Attribution  ## Metadata - Author: [[Crossword]] - Full Title: Attribution - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/6578a8b1-fa27-4cb2-ad73-6a01b28ef83e ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Legal Vs Ethical Copying** - Jonathan and Luke distinguish legal GPL copying from ethical concerns about attribution and respect. - Jonathan feels copying without credit breaks a social contract in open source communities. Transcript: Jonathan Luke, how do you feel about a plugin copying, and I put that in quotes, like another plugin? Hi, Jonathan. Luke There are particular rules around it for the plugin directory, if that's what you mean. No, that's not what I mean. How do you feel about it? Okay. I guess, what end? If a plugin is copying another plugin and making a few changes because, you know, I would have preferred it done this slightly other different way and then just running that locally Or, you know, running that personally on a personal site. And great, that's within the spirit of open source. If you have, say, put a bunch of effort into developing, I don't know, let's just throw out a random example. Let's say an e-commerce plugin and we'll call it Big O Shop, just as an example. And then somebody comes along and hypothetically renames Big O Shop to Shoe. Do Commerce. Do Commerce. Yeah. And releases it. And not only releases it, but they have maybe Do Commerce has a bigger audience from some of their other work. I'm not sure if this is where you intended the episode to go, but maybe I don't feel quite so good about that. Jonathan Okay. So I'm struggling a bit with this here because I think there's a line between what's legal and within the context and the confines of the GPL, for instance. And there's also what's like what's ethical. And I want to talk about that a bit because for me, it's not cut and dry. And it's almost like I remember way back in the day, I worked on a software as a service platform. This was 15 plus years ago. And it focused on this particular set of functionality for like paywall for publishing, right? And a WordPress plugin came along. I won't name names. And it initially, in an initial release, literally like copied the HTML and CSS that we worked a bunch of time on for a particular like screen and like how the paywall functionality worked. They copied it, put it in there. Since then, it's much different. It's evolved and there's been more things. I remember how it felt initially where it's like, that's technically fair play. The source code is public. They could copy it and they made some changes to it, but it just, something didn't feel right about it and i've i've been trying to think through like what it is i have an idea about what's What it is that bothered me there and i i think there's this uh because there's it's got to have something to do with the amount of change right ([Time 0:00:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4f8212ef-5475-4073-9242-84fb30f50fec)) - **Forked And Shamed Experiences** - Luke shares being forked by WooCommerce after removing his plugin from their store. - He also remembers copying web designs as a teen and getting publicly shamed for it. Transcript: Luke Okay if you if you don't make any changes at all, this happened to me also. It did also happen with WooCommerce. We had a plug-in up, myself and Michael Visser had a plug-in up on the WooCommerce store when it very, very first started, Product Imported Deluxe. And the WooCommerce store wasn't giving us any sales figures. They didn't provide us with a dashboard. It wasn't everything we thought it would be. This was very early days, right? Within a few months of it launching. And so we decided after about a year of no updates to pull our plugin off of the WooCommerce store. And when we did that, they said, oh, okay, that's fine. And then they forked our plugin and put it up on the WooCommerce store with a slightly different name. Oh, wow. And just sold it directly themselves instead of us getting any revenue from it. So yeah, that sort of same thing has happened to me. But then also I've done that same thing to other people. I remember when I was maybe like 15 and learning to code, writing HTML and CSS. One time I had found a website that I really liked and I'd gone to that website, copied the source code, copied the HTML and CSS and turned it into my own version of that website and changed The text, changed the styles a little bit. And when I finished with it, it was kind of different, but you could definitely see the resemblance. And I remember that this person who'd originally done it, they had a list on their website, which was a, like a list of shame, I think they called it. And my name got put up there for copying his website. ([Time 0:03:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4f1c3a6d-3710-4f78-b457-8d7a9aa79069)) - **Attribution Is The Core Issue** - Jonathan identifies attribution, not copying itself, as the core concern. - He wants simple credit when others build on his work or draw clear inspiration. Transcript: Jonathan Think, at least for me, the thing that's bothering me about this is attribution or the lack thereof. Because at the end of the day, it's not that someone copies something that bothers me so much. You know what I was thinking about? At WordCamp US, I got to watch as Miriam Schwab showed us the new Angie from Elementor. Have you seen it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It does a couple of things that I thought were quite innovative. It builds a sitemap rather than just like throwing you into something so I could see some logic and reason to it. I thought, no, that's quite cool. It was unique