4 ms·

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

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
      I thought the MIT license was the original one?
      - cmcaleer 2y ago
        It was Apache2, see this (preserved) fork. https://github.com/Dramaga11/vsc-material-theme/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/Dramaga11/vsc-material-theme/blob/main/LI...
    - lmm 2y ago
      Only if they do hold all the copyrights. If they've removed the notices from other people's open-source contributions (and don't have a CLA or similar that permits them to do so) then that's copyright infringement.
- bad_user 2y ago
  > Morally wrong, legally not so much Of course, but then, the legality of it is irrelevant. Free markets work because consumers can exercise their freedom to choose, and in such instances it's easy, given that the reason for why many such projects see wide adoption is their FOSS nature.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    Just a reminder: https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/ https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
  - dspillett 2y ago
    > Free markets work because consumers can exercise their freedom to choose That only works if the consumer is fully informed. In the case of bait & switch sometimes the switch happens without them being informed and/or without giving them chance to cancel/uninstall/whatever.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Changing the historical agreement is fraud. If he edited the repo history to edit the licence that is.
Capricorn2481 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. The issue is not someone wanting to be financially rewarded for work, however small. That's completely different from saying you need money to "maintain" what is essentially configuration for colors. That's a deceptive use of that word. Let's call this what it is: a grifter asked people to pay him for the privilege of hacking them.

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
    I thought the MIT license was the original one?
    - cmcaleer 2y ago
      It was Apache2, see this (preserved) fork. https://github.com/Dramaga11/vsc-material-theme/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/Dramaga11/vsc-material-theme/blob/main/LI...
  - lmm 2y ago
    Only if they do hold all the copyrights. If they've removed the notices from other people's open-source contributions (and don't have a CLA or similar that permits them to do so) then that's copyright infringement.
bad_user 2y ago
> Morally wrong, legally not so much Of course, but then, the legality of it is irrelevant. Free markets work because consumers can exercise their freedom to choose, and in such instances it's easy, given that the reason for why many such projects see wide adoption is their FOSS nature.
- cratermoon 2y ago
  Just a reminder: https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/ https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
- dspillett 2y ago
  > Free markets work because consumers can exercise their freedom to choose That only works if the consumer is fully informed. In the case of bait & switch sometimes the switch happens without them being informed and/or without giving them chance to cancel/uninstall/whatever.
TZubiri 2y ago
Changing the historical agreement is fraud. If he edited the repo history to edit the licence that is.

Capricorn2481 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. The issue is not someone wanting to be financially rewarded for work, however small. That's completely different from saying you need money to "maintain" what is essentially configuration for colors. That's a deceptive use of that word. Let's call this what it is: a grifter asked people to pay him for the privilege of hacking them.