I think he saw the video lol, he just tried to get my fork taken down from the marketplace. Don't worry, we're not going anywhere. Just had to change the logo :)
The new copyright he finagled isn't even relevant, the repo is empty now so it doesn't apply to anything… Which tbh is the smartest thing he's done; just check the blame on the typescript files, he would be in violation of copyright if he tried to relicense them.
Dracula Theme devs do the right thing by paywalling their own additional themes and designs, but not the original theme. They still help maintain the open source theme. This is just straight up bs.
Pantone is predatory but they do actual color science, they pour money into making sure a pantone # looks exactly the same on a calibrated screen, can of paint, plastic pigment, fabric, in print. The only science this guy is doing is history revisionism :D
I think the creator could handle this whole situation so much better. If he wanted to get some revenue from his creation (and there is nothing wrong with that), he should use the proper and fair way: create a paid version, add a paid feature, and keep the free as an "ad" for the project and the paid. But changing the license like that, "nuking" the project, is not an honest move.
true, but after watching the video I doubt that he could build such a feature (that is worth paying (I think just makeing ppl aware of donating would be wayyy better)), 1.6k loc in TS/JS and he is looking for an TS/JS dev to support him...
@@balduin_b4334 That too, would be a great solution. I agree with you that it would be hard to create a paid feature because of the scope of the project. The donation would be a better solution. I agree.
I'm guessing what he wanted to do was push the free extension out to replace it with his "own" paid version. And if you read that thread on GitHub, the author of the Zed extension was going to comply with whatever changes were asked of him if not for the community standing behind him. So, yeah, he messed up, but I wouldn't assume good faith on his part - he knew what he was doing.
Even if we assume that google has the trademark of Material or something, restrictions like that only really exist to prevent people from intentionally confusing consumers. A colour scheme for a code editor is very unlikely to cause confusion for consumers, so even if Google wanted to sue him they'd probably lose.
@@asuasuasu You don't need to prove intent, but to my knowledge if you can prove that you didn't intend to, it can limit the extent of damages. It's called the innocent infringer defense. That said, I am not a lawyer so yknow. Everything I say should be taken with many grains of salt.
We have a generation of devs who want the “0pen source” clout but then become some sort of dictator when things don’t go their way after trying to get paid.
And the same ones think open source is free. But it's all about the license. I have others projects that provide the source with a paid license. If I'm going to use something I might earn something from, even if I can find the source code, even if it's freely distributed by the dev, if there's a paid license that affirms my rights, I go that route. I want a receipt to prove when I was licensed.
He is not a dev. He is common unsuccessful narcissistic fraud. And genuinly non-issue comparing to people diverting all donations and funding away from development.
When I was a kid, I wrote a piece of software that reached >5m downloads. I remember thinking it was pretty cool and telling people, only to be called an idiot because I released it for free. They were under the impression that >5m people would've paid, or that it would've had the same impact if it cost money. I doubt even a hundred people would've paid a fiver.
Kind of depends. What was the software? If the utility behind it is useful enough to warrant its use regardless of being attached to a pricetag or not; then they were sorta kinda right. But then again, you also are right that you may not have reached as much exposure as well due to being free. It's moments like these where I consider the 1$ model as being appropriate middle ground. If you figure it should be free outright, but you are being told by people "This should cost money", charge a single dollar per license. It's cheap enough that generally most people will be fine with paying that amount, while being just expensive enough to avoid the "If it is free, you are the product" rhetoric that tends to be true with many 'free' software. But a side note about that last part. I am not saying open source software is making their users the products in the same definition of 'free' as what is often used by the Free Software folk. That's a whole different ball game, where the product can still have a price tag attached, but the software must remain 'free to do as you wish with'. Basically, there's a difference between 'free' software that costs nothing to use, but still uses you to become profitable; and the software that is free to use how you wish; but you may still sometimes have to pay for it. And this concept, ironically, confuses the absolute heck out of a lot of people somehow. Even the Open Source community. A lot of people think if it is open source, is should cost nothing. They are wrong. Just like you were, but also weren't; because you are both right in that you may not have gotten as much traction but also wrong that you shouldn't have put a price on it at all. If it is useful enough that people are willing to download it in the numbers of millions; put a price on that. It will help fund the rest of your endeavours, which ideally, will turn out to be better than your prior. Which you can add another dollar or two onto that price tag again for. Again, it keeps the price cheap enough going with the dollar model, while allowing profit to be attained in some form; without having to resort to data mining your users for profit instead. Again, not saying open source programs do that last part. But many programs that are 0$ to use, generally are using you to make the $'s in the first place. A catch 22 of sorts that is not my fault, or my problem to argue with others over being a thing or not. It is a thing; like it or not.
