'Facebook inspired', but done on the developer's own time. Likely some weekend project because they were bored. I really don't think this is done in malice like some other comments hint at.

creddit 6y ago

Facebook did or a developer at Facebook did? These are very obviously different concepts. Given that the aforementioned repo sits clearly under that developer’s Github Account and NOT Facebook’s, it seems fairly likely that this is a developer doing this in his own time.

agilob 6y ago
>Facebook did or a developer at Facebook did? These are very obviously different concepts When you work for a company, they own your code and anything and everything you do, so it doesn't matter. Facebook is responsible for it.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  This is simply not true. Companies reserve the right to own any IP you create when you’re in contract, but that doesn’t mean they automatically own/are responsible for everything you do. Those clauses exist to give the upper hand to companies when it comes to claiming rights over the creation of potentially competing IP. Not to become liable of everything an individual does. That would be nuts.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    As I understand it, large tech companies explicitly require corporate approval for any open source projects you release on your own time or their time.
  - agilob 6y ago
    > This is simply not true. Companies reserve the right to own any IP you create when you’re in contract, but that doesn’t mean they automatically own/are responsible for everything you do. Depends on a contract. I worked in once place that specifically said every line of code you write during employment belongs to the company. Even on own PC, during non-working hours on bank holiday during personal holiday. One guy ended up in troubles after the contributed a bug fix to Eclipse STS, which we were using at work.
- 6y ago

glenda 6y ago

In my experience working with Facebook developers has been a total pain in the ass when it comes to open source. They request all kinds of features with no intention of helping and are quite aggressive about it. That kind of behavior puts a serious burden on open source maintainers. Facebook employees should be ashamed of the way they treat other developers.

Lammy 6y ago

> The action has been published on the GitHub Marketplace using the same name as my open source project, preventing me from publishing my project as a GitHub action using the project name. Aside from just criticizing the actions of Facebook here it seems strange to me that GitHub so famously (due to its 'Fork' button imo) has a "user/repository"-style namespace for code but that their "Marketplace" has a flat namespace of only your app[0] name. According to its front page they are "tools to improve your workflow", but I just feel out of the loop and honestly slightly confused about what this is or why I would want to use it. I guess I'm officially old now. Oh well, back to neovim :) [0] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/developers/github-marketplace/requirements-for-listing-an-app https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/developers/g...

asddubs 6y ago
I guess they were trying to preempt copycat projects trying to siphon inattentive people by having names be unique

willhoyle 6y ago

Is there a license that basically says: MIT License unless you’re FANG? Is that what people mean when they say a code base is dual-license?

gpm 6y ago
Dual license means that you are offering two separate licenses to the code, and that people can use the code under either license. So if you wanted "MIT unless you're FANG, in which case you get an even more liberal license", you could do that with dual licensing. On the other hand if you want "MIT unless you're FANG, in which case all rights reserved" you're going to have to come up with some custom license.
randy408 6y ago
Dual-license typically means (A)GPLv3 with the option for a commercial license.

krick 6y ago

I won't comment on the subject, but bots interjecting with some random and completely irrelevant stuff were funny in a Kafkaesque way.

ship_it 6y ago

BTW. @Armin is really generous developer who is behind the Buster[1] project (an extension that solves captchas for you) Shame on Facebook, again! [1] https://github.com/dessant/buster https://github.com/dessant/buster

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

offtop5 6y ago

This stuff will be the end of the MIT license. I really like MIT, but the idea a billion dollar company can take my project and actually impede me is too much.

Master_Odin 6y ago
Take your project idea and implement it to run under a different framework (GH app vs GH actions) and use the same super generic name. I'm not sure how the license matters here.

antonf 6y ago

I think this is just engineer that works at Facebook created project with same name in their free time, not Facebook the company made such a naming decision. Here's why I think so: commits coming from Facebook in facebook and facebook-experimental github orgs have additional metadata fields like "Reviewed By:", "Differential Revision:", "fbshipit-source-id:": https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/864cdf3383695ec43d22da457de19952a6d86e21 https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/864cdf338369... Commits in hramos/label-actions repo don't follow this pattern: https://github.com/hramos/label-actions/commit/28c4884562c2a0a581123d5e19ba1bbd39043890 https://github.com/hramos/label-actions/commit/28c4884562c2a...

cmiles74 6y ago
At the very least, they took the time to replicate the YAML format of the other tool. Clearly they were aware of the other tool's of my existence. If you look at the Facebook React Native project, you can see the commit where they switched from the OP's tool to their own version.

f6v 6y ago

Everyone is so quick to assume malice.

