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Someone uploaded a replacement, Material Theme (But I Won't Sue You) https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=t3dotgg.vsc-material-theme-but-i-wont-

Someone uploaded a replacement, Material Theme (But I Won't Sue You) https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=t3dotgg.vsc-material-theme-but-i-wont-sue-you https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=t3dotgg....

oefrha 2y ago
The original author seemed to talk a lot about funding development/maintenance, so I got curious about what the hell needs to be maintained. I cloned the https://github.com/t3dotgg/vsc-material-but-i-wont-sue-you https://github.com/t3dotgg/vsc-material-but-i-wont-sue-you repo and had a look. Here's a LoC summary: =============================================================================== Language Files Lines Code Comments Blanks =============================================================================== CSS 2 142 119 0 23 TypeScript 32 2026 1650 243 133 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HTML 2 59 49 1 9 |- JavaScript 2 2 2 0 0 (Total) 61 51 1 9 =============================================================================== Total 36 2227 1818 244 165 =============================================================================== Among those, 622 lines of TS are hex color definitions for variants in scripts/generator/settings/specific. Most of the rest seems pretty boilerplatey, e.g. look at the 599 lines in scripts/generator/color-set.ts. So the question remains: what the hell is there to maintain (that takes more than a couple minutes every $godknowshowlong)? I've published and maintained waaaaay more substantial open source projects for years without expectation of any financial contribution.
- bad_user 2y ago
  There's nothing wrong with building proprietary software of a couple of thousand lines of code, including themes. And people should be able to ask for money in exchange for their work. What's wrong is the bait and switch, as these projects end up being popular because of their FOSS nature.
  - miyuru 2y ago
    He had raised about $7.6k total funding using opencollective. https://opencollective.com/material-theme https://opencollective.com/material-theme that's pretty good, especially for a vscode theme.
    - nsonha 2y ago
      Pretty good for a material design theme. The most boring, over used yet ugly and style-over-function design.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Wild.
  - weinzierl 2y ago
    "What's wrong is the bait and switch,[..]" Morally wrong, legally not so much. If it is under a permissive license (and it was MIT originally as others have pointed out) you can always cut a proprietary version. That doesn't take away the right to use the permissively licensed code of course.
    - buttercraft 2y ago
      What about this clause: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software" It sounds like they went out of the way to remove that copyright notice. Am I misinterpreting that part? Genuinely curious since this stuff affects me....
      - oynqr 2y ago
        As the original Copyright holder, you can do that. It just doesn't make the old Apache licensed version disappear.
        buttercraft 2y ago
- gamedever 2y ago
  it's a problem. As soon as it became easy to ask for money via Patreon or githib sponsorship, etc... tons of people are going to try to get some for minimal effort. It's just the nature of the beast.
  - phyzix5761 2y ago
    I think effort is irrelevant. Value is what we really look at when deciding what price to pay. It doesn't matter to most people if it took someone a 1000 hours to produce a loaf of bread. They're not going to pay 100x the price of the bread that took 10 hours to produce. Especially, if the products are mostly indistinguishable.
    - elzbardico 2y ago
      Partially in jest, but have you forgotten about the luxury market?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - phyzix5761 2y ago
        I think the luxury market proves my point. The perceived value of luxury items is much higher as reflected in the price paid. Although, the cost and effort to produce luxury items is roughly the same as a similar non luxury item.
  - oefrha 2y ago
    Asking for money isn’t a problem. The problem is this person went out of their way to extract money by harassing people who rightfully use the open source Apache 2 version, switching the marketplace extension to a closed source version with obfuscated code (likely malicious according to MS), and possibly more, all this for doing a quite small amount of work. That’s after already raising $7.6k, apparently.
    - 2y ago
- theobr 2y ago
  hi, maintainer of the fork here just did a pass and removed everything that was not necessary - it's even less code now lmao ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TypeScript 23 50 169 1307 Markdown 6 129 0 224 YAML 2 8 6 52 INI 1 1 0 7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 32 188 175 1590 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yellow_lead 2y ago
Looks like the creator of the replacement is the tech YouTuber theo (https://m.youtube.com/@t3dotgg https://m.youtube.com/@t3dotgg)
- jmkni 2y ago
  Just made that connection, I've been watching a lot of his content recently, it's excellent
theobr 2y ago
Oh hey, that's me! Not surprised this guy went kind of insane tbh