If I were you, I would just be proud of myself for making something that 5 MILLION PEOPLE decided "yes, I like this. I want my own copy". like 5 MILLION PEOPLE is ALOT of people.
The Material Theme drama is peak "You vs. the guy she told you not to worry about." Zed: Adds theme under original Apache 2.0 license. Matia: Writes fanfic about licenses, pretends Apache didn’t exist, and calls his lawyer.
no way bro said "here's some colors I yoinked from Google, that will be $5 from now on, if you dare look upon these same colors you are destroying open source"
Some guys are deranged. In this case it's nice that we have a mountain of proof that he is bs-ing. Would be nice to have it in the real world too and would be cool if he could see and apologise. But will probably not happen.
This dude created a PR on Zed repo for his theme, under a closed source, which Zed said they can't merge if it's closed source (after all, how can users even install a theme without the theme.json?). So he created a repo for it, but the entire theme json is obfuscated behind unicode escapes lol. He included his own custom license. But the zed contributor license - which you have to sign before they will accept your pr - says the contributor gives zed permission to use and share contributions with a perpetual, worldwide, non exclusive, no change, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, sublicense, and distribute. You sign away your rights to the code you contribute the moment it's accepted. This dudes included license is literally void the moment he contributes this anyways. Edit: The PR didn't actually include the source of his theme, which was in a different repo. And I haven't bothered to check whether Zed requires/wants people to submit the source or if what he was was the actual "proper process". So I'm not sure how much the contributor license applies to the license of his repo. But either way, I still wouldn't accept his PR either since it was in bad faith.
Theo, I've liked you for a while, I respected your presentation style and skills... this ... this earns a deep and abiding respect for you as a person. "Waste my time, not actual open source devs ..." that's just beautiful dude. I watched your ads already waiting for when one ticks a box I need and I hope one comes up soon.
What do we learn from this? It is not advisable to use forms of internet communication during a mental breakdown unless one like to be sorry (to the world).
The first half of the video I was just thinking "please tell me it was apache it would be so fucking funny" and it fucking was LMAO Apache is basically the "do whatever the fuck you want with it, I'm not doing this for money or recognition but to share work I think is useful"
Even if I disagreed with the CEO of Automattic, even he has a more legitimate claim than this guy. Dextor is a straight up professional Conclusion was great, but the "fight the instinct to replicate success" part was unfathomably based
I think that's actually a bigger point than you realise. I think Mullenweg actually had an extremely fair point in retrespect to WpEngine. It's just that he went absolutely off the rails over it. There is a big difference between squaring up to the schoolyard bully and punching him in the nose. Mullenweg however, shot the schoolyard bully, killed his entire family including his pets and demanded a pound of flesh from anyone the schoolyard bully ever spoke to. Even though he was technically correct, he thoroughly abused that position and turned it into an insane power trip.
Thanks for the setup man. I was just starting tonight to pick a new theme. Picked Material Ocean. Your video was the last one I should have seen and you surprised me, man. Many thanks
I think another aspect people don't realize is socials outside of developers, when I tell my friends about how I made something, published it for free, they think I'm delusional doing charity work and wasting my time by not monetising it, those can influence people too, I'd imagine it's something similar here, or at least it rationalizes the events to some degree,
I konw the feel, I created a zoom library just for people to use as I could not find what I needed, I commented this to someone and I was told "How much money are you making out of this?"
There's no issue with monetizing your work. As long as it is actually your work. Here the guy got 92 contributors that all ultimately quit because he repeatedly rejected their PRs to publish their content under his own name. This guy is just a robber looking for a way to sell the loot after a bank heist.
It's not that he doesn't understand open source, the guy just seems like an imbalanced individual (possibly narcissistic). It's very egotistical behavior -- the "I created this, this is mine. Those people may have contributed, but it was miniscule. Those PR/issues are just user errors. My code is great." like behavior. I believe I used his theme, and noticed the change .. did he add pay-features or something? Iirc, that was when I uninstalled it. He would have been much better off just putting a donate link.
i will add to this: everyone is pro open source and just expects people to pay them for it, make enterprise features that people can justify paying for where they work.
@@flygonfiasco9751for mobile devices. We really need something for desktop that works on both Windows and MacOS. Both own's look weird on the other (Tho I guess Fluent Design ain't that bad)
Huh... and I thought a Monokai-ish theme for VS Code asking me to pay 20 dollars is the peak absurdity. (to be honest, the theme itself was really good, and maybe I'd pay for it if it was like $3... but $20, for just a palette of colours, really??)