from what I'd seen. And then, and I'm forgetting the name of it, but the repository just did a story recently. These folks came out, it was 10Web or something. They had this product that they made. And I noticed that when I was looking at the screenshots of the product, it reminded me a lot of Elementor and the Angie experience. And I haven't looked into it to know for sure. But up till that point, I had just seen, I hadn't seen something like that in Angie. And then I saw what they created. And to me, it looked a lot like what I'd seen. And I don't know if it, you know, it's not like this was a, you could argue, oh, it's not that unique or whatever the case. What I would have loved to have seen is like attribution. If someone, I don't know, I don't know. I've been wrestling with this a bit. ([Time 0:05:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/10a1785c-f6c3-4409-a7c8-689ab2cc3b11)) - **Code Snippets Copy Example** - Jonathan cites Awesome Motive's Code Snippets product as an example that felt like a copy of an earlier product. - He was bothered because they presented it as if no prior work had inspired them. Transcript: Jonathan I remember when Awesome Motive came out with their Code Snippets product. Oh, yeah. And to me, we talked about this a couple years back. It pretty blatantly copied. There were some things that definitely looked different, but it very much copied the Code Snippets Pro product in terms of its roadmap and some of the key feature sets in a way that it Wasn't the copying that bothered me so much. And I think they've continued on since, but that they did it as if it was a brand new thing that drew no inspiration, that give no reference to there having been anyone else out there. That's the part that bothered me. Luke And we can't have this discussion without also mentioning the inverted commas fork of Advanced Custom Fields Pro into Secure Custom Fields. Right. Where they actually even stole the slug. Jonathan But anyway, I mean, that's a clear problem. That's a unique thing because attribution wasn't the problem so much there. ([Time 0:08:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4eda27cb-2cf4-45e2-a5ac-4cea1243aaf6)) - **ACF Pro Fork Example** - Luke mentions the fork of Advanced Custom Fields Pro into Secure Custom Fields as a blatant case. - He notes they even stole the slug, making it a clear problem beyond attribution. Transcript: Luke We can't have this discussion without also mentioning the inverted commas fork of Advanced Custom Fields Pro into Secure Custom Fields. Right. Where they actually even stole the slug. Jonathan But anyway, I mean, that's a clear problem. That's a unique thing because attribution wasn't the problem so much there. So you said ([Time 0:09:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5a71e91a-34ba-44db-97c6-5153ef465eab)) - **Inspiration Vs Ripoff Depends On Practice** - Jonathan and Luke note inspiration versus ripoff depends on intent, change, and acknowledgment. - Luke calls out a mismatch between stated values (credit) and actual practice in the ecosystem. Transcript: Luke Earlier, Jonathan, that there's been some discussion in the space about some e-commerce copy. I'm not aware. Jonathan Yeah, so apparently, I haven't dug into it too deeply, but on X this morning, I noticed some folks were upset about some comparisons that have been done between Fluent Cart and SureCart. And SureCart, funnily enough, was actually, I don't know if you remember in the last episode, when you were talking about e-commerce, this new product, SureCart was actually what I was thinking about. And I didn't know their product all that well. I knew it was a SaaS, you know, whatever the case was. And I have not investigated this. The accusation is that SureCart, sorry, FluentCart just like copied a lot of what SureCart did. Okay. And just decided to like take out the SaaS component and make it into WordPress. That's what I was understanding. That is interesting in the context of Jigo and Woo, isn't it? Right. And it's interesting, right? Because I don't know. And it does make me curious to look into it more. If someone is going to create an e-commerce product, you're going to draw inspiration from other things that have been done. And in a way, that would be a compliment. Like, oh, we like these patterns over here. We're going to copy it. I think, because I have my own qualms with what the awesome motive world tends to do with their things, right? So it was a little bit of, Syed apparently came out on an X and was calling out people for copying them. And I was like, well, really? That's at least how I felt in the moment. I want to see good products come to the market, though. And I think the heart of what I'm wrestling with is this, can we tell a more honest story? Or can we give credit where credit is due? Luke Yeah, Affluent Cut had launched and said, hey, we really liked what shortcut we're doing and we we didn't want the sas component so we thought we'd build it in to the wordpress database And you know we that i think that that's totally fine you know the browser i'm using as we record this is called ungoogled Chromium. It's like my second browser that I use. I use Safari mostly and then occasionally I have to use something like Riverside, which annoyingly won't let me use Safari. But I use this ungoogled Chromium project, which is great. And it's making me think maybe I can do a similar thing to WooCommerce. Maybe I can do like an un-wooed WooCommerce, get rid of all of the WooStore, get rid of all of the add-ons and upsells and integration things. It was still integrate with all of the plugins, but would you use that? Jonathan In