One other Twitter comments reveals that they probably just asked an AI to copy Papermark. Evidenced by AI comments saying the page was aligned to the "reference"
> The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...]
The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right.
Ahhh, that explains now why working 7 days a week is necessary for this Manhattan-project-level startup, he's not ‘Grindmaxxing’ by waking up with the 5 AM club every day!
Can someone give a bit more of context on this thread? I have no idea who Nico is nor what Papermark is or does.
As an aside thought not related to the thread: Is it my perception or people are getting more used to not only vibe code things from existing solutions/projects but also "steal" open source code and do whatever the heck they want without complying morally/ethically/legally to the whole premise of open source?
I have the feeling that more than ever open source violations are flourishing everywhere without any major legal consequences.
show comments
NikxDa
From what I can tell, his argument seems to be that
1. no code was manually copied by a developer, and
2. all software in the same space copies off of each other
But the big giveaway here is the exact same layout/copywriting on both products. Telling an LLM "write this product and build a 1:1 clone" is still copying by all sensible definitions. The fact that he argues nothing was copied is ridiculous.
You have to share the source code even when the user interacts over the network with the software.
The project which uses that code, must also be AGPL,
There are ways to separate it and go around it, for example, using an AGPL auth server shouldn't affect the code where your business logic lives
I am sure they could have found a way to design their product to be compliant, especially following past drama.
This is assuming the code is indeed copied, since we don't know that for sure, it does look very similar but I am not sure how that is enforced
show comments
bilekas
If we take what they're saying as fact and that they didn't copy and paste the code, but for all intents and purposes the LlM basically did reproduce the same code based on its crawling of the repo and not respecting the license. It would make a great civil case for the courts to decide.
Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". Smells bad to me.
renoir
This is happening on a constant basis among YC companies, as if it was guidance of YC itself.
show comments
fantasizr
tech will do anything to normalize theft and call it innovation
show comments
bushido
Both designs are nearly boilerplate ShadCN blocks/components, it looks nearly identical to this stuff: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks
CodesInChaos
I like the contradiction on the copycat page:
> This action cannot be undone
> Freezing is reversible from this page
I assume being irreversible is an essential part of the freezing feature.
show comments
LunicLynx
Isn't this always the case? Most of the time you just don't know where AI stole it from?
arlattimore
Yuck, a little vomit just came up :(
Aurornis
Since the Tweet is small enough and a lot of people aren’t reading it (Twitter links don’t work well for those without an account some times) I’ll quote it here
> Hey Nico,
> It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code.
> We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately.
> It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud.
> It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.
boesboes
I hope YC does the right thing here and pull funding of these ass wipes.
show comments
tsunamifury
Customer aquisitions and retention has always been the moat over code. As much as this forum might have a hard time accepting that
an0malous
Classic YC startup move
steveBK123
I wonder if this is a bigger risk/more widespread in the AI era? Could a bad actor with a copy of someone else's proprietary source code train an LLM on it and come out with code that does not show enough evidence of theft?
nerdix
If you drop a screenshot of a web page into something like Figma Make, you can get it to produce a strikingly close replica. I get that vibe from the screenshots. They are very similar but not exactly the same. That's probably also why a lot of the copy is the same.
Not getting your magic text generator to reword the copy for you is just sloppy.
show comments
summarybot
What's the cost/benefit analysis on Papermark being open-source?
Glyptodon
Is this related to the post where someone copied a UI and said as long as they changed 3% it's fine or totally unrelated?
itomato
Why are people using what used to be Twitter in seriousness?
show comments
tsunamifury
With LLMs being able to replicate simple SaaS tools we are going to see a lot of "you stole my idea" and regardless of it being right or wrong, the judgement of time tends to be defensibility.
I wouldn't bet on small scale software defensibility in the future. Just being practical...
dwaltrip
What a scumbag. The replies from Nico are insane:
“Team effort”
“:praying-hands (x2)”
And so on… The audacity and complete shamelessness…
I wonder what narrative they tell themselves.
show comments
kleiba2
Missing context.
mmonaghan
ehhhh I'm not a corgi stan but I'd bet they just took the design & copy, which is totally fine imo. Often better to just take another's design instead of spend a bunch of cycles figuring out flow. This is doubly true for secondary pages/layouts/features.
If I were them, I'd have changed copy and probably done some internal testing to smooth rough edges/improve where needed but sounds like they're moving as quickly as possible.