I'm convinced the dude doesn't know how open source works let alone knows coding in general. Looking for a Typescript maintainer for a code editor theme is like ???
>"is complicated or am i missing something?" The majority of people who do that get very little to no support at all. Wikipedia, one of the most popular sites of all time, constantly asks for donations, and only 2% of its userbase actually donates. From my own personal experience, a website I ran for two years had a notification asking for donations for keeping the server up. Out of the 500k+ conversions, 0 people donated, which made me shut down the website (initially it was made for myself and family, but once I created a private alternative, it was only up for convenience, and I couldn't justify spending $10/month and maintaining it for free.)
@@the1whoplayzwikipedia deserves no money, wikimedia foundation LITERALLY gives away more money to other foundations than they spend on server costs every year.
@@the1whoplayz Yeah it seems very hard to get donation/support that way right? I see people claiming to make tons of money out of chrome extensions, but the real method is always subscription?
I was wanted to look for a new theme and saw your fork and the description and thought "I got to know the lore on this" and searched in youtube and I find the guy who forked it also uploaded a video on this.
I dunno, this is pretty inspiring if you ask me. Really gives me hope that regardless of license changes, my open source projects will remain available, and people won't be bullied into paying for it, just because some company came along and yoinked it after I'm gone.
Thanks Theo for taking your time to reporting on this! It's sad to see these scenarios, but I think it's important to shed some light on what happened. Also huge kudos for using your platform to help the open source community like that!
When he says "the extension has a cost in my life" that makes me want to engage my empathy circuits and understand what caused him to grab a spade and start digging this hole in the first place. But then I read "running out of dev friends" and I wonder how much of it is self-inflicted and he's just impossible to work with. Then I see him citing "7.8 million users" and I wonder if it's just greed and he's decided that there must be a way to squeeze cash out of that big an audience.
I remember my first opensource project. It was instant messenger using one of (then popular) networks in my country. As a base I used older, abandoned project. Then I did my stuff, rewriting it with modern versions of framework and added some of missing functionalities (it was publicly known that IM uses some parts of XMPP/Jabber protocol, just with renamed stanzas and some extensions). Yet, the company running the servers was not the one that was after me. It was literally a guy that published GPLed proof of concept. I pointed him to a licence and wished him good luck.
This idiot gave me 1 star when I made a theme plugin for JetBrains products inspired by his colors. Now I feel more motivated to update it with all variations. Also can you have TM or whatever on hex colours combinations?
3:06 Personally I would just ignore this issue. It's unlikely that he will actually sue someone - after all he is a private individual, not a billion dollar company which means that he might not want to waste his money too much. And even if he does sue you he probably will not have resources to drag on for years and years - probably he will retreat when you explain in court you based your project on old apache license version.
I have to say that the video tone is much better than the other ones with too much "hate", happy to see you cared about that. :)) And about the video content I have to say that since wordpress, winamp and now this, i don't know whats happening to people regarding licences nowadays. What's the catch here? Are we on a point that we need this mutch drama in the opensource comminity for it to grow?
seeing how git works I've always thought, "I wonder if anyone would ever try to force push to rewrite history for their own gain", then conclude nah no one's a dev that is *that* dumb. welp, here we are :D
git/github should have a meta-history which records history that gets "wiped" by force pushes, squashes, rebases, etc. And this is why. Having a nice git history is useful in a lot of cases. But also having non-erasable history is EXTREMELY useful and creates a lot of trust.
It has good contrast compared to other themes. I have been been using this theme since forever and I really don't wanna go through the hassle of finding a new one
There are a lot of weird shenanigans around open source projects, including sketchy bots that contribute random small patches to many projects just to build up reputation on a sleeper account. But weirdest is those open source devs and contributors who parasitize other open source projects, retitle them as “Pro Version” with a modified facelift, and divert users away from the core project. Also, jerks. There are an unusual number of jerks who get bent out of shape if their demands are not addressed forthwith. But as a maintainer you do what you can and try to have a sense of humor and carry on!
I'm not sure if it was him, but someone was going in a bunch of open source discord servers and was spamming his perspective. It was very annoying and he got banned from many a server
This is just completely sad, clear case of ego getting to someone and him not willing to let go of it. I also like how he is completely forgetting his project received literal contributions from many many people, this isn't entirely his own exclusive special theme by far.