oefrha 2y ago

The original author seemed to talk a lot about funding development/maintenance, so I got curious about what the hell needs to be maintained. I cloned the https://github.com/t3dotgg/vsc-material-but-i-wont-sue-you https://github.com/t3dotgg/vsc-material-but-i-wont-sue-you repo and had a look. Here's a LoC summary: =============================================================================== Language Files Lines Code Comments Blanks =============================================================================== CSS 2 142 119 0 23 TypeScript 32 2026 1650 243 133 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HTML 2 59 49 1 9 |- JavaScript 2 2 2 0 0 (Total) 61 51 1 9 =============================================================================== Total 36 2227 1818 244 165 =============================================================================== Among those, 622 lines of TS are hex color definitions for variants in scripts/generator/settings/specific. Most of the rest seems pretty boilerplatey, e.g. look at the 599 lines in scripts/generator/color-set.ts. So the question remains: what the hell is there to maintain (that takes more than a couple minutes every $godknowshowlong)? I've published and maintained waaaaay more substantial open source projects for years without expectation of any financial contribution.

bad_user 2y ago
There's nothing wrong with building proprietary software of a couple of thousand lines of code, including themes. And people should be able to ask for money in exchange for their work. What's wrong is the bait and switch, as these projects end up being popular because of their FOSS nature.
- miyuru 2y ago
  He had raised about $7.6k total funding using opencollective. https://opencollective.com/material-theme https://opencollective.com/material-theme that's pretty good, especially for a vscode theme.
  - nsonha 2y ago
    Pretty good for a material design theme. The most boring, over used yet ugly and style-over-function design.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    Wild.
- weinzierl 2y ago
  "What's wrong is the bait and switch,[..]" Morally wrong, legally not so much. If it is under a permissive license (and it was MIT originally as others have pointed out) you can always cut a proprietary version. That doesn't take away the right to use the permissively licensed code of course.
  - buttercraft 2y ago
    What about this clause: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software" It sounds like they went out of the way to remove that copyright notice. Am I misinterpreting that part? Genuinely curious since this stuff affects me....
    - oynqr 2y ago
      As the original Copyright holder, you can do that. It just doesn't make the old Apache licensed version disappear.
      - buttercraft 2y ago
gamedever 2y ago
it's a problem. As soon as it became easy to ask for money via Patreon or githib sponsorship, etc... tons of people are going to try to get some for minimal effort. It's just the nature of the beast.
- phyzix5761 2y ago
  I think effort is irrelevant. Value is what we really look at when deciding what price to pay. It doesn't matter to most people if it took someone a 1000 hours to produce a loaf of bread. They're not going to pay 100x the price of the bread that took 10 hours to produce. Especially, if the products are mostly indistinguishable.
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    Partially in jest, but have you forgotten about the luxury market?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - phyzix5761 2y ago
      I think the luxury market proves my point. The perceived value of luxury items is much higher as reflected in the price paid. Although, the cost and effort to produce luxury items is roughly the same as a similar non luxury item.
- oefrha 2y ago
  Asking for money isn’t a problem. The problem is this person went out of their way to extract money by harassing people who rightfully use the open source Apache 2 version, switching the marketplace extension to a closed source version with obfuscated code (likely malicious according to MS), and possibly more, all this for doing a quite small amount of work. That’s after already raising $7.6k, apparently.
  - 2y ago
theobr 2y ago
hi, maintainer of the fork here just did a pass and removed everything that was not necessary - it's even less code now lmao ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TypeScript 23 50 169 1307 Markdown 6 129 0 224 YAML 2 8 6 52 INI 1 1 0 7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 32 188 175 1590 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

yellow_lead 2y ago

Looks like the creator of the replacement is the tech YouTuber theo (https://m.youtube.com/@t3dotgg https://m.youtube.com/@t3dotgg)

jmkni 2y ago
Just made that connection, I've been watching a lot of his content recently, it's excellent

theobr 2y ago

Oh hey, that's me! Not surprised this guy went kind of insane tbh