My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]

YC should put integrity and ethics of founders as a key variable for funding.

Unfortunately, that would probably get in the way of making money.

> integrity and ethics

How do you evaluate that?

The easiest way to check for integrity and ethics is if the startups YC finances routinely run afoul of YC's ethics code or the law.

If YC has no ethics code, that's your answer right there. If they do but it fails to mention basic things like lying, cheating, deceiving especially when done intentionally, bingo again. If breaking the law isn't an automatic termination of the collaboration, it takes you to the same conclusion. If YC explicitly supports the startups when knowing about these problems, or implicitly by skirting due diligence and turning a blind eye, or accepts startups having no commitment to an ethics code, then ethics or integrity are not core values, or even are completely absent.

There are more nuanced topics and methods but if it doesn't pass the smell test with the basic ones, it won't pass it with any.

I follow a bunch of YC founders on X. Lots of behavior that could be construed as 'growth hacking - or 'deceptive' depending on your bent: promoting open source libraries that don't work, rewriting tweets from smaller accounts, coordinated replies from mutuals and so on.

I guess that's the game, but they do seem a lot more cavalier about it of late. Increasingly resembles the crypto 'community' (derogatory).

I am sure they do.

I am not sure that they weigh it in the direction you are thinking of, though.

GGP was clearly in the context of “how would YC evaluate this pre-funding?” rather than “how would outsiders evaluate YC?” but 15 seconds of search turned up: https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics

That would mean YC needs to reinvent itself first. That's not happening.

> 15 seconds of search turned up

...some latent passive aggressiveness and YC's founder ethics code not YC's own ethics code. You need an anchor for the chain of trust. That must be the VC's (YC in this case) integrity and ethics code first.

You stopped reading after the first few words, misunderstood even those, and rushed to answer didn't you?

I addressed exactly how to evaluate ethics and integrity prefunding, and ensure it post with 2 very simple concepts that would have worked perfectly at least for this easy to catch incident:

1) Do your due diligence. In this case "15 seconds of search" would have turned up the original code and the license mismatch.

2) Have clauses to ensure breaches of law or ethics have severe consequences to the founders.

The founders indisputably breached YC's founder ethics code, in particular "Being honest in the YC application and interview process" and "Generally operating in good faith and behaving in a professional and upstanding way". Or maybe the founders were honest and YC accepted this but then we circle back YC's own ethics code.

YC had means to check for this prefunding, and has means to deal with the problem now. If there's no transparency that any of this happened, it didn't happen. So the point of "checking integrity and ethics" becomes moot.

I don’t believe I misunderstood these words of yours, and provided you a ready reference to check for yourself whether YC had a code of ethics and whether that code contained the elements you were hand-wringing about.

> If YC has no ethics code, that's your answer right there. If they do but it fails to mention basic things like lying, cheating, deceiving especially when done intentionally, bingo again.

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> YC had means to check for this prefunding

How would YC check in December 2024 for a copyright violation that was discovered in July 2025 and probably happened in 2025 during the batch (after funding)?

This is indeed a problem that Pickle/YC have to deal with, but I'm not nearly convinced that this was findable in 15 seconds pre-funding.

YC's funded over 4000 companies. How many have had ethics scandals of any size? Less than 5%? Less than 2%? They're betting on founders, probably rejecting some on ethics grounds, and trying to nudge those funded to stay ethical while being aggressively fast. If they're hitting over 95% "no scandals", that's pretty good from a 2 page application and 15 minute interview process.

sokoloff, I already told you twice that I am referring to YC's (or any VC's) own code of ethics, for themselves. Not just the one for founders. The rules YC applies to themselves are the root of trust for everything that later comes out of the startups they finance.

This issue could have been caught earlier and solved if YC checked for this earlier. And maybe it could even have been prevented if YC imposed harsher penalties for breaking the ethics code or the law. But instead it was caught and made public by someone else, and it's that public pressure that caused any reaction from the founders.

> that's pretty good from a 2 page application and 15 minute interview process.

You're damning YC with praise. 15min to assess potential for profit but also ethics and integrity doesn't make it look like they'll put much focus on the latter. Always good to have confirmation.

It's your choice to take the strawman argument and fight that instead because it's more accessible to you. It's your choice to pretend you don't get the meaning of words (like what YC's own code of ethics could mean, of the "if" that preceded every one of those sentences you keep quoting) and drag the conversation down just to save face. It's your choice to keep finding weak defense arguments for VCs who are sacrificing integrity for money in a 15min interview.

Now I see the disconnect on the code of ethics. In my view, pg, dang, tomhow, rtm, Jessica, Garry, et al are members of the YC community within the meaning of the code and I think they think they are members of the community and bound by that code, making that YC’s code for all community members and therefore YC overall. You seem to conclude otherwise.

Setting that difference of interpretation aside, It’s difficult to figure out how and when exactly you think YC could have surfaced the problem with the repo that was published in the last 24 hours months ago when they made the funding decision.

Could you help me understand the notional timeline of actions that you think would have avoided this?

There's no integrity and ethics in AI, and the money's at AI.