The proper thing here should've been to add a gods damn link to support the creator and ask users to politely support him. It'd be a nice bit of extra cash for him alongside an actual, paying job. If what you are making is great and appreciated by end users, I have personally found that people will actively seek you out to give you money for nothing in return. It's the power of true open source. Provide value, and people will show their gratitude in whichever method they find possible. A copyright battle will drain the resources of both parties. It's just not worth it versus showing kindess and receiving kindness.
I think he saw the video lol, he just tried to get my fork taken down from the marketplace.
Don't worry, we're not going anywhere. Just had to change the logo :)
Thanks Theo! :)
He actually bit the bait 😂
Mattia Astorino aka Equinusocio is a clown of the highest order
This is hilarious. Thanks for setting up the extension
The new copyright he finagled isn't even relevant, the repo is empty now so it doesn't apply to anything…
Which tbh is the smartest thing he's done; just check the blame on the typescript files, he would be in violation of copyright if he tried to relicense them.
IP attorney here. Nice job Theo. I really have nothing to add on the legal part.
🫡
Down to collab on legal adjacent stuff in the future?
@ love to, let me know if (err… when 😆) something comes up!
W
Not an IP attorney here, but since we're commenting to say we have nothing to add, I also have nothing to add 😉
Have a great 2025!
My guy's publishing something that he doesn't want people to use
microsoft publishing something that they didn't want people to use for free
"oh no my css which i designed specifically for people to use is getting used!"
nikos
OMG NIKO ONESHOTS
I swear. It’s just a couple of colors.
"rent due" developer edition
🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
yes but replace it with "drug habit"
@@bruskorken it does kinda seem like a "crackhead thing to do" and they still have to pay rent, so maybe both?
Dracula Theme devs do the right thing by paywalling their own additional themes and designs, but not the original theme. They still help maintain the open source theme. This is just straight up bs.
I have Dracula Pro and love it. Mostly just love supporting the devs.
Hi Lewis @@CodingWithLewis
Darcula is way better
imagine fighting for a list of colors
Pantone called
at least they have physical colors though, this is fighting over hex codes
Pantone is predatory but they do actual color science, they pour money into making sure a pantone # looks exactly the same on a calibrated screen, can of paint, plastic pigment, fabric, in print. The only science this guy is doing is history revisionism :D
Well the DVD (CSS) or blu-ray master key is also „just a string“, but I totally get the point.
Pantone suuuuucks
I think the creator could handle this whole situation so much better. If he wanted to get some revenue from his creation (and there is nothing wrong with that), he should use the proper and fair way: create a paid version, add a paid feature, and keep the free as an "ad" for the project and the paid. But changing the license like that, "nuking" the project, is not an honest move.
true, but after watching the video I doubt that he could build such a feature (that is worth paying (I think just makeing ppl aware of donating would be wayyy better)), 1.6k loc in TS/JS and he is looking for an TS/JS dev to support him...
@@balduin_b4334 That too, would be a great solution. I agree with you that it would be hard to create a paid feature because of the scope of the project. The donation would be a better solution. I agree.
@@balduin_b4334 why the F you need another dev just for such trivial feature. What justify an entiere's year of salary of a dev ?
@@balduin_b4334 i mean it's a theme bundle what could be paid as extra another theme ?
I'm guessing what he wanted to do was push the free extension out to replace it with his "own" paid version. And if you read that thread on GitHub, the author of the Zed extension was going to comply with whatever changes were asked of him if not for the community standing behind him. So, yeah, he messed up, but I wouldn't assume good faith on his part - he knew what he was doing.
This guy saw WordPress and said: I want a bit of that.
Comparing this to WordPress is very disingenuous.
Wordpress is the real big project but not this one.
@@the1whoplayz in scale and other ways, yes- but there is a venn diagram here I think. hbu?
Bigger drama competitions are a law of nature
Why did he even name it Material Theme? Did he pay Google for that name himself?
Even if we assume that google has the trademark of Material or something, restrictions like that only really exist to prevent people from intentionally confusing consumers. A colour scheme for a code editor is very unlikely to cause confusion for consumers, so even if Google wanted to sue him they'd probably lose.
@@EdepolFox i'm skeptical that you'd have to be _intentionally_ confusing consumers to violate a trademark, though...
@@asuasuasu i think it’s like people getting sued for calling something classical music theme. You can’t really sue people for something so generic.
@@asuasuasu You don't need to prove intent, but to my knowledge if you can prove that you didn't intend to, it can limit the extent of damages. It's called the innocent infringer defense.
That said, I am not a lawyer so yknow. Everything I say should be taken with many grains of salt.