cmiles74 6y ago
There's a commit in the React Native project where they switch from the OP's tool to their own, which has the same name. I'm not sure there's any other way to see it.
- ris 6y ago
  To see it as someone just trying to get work done, and wanting to continue to call this fairly trivial tool something obvious?
  - zeusflight 6y ago
    Does wilfully omitting the original copyright statement (as required by MIT license) and removing any reference to the original author count as someone 'just trying to get work done'? However trivial the code may be, denying credit is as bad as stealing.
    - warkdarrior 6y ago
      Copyright (as in the MIT license) covers only the actual contents of the work, not a generic name like "label-actions".
      - zeusflight 6y ago
        I was referring to attribution, not trademark claims. They can reuse the name (though unethical), but they can't avoid this part of the License: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Where do you see the original copyright statement in this obvious derivative? Edit: The FB developer has since replied and has agreed to attribution. I guess this complaint is resolved.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

CaptArmchair 6y ago

Sounds to me that this is branding or trademark problem rather then a copyleft licensing problem. [1] [1] https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/ https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/

fsociety 6y ago

“Engineer who works at Facebook has taken the name of my open source project”, corrected that for you. This feels like using HN to brigade an individual at best, and people might accept it because they opened the issue against Facebook and not the individual.

jrochkind1 6y ago

> possibly not complying with the MIT license. I think this author is trying to make the MIT license do something it was not designed to do and is not generally understood to do. I think he chose the wrong license if he wanted his work to legally require his permission to be copied. I'm not even sure what parts of the license he thinks have been broken. (The idea that it's even possible to violate terms of the MIT license is I admit somewhat new to me). Elsewhere in the thread, commenters suggest the violated clause is: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." But I have never before seen it suggested that the MIT License is in fact "viral" like the GPL, that it requires derivative works to also be licensed MIT. The license is usually understood as quite the opposite, and often used intentionally because of that. If that's what you wanted, you chose wrong with MIT license. Generally when I personally see code with an MIT License, I understand that I am able to copy whatever I want from that project to my own projects, I thought that was the point of it. Do y'all not do the same? Copying ideas or a name does not seem to me to be "a copy or substantial portion of the Software"; but even aside from the particular license terms, the worse part for this argument is they are generally not protected by copyright at all. > has reimplemented the app with almost the same features and configuration syntax using GitHub actions Reimplementation? So nobody is alleging actual code got copied? "Features" are not generally even copyrightable at all, it doesn't matter what license you use. Whether "configuration syntax" is copyrightable or not... I guess the author is taking the Oracle side in Google v. Oracle, on copyright protection of APIs. But if you believed your "configuration syntax" was copyrightable and you wanted to require people to ask your permission before copying it -- you really ought not to release it under an MIT License. Even apart from licensing, in general I don't think "features" or "configuration syntax" are or ought to be protected by copyright at all. I'm sorry, yes, people can copy them from you. If the David and Goliath roles were reversed, I have a hard time believing a large corporation alleging someone had violated copyright for cloning "features and configuration syntax" -- for something released under the MIT license in the first place -- would get any sympathy at all. We (software devs) have generally supported the right to clone software, for good reason. Re-using the name is certainly rude. I am not sure if it is actionable. The rest of it... it's not even about open source, its about that cloning software has always been allowed (although Oracle v. Google may be about to change that, which will be a disaster).

thih9 6y ago

I wish there was a better way to discuss this, ideally without 1. focusing on actions of individuals and 2. assuming bad faith. Doing both of these when there are still some unknowns can cause unnecessary harm.

baby 6y ago

People wanted open source to be a thing, and now people are not happy anymore. Smh

zeusflight 6y ago
Open source != unpaid, uncredited work. That is just what corporations want it to be. In this case, it's a violation of the open source MIT license to remove the original copyright statement.
- enneff 6y ago
  It’s a reimplementation that the guy wrote in a few hours. It is not a derived work.

LeoPanthera 6y ago

Comments on the linked page are being deleted.

enneff 6y ago

I don’t get it. The original label-actions is <500 LoC, and that code hasn’t been touched for a year. Why does this person expect to make money from this tiny project? Open source can be weird sometimes.

Johnyma22 6y ago

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395 https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395 @facebook facebook locked and limited conversation to collaborators 3 minutes ago ruh roh..

lloydatkinson 6y ago

Facebook have closed the issue and blocked comments as they are cowards

wil93 6y ago

Response by the Facebook developer: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395#issuecomment-727640067 https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/30395#issuec...

lol768 6y ago
Seems like an entirely reasonable response. > I haven't seen a reach out from you so far but my apologies if I missed it. Sounds like the GitHub issue OP didn't try to contact the engineer directly first.. might've been an easier way to resolve this?