If they did just copy paste code, straight to jail...
show comments
dzonga
fraudulent people are gonna do more fraudulent shit. more news at 11.
once the money dries up, these people will be on the next 'wave' without retrospective of what led to failures before. the past gets buried like it never existed.
bix6
Ah another YC popcorn fest
Chris2048
What's with this response in the Twitter thread??:
"This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public"
The X link has screenshots where the two products have lots of identical pages. Is that IPable? Honestly don't know since I seem to use a lot of products that look like other products (LibreOffice, etc). But the pages for obscure things looking identical is kind of sus.
show comments
contentkraft
Hey Claude, copy XYZ, make no mistakes.
The meme keeps on memeing.
show comments
wolttam
Folks... read the actual tweet. They literally didn't vibe code it - they copy-pasted another project.
Plot twist, they both vibe coded it and now are pointing the finger at each other. /s
NickNaraghi
Gonna have to see the agent trace on that one.
jobs_throwaway
You didn't code it, you stole it from open source OS and compiler maintainers
show comments
lenerdenator
Unless you don't copy the license terms, it's impossible to "steal" open-source code. That's... sort of the point.
show comments
qwertytyyuu
Stealing it for your use case would take more effort vibe coding. The term is fine as is
feverzsj
LLM generated code could have very similar pattern to existing code with stricter license it trained on. So, it's better to keep them to yourself instead of bothering the public.
aboardRat4
It is not possible to steal something which doesn't obey conservation laws. Don't try to scam physics, is always wins.
xyzsparetimexyz
Don't care. Competition is good for consumers.
show comments
olluk
Close your source if you don't want it to be read by LLM
show comments
dcow
When everyone is using LLMs to suggest IA, build basic UIs, dump out your startup in a day, etc. everything will look the same, even the source code. There will be no way to litigate this. Does it benefit society to force two companies to make their products look different? Where’s the outrage over all basic pencils looking the same? Let the market decide which pencils it prefers.
show comments
sublimefire
Being a bot of a devils advocate here. What I do not understand if it just looks similar, or implements the same features, or the code is actually copied and modified, i.e. the source is obviously from papermark. I think interfaces can be copied, thinking along the lines of implementing a protocol or a feature, so that would be legit. The UI looks very similar but if this is a totally different code then what? is it copyright infringement on the look and feel of the papermark brand?
Clearly it should be an issue for the investors anyway as it “looks” like a copy in the tweet alone, it might mean this code will eventually become available from download to comply with agpl, which in turn wipes out any moat.
One other Twitter comments reveals that they probably just asked an AI to copy Papermark. Evidenced by AI comments saying the page was aligned to the "reference"
https://xcancel.com/ffumarola/status/2070479755892371713#m
Their response:
> The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...]
The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right.
https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951
> Sorry for the delayed response to this, I just woke up
Posted 7:52 am
https://x.com/i/status/2070158170937581951
Ahhh, that explains now why working 7 days a week is necessary for this Manhattan-project-level startup, he's not ‘Grindmaxxing’ by waking up with the 5 AM club every day!
(Context for folks not terminally online: https://x.com/i/status/2061139112426623054)
Can someone give a bit more of context on this thread? I have no idea who Nico is nor what Papermark is or does.
As an aside thought not related to the thread: Is it my perception or people are getting more used to not only vibe code things from existing solutions/projects but also "steal" open source code and do whatever the heck they want without complying morally/ethically/legally to the whole premise of open source?
I have the feeling that more than ever open source violations are flourishing everywhere without any major legal consequences.
From what I can tell, his argument seems to be that
1. no code was manually copied by a developer, and
2. all software in the same space copies off of each other
But the big giveaway here is the exact same layout/copywriting on both products. Telling an LLM "write this product and build a 1:1 clone" is still copying by all sensible definitions. The fact that he argues nothing was copied is ridiculous.
License in question: https://github.com/papermark/papermark?tab=License-1-ov-file It is AGPL, basically means:
You have to share the source code even when the user interacts over the network with the software.
The project which uses that code, must also be AGPL,
There are ways to separate it and go around it, for example, using an AGPL auth server shouldn't affect the code where your business logic lives
I am sure they could have found a way to design their product to be compliant, especially following past drama.
This is assuming the code is indeed copied, since we don't know that for sure, it does look very similar but I am not sure how that is enforced
If we take what they're saying as fact and that they didn't copy and paste the code, but for all intents and purposes the LlM basically did reproduce the same code based on its crawling of the repo and not respecting the license. It would make a great civil case for the courts to decide.
Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". Smells bad to me.