@@EdepolFox Consider me confused. I totally assumed "Material Theme" was related to Google.
Codextor giving a masterclass in communications
We have a generation of devs who want the “0pen source” clout but then become some sort of dictator when things don’t go their way after trying to get paid.
“Open source until popular” is what their brain thinks open source is all about 🤣
And the same ones think open source is free. But it's all about the license.
I have others projects that provide the source with a paid license.
If I'm going to use something I might earn something from, even if I can find the source code, even if it's freely distributed by the dev, if there's a paid license that affirms my rights, I go that route.
I want a receipt to prove when I was licensed.
Well... bowl of rice came knocking...
Obviously it's not so much about ideals and more about free labor in these instances
He is not a dev. He is common unsuccessful narcissistic fraud. And genuinly non-issue comparing to people diverting all donations and funding away from development.
- I spent so much time on issues and PRs
- also no one contributed
some people invent their own fake bureaucracy to justify their work, like microservices
When I was a kid, I wrote a piece of software that reached >5m downloads. I remember thinking it was pretty cool and telling people, only to be called an idiot because I released it for free. They were under the impression that >5m people would've paid, or that it would've had the same impact if it cost money. I doubt even a hundred people would've paid a fiver.
Kind of depends. What was the software? If the utility behind it is useful enough to warrant its use regardless of being attached to a pricetag or not; then they were sorta kinda right. But then again, you also are right that you may not have reached as much exposure as well due to being free.
It's moments like these where I consider the 1$ model as being appropriate middle ground. If you figure it should be free outright, but you are being told by people "This should cost money", charge a single dollar per license. It's cheap enough that generally most people will be fine with paying that amount, while being just expensive enough to avoid the "If it is free, you are the product" rhetoric that tends to be true with many 'free' software.
But a side note about that last part. I am not saying open source software is making their users the products in the same definition of 'free' as what is often used by the Free Software folk. That's a whole different ball game, where the product can still have a price tag attached, but the software must remain 'free to do as you wish with'.
Basically, there's a difference between 'free' software that costs nothing to use, but still uses you to become profitable; and the software that is free to use how you wish; but you may still sometimes have to pay for it.
And this concept, ironically, confuses the absolute heck out of a lot of people somehow. Even the Open Source community.
A lot of people think if it is open source, is should cost nothing. They are wrong. Just like you were, but also weren't; because you are both right in that you may not have gotten as much traction but also wrong that you shouldn't have put a price on it at all. If it is useful enough that people are willing to download it in the numbers of millions; put a price on that. It will help fund the rest of your endeavours, which ideally, will turn out to be better than your prior. Which you can add another dollar or two onto that price tag again for.
Again, it keeps the price cheap enough going with the dollar model, while allowing profit to be attained in some form; without having to resort to data mining your users for profit instead. Again, not saying open source programs do that last part. But many programs that are 0$ to use, generally are using you to make the $'s in the first place. A catch 22 of sorts that is not my fault, or my problem to argue with others over being a thing or not. It is a thing; like it or not.
If I were you, I would just be proud of myself for making something that 5 MILLION PEOPLE decided "yes, I like this. I want my own copy". like 5 MILLION PEOPLE is ALOT of people.
The Material Theme drama is peak "You vs. the guy she told you not to worry about."
Zed: Adds theme under original Apache 2.0 license.
Matia: Writes fanfic about licenses, pretends Apache didn’t exist, and calls his lawyer.
It’ll be a sad day if any legal action actually comes of this.
13:08 "Everything has been handled by me and friend js/ts developers (now I'm running out of dev friends)" - geez, I wonder why.
no way bro said "here's some colors I yoinked from Google, that will be $5 from now on, if you dare look upon these same colors you are destroying open source"
He thinks Open Source is 'free labor all profit'
Imagine paying money for a theme lol
Web developers ...
You can literally create one easily!! 🤣🤣😂
I don't mind but I gotta really be moved to do so
lol yea it's crazy
Imagine paying for a theme that is Apache 2 licensed.
1:00 I do not want to integrate AI into anything thanks
let's welcome that dev to The Streisand effect
Remember friends, Engineers have a long memory...and we all talk to each other.
Yeah but engineers can't talk to normies so it all cancels out
positivity is cool and all, but you should release a diss track on Ruby on Rails.
#!/no/cap
chill bro 😅
No need, we don’t even think about rails
I love that on the “Looking for TS maintainer” post he wrote “now I’m running out of dev friends”
FYI dont click that VS logo in the original github repo, it leads to a page that contains malware
People who write licenses are either: lawyers, carefree, or narcissistic. He doesn't seem like a lawyer, or carefree.