a way that there's, I don't know if I'd use it, but in a way there's something that I appreciate that's more honest about that. Like un-Google Chromium, you know what it is. Like you made a choice that you don't want the Google connection, yet you're still acknowledging that it's like Chromium, right? And there's a lot of great work that actually does go into the Chromium like project. And, but there's something about, it's almost disappointing when you see, oh, new browser. Oh, it's just Chromium with a wrapper. Yeah. Right? Like there's not, you know, not that there can't be room for innovation. That's the thing. It's like, I love that there can be innovation on top of the starting point of another product. I personally would like to see more credit given. And the scenario you described, like perhaps that's exactly what the Fluent Cart team did. They liked sure cart and drew inspiration from it maybe they didn't at all maybe they started from scratch there's an accusation though that that's not the case and at least for me i have Seen a precedent in our ecosystem in multiple occasions where people seem to copy and not like one of the values of the project is credit where credit is due well ([Time 0:09:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/79391ea2-7fe2-40bd-b20b-15e6295dbf28)) - **Give Credit For Clear Inspiration** - Give public credit when you draw clear inspiration from another product. - Acknowledge sources to maintain trust and the social contract in open source. Transcript: Jonathan And I think the heart of what I'm wrestling with is this, can we tell a more honest story? Or can we give credit where credit is due? Luke Yeah, Affluent Cut had launched and said, hey, we really liked what shortcut we're doing and we we didn't want the sas component so we thought we'd build it in to the wordpress database And you know we that i think that that's totally fine you know the browser i'm using as we record this is called ungoogled Chromium. It's like my second browser that I use. I use Safari mostly and then occasionally I have to use something like Riverside, which annoyingly won't let me use Safari. But I use this ungoogled Chromium project, which is great. And it's making me think maybe I can do a similar thing to WooCommerce. Maybe I can do like an un-wooed WooCommerce, get rid of all of the WooStore, get rid of all of the add-ons and upsells and integration things. It was still integrate with all of the plugins, but would you use that? Jonathan In a way that there's, I don't know if I'd use it, but in a way there's something that I appreciate that's more honest about that. Like un-Google Chromium, you know what it is. Like you made a choice that you don't want the Google connection, yet you're still acknowledging that it's like Chromium, right? And there's a lot of great work that actually does go into the Chromium like project. And, but there's something about, it's almost disappointing when you see, oh, new browser. Oh, it's just Chromium with a wrapper. Yeah. Right? Like there's not, you know, not that there can't be room for innovation. That's the thing. It's like, I love that there can be innovation on top of the starting point of another product. I personally would like to see more credit given. ([Time 0:11:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2447d145-0959-493d-923e-df3d4572a8f0)) - **Honest Forking Is More Respectful** - Luke compares 'ungoogled Chromium' honesty to a hypothetical un-WooCommerce that strips commercial layers. - Jonathan appreciates projects that explicitly acknowledge their upstream source. Transcript: Luke Chromium. It's like my second browser that I use. I use Safari mostly and then occasionally I have to use something like Riverside, which annoyingly won't let me use Safari. But I use this ungoogled Chromium project, which is great. And it's making me think maybe I can do a similar thing to WooCommerce. Maybe I can do like an un-wooed WooCommerce, get rid of all of the WooStore, get rid of all of the add-ons and upsells and integration things. It was still integrate with all of the plugins, but would you use that? Jonathan In a way that there's, I don't know if I'd use it, but in a way there's something that I appreciate that's more honest about that. Like un-Google Chromium, you know what it is. Like you made a choice that you don't want the Google connection, yet you're still acknowledging that it's like Chromium, right? And there's a lot of great work that actually does go into the Chromium like project. And, but there's something about, it's almost disappointing when you see, oh, new browser. Oh, it's just Chromium with a wrapper. Yeah. Right? Like there's not, you know, not that there can't be room for innovation. That's the thing. It's like, I love that there can be innovation on top of the starting point of another product. ([Time 0:11:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2c46b947-eacf-4506-b9f9-5f687183d8b7)) - **Early AI Browser Experience** - Luke asks Jonathan about AI browsers and mentions ChatGPT Atlas. - Jonathan tried Atlas and reports his initial experience was fairly negative and unreliable. Transcript: Luke I want to quickly, like, we've got not much time left. I want to ask you whether you've ever used any of these AI browsers. I know ChatGPT Atlas just launched. Did you get a chance to play with it? Jonathan Yeah, I played with Atlas a bit yesterday. And I'm a big fan in general of ChatGPT. OpenAI is kind of fascinating to watch as a company. My initial experience with Atlas was fairly negative. ([Time 0:14:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f16f6a3f-5709-4d26-9dd3-d9f3b307cc8a))