Hey Nico, you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark

mmunj 250 points 102 comments June 25, 2026
twitter.com · View on Hacker News

https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095

Discussion Highlights (19 comments)

NickNaraghi

Gonna have to see the agent trace on that one.

kleiba2

Missing context.

xyzsparetimexyz

Don't care. Competition is good for consumers.

lenerdenator

Unless you don't copy the license terms, it's impossible to "steal" open-source code. That's... sort of the point.

jobs_throwaway

You didn't code it, you stole it from open source OS and compiler maintainers

irdc

I'd suggest replacing that link with https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095

olluk

Close your source if you don't want it to be read by LLM

qwertytyyuu

Stealing it for your use case would take more effort vibe coding. The term is fine as is

wolttam

Folks... read the actual tweet. They literally didn't vibe code it - they copy-pasted another project.

bix6

Ah another YC popcorn fest

feverzsj

LLM generated code could have very similar pattern to existing code with stricter license it trained on. So, it's better to keep them to yourself instead of bothering the public.

Aurornis

Since the Tweet is small enough and a lot of people aren’t reading it (Twitter links don’t work well for those without an account some times) I’ll quote it here > Hey Nico, > It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code. > We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately. > It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud. > It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.

aboardRat4

It is not possible to steal something which doesn't obey conservation laws. Don't try to scam physics, is always wins.

blourvim

License in question: https://github.com/papermark/papermark?tab=License-1-ov-file It is AGPL, basically means: You have to share the source code even when the user interacts over the network with the software. The project which uses that code, must also be AGPL, There are ways to separate it and go around it, for example, using an AGPL auth server shouldn't affect the code where your business logic lives I am sure they could have found a way to design their product to be compliant, especially following past drama. This is assuming the code is indeed copied, since we don't know that for sure, it does look very similar but I am not sure how that is enforced

Chris2048

What's with this response in the Twitter thread??: "This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public" -- https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/207012600834729596... Is this just trolling?!

dwaltrip

What a scumbag. The replies from Nico are insane: “Team effort” “:praying-hands (x2)” And so on… The audacity and complete shamelessness… I wonder what narrative they tell themselves.

lorey

Their response: > The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...] The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right. https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951

Vaslo

The X link has screenshots where the two products have lots of identical pages. Is that IPable? Honestly don't know since I seem to use a lot of products that look like other products (LibreOffice, etc). But the pages for obscure things looking identical is kind of sus.

fantasizr

tech will do anything to normalize theft and call it innovation

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