Well put
Based comment
There's also Material Theme (stop the madness) fork, or known in the VS Code marketplace as Material Theme Cleanup
Video starts at 2:22
This made me remember Matt's shenanigans against WP Engine. These people have a price for their dignity.
Some guys are deranged. In this case it's nice that we have a mountain of proof that he is bs-ing. Would be nice to have it in the real world too and would be cool if he could see and apologise. But will probably not happen.
in jetbrains , it moves from free to recurring payment
ja-netfilter my beloved
Rust rover bros.... we are getting called out...
Recurring payment for a theme is absurd.
I would never pay for a theme. I rather use only the default theme that comes with the IDE.
@@rubyrubenstahl827 you can always use j a - netfilter
This dude created a PR on Zed repo for his theme, under a closed source, which Zed said they can't merge if it's closed source (after all, how can users even install a theme without the theme.json?). So he created a repo for it, but the entire theme json is obfuscated behind unicode escapes lol.
He included his own custom license. But the zed contributor license - which you have to sign before they will accept your pr - says the contributor gives zed permission to use and share contributions with a perpetual, worldwide, non exclusive, no change, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, sublicense, and distribute.
You sign away your rights to the code you contribute the moment it's accepted. This dudes included license is literally void the moment he contributes this anyways.
Edit: The PR didn't actually include the source of his theme, which was in a different repo. And I haven't bothered to check whether Zed requires/wants people to submit the source or if what he was was the actual "proper process". So I'm not sure how much the contributor license applies to the license of his repo. But either way, I still wouldn't accept his PR either since it was in bad faith.
lmao
Theo, I've liked you for a while, I respected your presentation style and skills... this ... this earns a deep and abiding respect for you as a person. "Waste my time, not actual open source devs ..." that's just beautiful dude. I watched your ads already waiting for when one ticks a box I need and I hope one comes up soon.
What do we learn from this? It is not advisable to use forms of internet communication during a mental breakdown unless one like to be sorry (to the world).
The first half of the video I was just thinking "please tell me it was apache it would be so fucking funny" and it fucking was LMAO
Apache is basically the "do whatever the fuck you want with it, I'm not doing this for money or recognition but to share work I think is useful"
"Written from scratch in Rust" That is all I needed to see on the website to understand the type of person he is.
You should fix the README file of your fork, since the installation commands written there still point to the "original" version.
Destroying your own Credibility: A Master Class
He should change the theme's name to "Immaterial" now to be more accurate.
Immature Denial would be great too
No matter what he creates from now on, his reputation is forever tarnished now.
Lmao, he has since changed his profile to a “dark” version.. and locked all of his public accounts..
Guy seems psychotic. He's literally just lying about the copyright status
Even if I disagreed with the CEO of Automattic, even he has a more legitimate claim than this guy. Dextor is a straight up professional
Conclusion was great, but the "fight the instinct to replicate success" part was unfathomably based
I think that's actually a bigger point than you realise. I think Mullenweg actually had an extremely fair point in retrespect to WpEngine.
It's just that he went absolutely off the rails over it.
There is a big difference between squaring up to the schoolyard bully and punching him in the nose.
Mullenweg however, shot the schoolyard bully, killed his entire family including his pets and demanded a pound of flesh from anyone the schoolyard bully ever spoke to.
Even though he was technically correct, he thoroughly abused that position and turned it into an insane power trip.
@rayjaymor8754 Fair point. I know a thing or two about "not controlling your strength" if you will
I will now be using your fork for the Material Theme for VS Code exclusively. Keep on fightin', they can't get away with this!
Thanks for the setup man. I was just starting tonight to pick a new theme. Picked Material Ocean. Your video was the last one I should have seen and you surprised me, man. Many thanks
sometimes i dont like your takes and views on stuff but i stick around for things like this 12:06...thats solid af bro
Poll.
Q: What do you think happened to the author?
1. Drugs (possibly Meth)
2. Demonic possession
1
3. Burnout and/or depression like almost everybody else eventually
4. COVID Isolation Syndrome
1 & 2 & 3 ... 100
I think another aspect people don't realize is socials outside of developers, when I tell my friends about how I made something, published it for free, they think I'm delusional doing charity work and wasting my time by not monetising it, those can influence people too, I'd imagine it's something similar here, or at least it rationalizes the events to some degree,
I konw the feel, I created a zoom library just for people to use as I could not find what I needed, I commented this to someone and I was told "How much money are you making out of this?"
