Hacker News Reader

Comment by neximo64 | Hacker News Reader

It is MIT licensed so theres nothing wrong them reselling faker but the stuff theyre doing here looks quite dodgy.

I am a user of retool but for companies with access to your data you expect a bit of integrity. Would be really interested to know what retools response is.

You should follow up a couple of weeks from now on HN if nothing happens.

View on HN

Using the faker CDN is dodgy and actually probably not legal.

But everything else is.

You don’t want startups using your IP? Don’t license it to them for free with no restrictions. Duh.

All of these stories in the last few months about big tech companies "abusing" open source software is straight out of /r/leopardsatemyface. "I want to build an open source project with a license that lets anyone use it any way they want for free! No, don't use it like that!"

FOSS is a cargo cult to many naive developers. They build useful tools, give them out, and expect millions of payout will happen somehow.

It's straight out of the South Park underpants gnome school of business:

1) Write open source code

2) ???

3) Profit

faker.js - the MIT licensed free software - generates links to fakercloud.com. The error is in faker.js creating links to a paid-service CDN, not in how Retool is using the MIT licensed software.

https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367...

The MIT license has a legal disclaimer, so the responsibility is not on the author of the software.

Ok so we have a business model:

1. Have paid service.

2. Have free MIT software that violates the TOS of your own paid service.

3. Comes along a company, uses your MIT software as is.

4. Whine for money, because your TOS is violated.

I think the main problem is Retool is using the faker cloud api directly behind the scene (?) and the generated data is hosted on the faker cloud CDN (?).

But they are paying for it so what's the issue?

It's MIT licensed. If they're actually reselling the API (and not hosting their own instance) then it could potentially be in violation of the terms of service, but that's it.

Using images from Faker's CDN is scummy and potentially illegal, but fairly minor overall.

If you are using images that someone else createdbwithout permission or license that is copyright infringement. If you are also using data created from a service and use it in your product again without permission or license this is also copyright infringement.

It's not using the cloud API. All this logic is in Faker.js itself, and apparently Retool unwittingly lifted it with the rest.

Yes, it's MIT and everybody else is allowed to use it as they want.

Would it be a good option to relicense the project under the AGPL/SSPL or whatever licenses (how MongoDB/Elastic/Anaconda have done) to get credit?

I have been seeing a lot of Retool lately on my Facebook News feed.

What's amazing to me is that they're using his CDN. Does this company have such terrible code review that they forgot to use their own CDN? Definitely makes me think twice about the quality of Retool's software.

Looks like Faker has links to their CDN hardcoded in the source code:

https://github.com/Marak/faker.js/blob/c9764abd20a198e318367...

Still something Retool should have caught, but a poor choice on Marak's end too

Reply on news.ycombinator.com