Posted by minimaxir 4 hours ago
Stealing an open source repo and launching it as your own app is a brazen move. Launching it with the same name as the original repo is just flagrant.
This guy thought he was going to ride this controversy to some free publicity for himself, using other people’s work. He flew too close to the sun and got caught out on every level.
It's in poor taste for sure but let's not pretend that the chosen license is doing him any favors: https://github.com/mbeher2200/DarkHours/blob/813cf85/LICENSE
Hate to see people fall for the “fewer restrictions == more free” fallacy. Profit-driven entities love when smart people publish MIT code that they can feed off of without giving anything back.
Nor is the copycat project prevented from using the name without a trademark. For instance one couldn't repackage Mozilla or Blender under those names:
- https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75558938&caseSearchType=U...
- https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85852073&caseSearchType=U...
Do you think he stole it directly, or an LLM reproduced it complete with existing bugs?
This is also a reminder that people lie or just hide some part of the story all the time, and we as readers should question every story if it only presents an opinion of one side, and not the other's.
That being said, hearing Apple's own opinion is probably not what we could reasonably expect.
One is that when presented with contradictory evidence, evaluate it honestly and, if you evaluate it to be correct, in full or in part, change your belief freely and without apology.
The other is when you decide you have made a mistake, say so plainly and openly.
They often go together, but not always. I can’t speak to the author’s belief, but I will file this article under Epistles from Gruber to the internet because it is an inspiration to me.
> Note: the original version of this post had a section here about an astronomy app I am working on that began as an astrology app and was rejected after having the astrology content removed. App store [sic] review reached out to me and let me know that they had apparently never been given the updated build and that the app should be fine to submit now.
So did the submitter submit the updated build, but it somehow never made it through Apple's process and thus was never looked at by the app store reviewer? Because that's also a bad look for Apple of "we rejected your app by mistake because we looked at the wrong version, not the new one you submitted".
> Whether Godier ever submitted a build of “Asterly” to the App Store that contained no occult horseshit and only the hard-science astronomy features that were present in his “Dark Hours” website that was available for the last week, I don’t know. But I have no reason to believe that he did.
His original submission was an astrology app. He then stole someone else’s open source repo, reskinned it, and tried to pass it off as his own app.
He is not a trustworthy person. He was trying to manipulate and deceive. I see no reason to point fingers at Apple for this.
He was trying to leverage anti-Apple sentiment for free publicity for himself and he thought nobody would notice that he stole the app and, brazenly, the name “Dark Hours” from someone’s open source project.
Is there astrology in this app? No. Was there..? Yes. And the person complaining skipped mentioning that detail about their app
This guy appears to be a serial liar.