There's no issue with monetizing your work. As long as it is actually your work. Here the guy got 92 contributors that all ultimately quit because he repeatedly rejected their PRs to publish their content under his own name. This guy is just a robber looking for a way to sell the loot after a bank heist.
Ok, But if you asked how many of those people would pay 5$ for a set of color definitions I think hardly anyone would raise their hand.
It's not that he doesn't understand open source, the guy just seems like an imbalanced individual (possibly narcissistic). It's very egotistical behavior -- the "I created this, this is mine. Those people may have contributed, but it was miniscule. Those PR/issues are just user errors. My code is great." like behavior.
I believe I used his theme, and noticed the change .. did he add pay-features or something? Iirc, that was when I uninstalled it. He would have been much better off just putting a donate link.
Everyone is pro open source until they realize they fumbled the bag a long time ago. If it's not pattented, I'm stealing it.
i will add to this: everyone is pro open source and just expects people to pay them for it, make enterprise features that people can justify paying for where they work.
1600 lines of TS and he needs a maintainer 🤣🤣🤣
"Material UI" is so 2014-2015.
Material 3 is pretty cool imo
@@flygonfiasco9751for mobile devices. We really need something for desktop that works on both Windows and MacOS. Both own's look weird on the other (Tho I guess Fluent Design ain't that bad)
Huh... and I thought a Monokai-ish theme for VS Code asking me to pay 20 dollars is the peak absurdity.
(to be honest, the theme itself was really good, and maybe I'd pay for it if it was like $3... but $20, for just a palette of colours, really??)
Imaging paying even $1 for a theme
Maybe if it was something other than just colors
I am absolutely bewildered that someone would even attempt this.
This is so petty it feels like watching a satire sketch.
I'm convinced the dude doesn't know how open source works let alone knows coding in general. Looking for a Typescript maintainer for a code editor theme is like ???
Probably should earn himself a ban on GitHub for trying to purge commits and make up a phoney licence clause.
Yeah.. if something is illegal here its his own violation of Apache "irrevocable" clause lol
Nuking contributors is the worse part.
"hey, i made this free version. here's a donation/get pro button so i keep maintaining it" is complicated or am i missing something?
Not when you have an ego the size of the Washington Monument
>"is complicated or am i missing something?"
The majority of people who do that get very little to no support at all. Wikipedia, one of the most popular sites of all time, constantly asks for donations, and only 2% of its userbase actually donates. From my own personal experience, a website I ran for two years had a notification asking for donations for keeping the server up. Out of the 500k+ conversions, 0 people donated, which made me shut down the website (initially it was made for myself and family, but once I created a private alternative, it was only up for convenience, and I couldn't justify spending $10/month and maintaining it for free.)
@@the1whoplayzwikipedia deserves no money, wikimedia foundation LITERALLY gives away more money to other foundations than they spend on server costs every year.
@@the1whoplayz Yeah it seems very hard to get donation/support that way right? I see people claiming to make tons of money out of chrome extensions, but the real method is always subscription?
@@the1whoplayzwikimedia is not starving lmao, they have shitload of money
I was wanted to look for a new theme and saw your fork and the description and thought "I got to know the lore on this" and searched in youtube and I find the guy who forked it also uploaded a video on this.
I dunno, this is pretty inspiring if you ask me. Really gives me hope that regardless of license changes, my open source projects will remain available, and people won't be bullied into paying for it, just because some company came along and yoinked it after I'm gone.
Thanks Theo for taking your time to reporting on this!
It's sad to see these scenarios, but I think it's important to shed some light on what happened.
Also huge kudos for using your platform to help the open source community like that!
Somehow I'm not surprised that this guy's only claim to fame is picking a few nice colors.
When he says "the extension has a cost in my life" that makes me want to engage my empathy circuits and understand what caused him to grab a spade and start digging this hole in the first place. But then I read "running out of dev friends" and I wonder how much of it is self-inflicted and he's just impossible to work with. Then I see him citing "7.8 million users" and I wonder if it's just greed and he's decided that there must be a way to squeeze cash out of that big an audience.
I remember my first opensource project. It was instant messenger using one of (then popular) networks in my country. As a base I used older, abandoned project. Then I did my stuff, rewriting it with modern versions of framework and added some of missing functionalities (it was publicly known that IM uses some parts of XMPP/Jabber protocol, just with renamed stanzas and some extensions). Yet, the company running the servers was not the one that was after me. It was literally a guy that published GPLed proof of concept. I pointed him to a licence and wished him good luck.
C'mon dude. Please don't take any more of this sponsor's offerings, I know there are better fits for your channel.
