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Comment by josalhor | Hacker News Reader

If I suggest an idea from a coworker in a meeting as if it was mine, that move would be seen, at the very least, as somewhat rude. If I got that idea from examining the competition, that would be seen as a smart move.

Sure, if attribution is a requirement then the natural thing to do is to turn it into a legal requirement. But I don't think that is the discussion here.

It comes down to how we want to treat open source. In order to encourage open source, I believe giving credit, even if not required, is courteous. Corporations are not monolithic entities that are perfectly defined. People work on these corporations.

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> If I suggest an idea from a coworker in a meeting as if it was mine, that move would be seen, at the very least, as somewhat rude.

It will be lot more rude if your coworker now hit social media berating you for stealing other people's ideas. If just office ideas were this important may be they need to be submitted with process of academic journals with proper attribution.

It can't be both ways: "Announcing that take my idea / software and run with it" And if someone does, telling them "you are first rate moocher, aren't ya?"

> It will be lot more rude if your coworker now hit social media berating you for stealing other people's ideas

Would it? I’d be inclined to agree with the coworker.

The message is not ‘stealing other people’s ideas’, it’s ‘stealing other people’s ideas without acknowledgement’.

> stealing other people’s ideas without acknowledgement’

Huh, I never heard of 'stealing with acknowledgement'. That'd be plain usage.

> I’d be inclined to agree with the coworker.

I'd think that co-worker would be subject of constant derision where people would run every trivial thing by them asking if they had thought it originally.

Edit: To be clear I support directly confronting folks taking ideas often without attribution or taking to higher ups if that is so important. But social shaming means the person better be prepared to live up to much higher public standards than it would be for some interpersonal issue.

Corporations the size of Amazon are imune to shame. If it's not a hard requirement, they'll only comply if it's not against their self interest to do so.

I agree this is about the culture of software and open source in particular.

Reducing the issue to the bare minimal legal requirement is stooping low, that we cannot expect corporations to behave ethically, with common decency and respect, unless forced to do so by law. Sure, that's the real world, but we should demand better of the people who run and work in these corporations.

> that move would be seen, at the very least, as somewhat rude.

In a few places I worked at, this was just par for the course. It's all in the (corporate) game.

As much as decent, polite, and courteous people do exist (and I try to be one of them), it's a fact of life that assholes exist, and they often prosper on the back of such decent people.

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