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Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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)

They did take the code. Here is the proof: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/f9c2157141b8...

(Posted in another thread on same discussion).

That commit doesn't prove any code was taken...

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 And the "copied" one here: 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.

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

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.

To be fair, this issue is going to get a lot of traffic. And complaints getting traffic are how issues are solved with Facebook.

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.

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.

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