I thought the same. *Him* advertising some generic AI crap screams sellout like nothing else
This idiot gave me 1 star when I made a theme plugin for JetBrains products inspired by his colors. Now I feel more motivated to update it with all variations. Also can you have TM or whatever on hex colours combinations?
Anytime I hear "Material" i just think shitty UI anyway
that part 😸
Paid color selections? What's next, paid window positions?
Some people.
3:06 Personally I would just ignore this issue. It's unlikely that he will actually sue someone - after all he is a private individual, not a billion dollar company which means that he might not want to waste his money too much. And even if he does sue you he probably will not have resources to drag on for years and years - probably he will retreat when you explain in court you based your project on old apache license version.
Rolling your own license, just below rolling your own encryption and a land war in asia.
6:05
The lion, the witch,
and audacity of that human glitch.
"I've never seen anything like this" it's straight out of a certain politician's playbook.
I don't know who you are but Now im subbed. Nice job explaining all that.
I have to say that the video tone is much better than the other ones with too much "hate", happy to see you cared about that. :))
And about the video content I have to say that since wordpress, winamp and now this, i don't know whats happening to people regarding licences nowadays. What's the catch here? Are we on a point that we need this mutch drama in the opensource comminity for it to grow?
So what i took from this video is... to never underestimate how petty theo can be.
If I had better connections I would start rent a bully service on one of the darknets.
4:12 - it will, it will set the precedent, it will give this man food for thought, a point of reference
12:32: a somewhat “unfortunate” (but perhaps also apt) new word created by the ^C on Line 8.
11:44 the last section was brutal!,
You gain a subscribe
seeing how git works I've always thought, "I wonder if anyone would ever try to force push to rewrite history for their own gain", then conclude nah no one's a dev that is *that* dumb. welp, here we are :D
Matt from wordpress has a soulmate
They're both named Matt even. 🥸
git/github should have a meta-history which records history that gets "wiped" by force pushes, squashes, rebases, etc. And this is why.
Having a nice git history is useful in a lot of cases. But also having non-erasable history is EXTREMELY useful and creates a lot of trust.
It does - check the "Activity" link on the side of the page.
who the F uses material theme in code editor? yuck
Why not... it's a relatively ok theme…
It has good contrast compared to other themes. I have been been using this theme since forever and I really don't wanna go through the hassle of finding a new one
There are a lot of weird shenanigans around open source projects, including sketchy bots that contribute random small patches to many projects just to build up reputation on a sleeper account. But weirdest is those open source devs and contributors who parasitize other open source projects, retitle them as “Pro Version” with a modified facelift, and divert users away from the core project. Also, jerks. There are an unusual number of jerks who get bent out of shape if their demands are not addressed forthwith. But as a maintainer you do what you can and try to have a sense of humor and carry on!
This is a great video, I'm glad you put it out!
I'm not sure if it was him, but someone was going in a bunch of open source discord servers and was spamming his perspective. It was very annoying and he got banned from many a server
This is just completely sad, clear case of ego getting to someone and him not willing to let go of it. I also like how he is completely forgetting his project received literal contributions from many many people, this isn't entirely his own exclusive special theme by far.
His site now states 'Material Theme - The original one'
The proper thing here should've been to add a gods damn link to support the creator and ask users to politely support him. It'd be a nice bit of extra cash for him alongside an actual, paying job.
If what you are making is great and appreciated by end users, I have personally found that people will actively seek you out to give you money for nothing in return.
It's the power of true open source. Provide value, and people will show their gratitude in whichever method they find possible.
A copyright battle will drain the resources of both parties. It's just not worth it versus showing kindess and receiving kindness.
Even Oracle didn't try to pull back what had been released with Open Solaris.
Just got back from Nosferatu and this dude did a great job as Count Orlok. (nice vid btw)
"huggingface but for real developers" 😂😻
We need more smart people, caring about others like you. Honestly.
1:32 "will take less than 5 seconds". Takes 9
1:05 have some principles man, AI bs? Can't you just promote a VPN?
this.
oh no, Theo is cancelled now?
Why ? I use fal too for my notebook covers and stuff.
Easy
Theo literally uses Cursor lol if you’re looking for anti-AI content this isn’t the channel
Thanks so much for not sueing me, great video btw.
Thanks for shedding light on this issue
Thanks. Enjoy the rest of your positivity focus!
Man every six months there is a new episode in the Mattia Astorino drama.
Insane that he’s doing that.. Installing your version right fnow!
Drama aside, don't try to write your own licences - open or closed source. They're a legal minefield and almost always won't do what you want.