Y Combinator is being criticized after it backed an AI startup that admits it basically cloned another AI startup

A Y Combinator startup named PearAI launched with an X post thread and YouTube video on Saturday and created immediate controversy. And some of that is splashing onto YC itself.

PearAI offers an AI coding editor. The startup’s founder Duke Pan has openly said that it’s a cloned copy of another AI editor called Continue, which was covered under the Apache open source license. But PearAI made a major misstep: PearAI originally slapped its own made-up closed license on it, called the Pear Enterprise License, which Pan admitted was written by ChatGPT.

Changing a license like this is a big deal in the open source world. Not only are there legalities involved in violating a software license, but it defeats the whole purpose of open source, which is about community building, sharing, and contributing. In an apology PearAI’s Pan posted on Monday, he said that the project has now been released under the same Apache open source license as the original project.

The launch thread went viral with thousands of comments by Sunday. Some were congratulatory, but others were vicious in pointing out the licensing and the fact that PearAI wasn’t so much a fork with new stuff added, but a replica with a new name. Pan admitted as much in his apology.

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