This is happening on a constant basis among YC companies, as if it was guidance of YC itself.
tech will do anything to normalize theft and call it innovation
Both designs are nearly boilerplate ShadCN blocks/components, it looks nearly identical to this stuff: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks
I like the contradiction on the copycat page:
> This action cannot be undone
> Freezing is reversible from this page
I assume being irreversible is an essential part of the freezing feature.
Isn't this always the case? Most of the time you just don't know where AI stole it from?
Yuck, a little vomit just came up :(
Since the Tweet is small enough and a lot of people aren’t reading it (Twitter links don’t work well for those without an account some times) I’ll quote it here
> Hey Nico,
> It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code.
> We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately.
> It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud.
> It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.
I hope YC does the right thing here and pull funding of these ass wipes.
Customer aquisitions and retention has always been the moat over code. As much as this forum might have a hard time accepting that
Classic YC startup move
I wonder if this is a bigger risk/more widespread in the AI era? Could a bad actor with a copy of someone else's proprietary source code train an LLM on it and come out with code that does not show enough evidence of theft?
If you drop a screenshot of a web page into something like Figma Make, you can get it to produce a strikingly close replica. I get that vibe from the screenshots. They are very similar but not exactly the same. That's probably also why a lot of the copy is the same.
Not getting your magic text generator to reword the copy for you is just sloppy.
What's the cost/benefit analysis on Papermark being open-source?
Is this related to the post where someone copied a UI and said as long as they changed 3% it's fine or totally unrelated?
Why are people using what used to be Twitter in seriousness?
With LLMs being able to replicate simple SaaS tools we are going to see a lot of "you stole my idea" and regardless of it being right or wrong, the judgement of time tends to be defensibility.
I wouldn't bet on small scale software defensibility in the future. Just being practical...
What a scumbag. The replies from Nico are insane:
“Team effort”
“:praying-hands (x2)”
And so on… The audacity and complete shamelessness…
I wonder what narrative they tell themselves.
Missing context.
ehhhh I'm not a corgi stan but I'd bet they just took the design & copy, which is totally fine imo. Often better to just take another's design instead of spend a bunch of cycles figuring out flow. This is doubly true for secondary pages/layouts/features.
If I were them, I'd have changed copy and probably done some internal testing to smooth rough edges/improve where needed but sounds like they're moving as quickly as possible.
If they did just copy paste code, straight to jail...
fraudulent people are gonna do more fraudulent shit. more news at 11.
once the money dries up, these people will be on the next 'wave' without retrospective of what led to failures before. the past gets buried like it never existed.
Ah another YC popcorn fest
What's with this response in the Twitter thread??:
"This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public"
-- https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/207012600834729596...
Is this just trolling?!
The X link has screenshots where the two products have lots of identical pages. Is that IPable? Honestly don't know since I seem to use a lot of products that look like other products (LibreOffice, etc). But the pages for obscure things looking identical is kind of sus.
Hey Claude, copy XYZ, make no mistakes.
The meme keeps on memeing.
Folks... read the actual tweet. They literally didn't vibe code it - they copy-pasted another project.
I'd suggest replacing that link with https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095
Plot twist, they both vibe coded it and now are pointing the finger at each other. /s
Gonna have to see the agent trace on that one.
You didn't code it, you stole it from open source OS and compiler maintainers
Unless you don't copy the license terms, it's impossible to "steal" open-source code. That's... sort of the point.
Stealing it for your use case would take more effort vibe coding. The term is fine as is
LLM generated code could have very similar pattern to existing code with stricter license it trained on. So, it's better to keep them to yourself instead of bothering the public.
It is not possible to steal something which doesn't obey conservation laws. Don't try to scam physics, is always wins.
Don't care. Competition is good for consumers.
Close your source if you don't want it to be read by LLM
When everyone is using LLMs to suggest IA, build basic UIs, dump out your startup in a day, etc. everything will look the same, even the source code. There will be no way to litigate this. Does it benefit society to force two companies to make their products look different? Where’s the outrage over all basic pencils looking the same? Let the market decide which pencils it prefers.
Being a bot of a devils advocate here. What I do not understand if it just looks similar, or implements the same features, or the code is actually copied and modified, i.e. the source is obviously from papermark. I think interfaces can be copied, thinking along the lines of implementing a protocol or a feature, so that would be legit. The UI looks very similar but if this is a totally different code then what? is it copyright infringement on the look and feel of the papermark brand?
Clearly it should be an issue for the investors anyway as it “looks” like a copy in the tweet alone, it might mean this code will eventually become available from download to comply with agpl, which in turn wipes out any moat.