Zigbook Is Plagiarizing the Zigtools Playground

https://zigtools.org/blog/zigbook-plagiarizing-playground/

by todsacerdoti • 8 months ago

475 136 8 months ago

wavemode• 8 months ago

original submission dicussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45947810

darshanime• 8 months ago

since zig is famously decentralized, i don't think there is a way to effectively combat bad actors like these? there is no "official zig org" that can disown them

IncreasePosts• 8 months ago

In a decentralized but communicating community, this kind of post is raising awareness, and then the others in the community will make their own choices regarding the matter.

pa7ch2• 8 months ago

Its the opposite in my understanding. Zig has a BDFL.

Trademarks are the usual cudgel of choice to enforce a bad actor claiming to be part of offcial Zig.

testdelacc13• 8 months ago

But he isn’t. He’s just writing an AI slop book about Zig. Surely there’s nothing legally wrong with that? He never said it’s an official book or backed by the Zig project.

The trademark cudgel is used on people who release an incompatible language that they insist on calling Zig, confusing people who want to try Zig. Or people who add malware to the Zig tool chain and try to distribute that.

Trademark can’t be used to control bad actors like zigbook.

do_not_redeem• 8 months ago

I wonder what tools the Zig team has to deal with trolls like this.

Is the zig name or logo trademarked? What about the mascot he's using as his github picture?

They're violating the terms of the MIT license as mentioned in the article, so maybe Zigtools has legal standing.

As for lying about no AI, being an asshole isn't illegal, so no angle there.

Any other ideas I missed?

bragr• 8 months ago

Lying potentially opens up fraud angles if they are soliciting or receiving something of value. Maybe false advertising even they are giving it away for free. A lot of this will depend on who has jurisdiction

wyldfire• 8 months ago

Plagiarism is a moral wrong.

But copyright infringement is a legal wrong (a civil liability).

Is what they're doing infringing on a copyrighted work? Or does it fail to uphold license terms? Many open source licenses have some amount of attribution as a requirement, so that'd be something to consider.

bjt• 8 months ago

It's addressed in the post. MIT license. Zigbook is not honoring the attribution requirement. A PR to change that was closed and obfuscated.

_zagj• 8 months ago

Zigbook is not honoring the attribution requirement

It's crazy how many people treat MIT as if it were public domain.

lenkite3• 8 months ago

AI is actually beginning to encourage "restricted source", public-only-gets-binary debates to simply avoid such legal issues.

Write a snail-mail letter to get the real sources. Repositories are private with a small well-vetted list of contributors. Also avoid slop-PR headaches that away.

femiagbabiaka2• 8 months ago

If you were licensing MIT, ostensibly it’s not the copying you care about, just the attribution. There is always the option to turn off prs, or even distribute code without using github.

tliltocatl2• 8 months ago

Sorry, this sounds like the absolutely worst idea ever. The way to kill open source as such. Sloppy PRs will end when the idiot HRs release there is no value in them. Plagiarism isn't really anything new and AI doesn't really change much there. But adding friction to examining source is a sure way to make no one care to contribute.

claudiug• 8 months ago

not so much to AI companies :)

kachapopopow2• 8 months ago

I just can't get over how ridicioulus the "no ai" statement is.

I really love the part where llm.txt has the same notice, something humans will never read, or the fact that llm.txt exists considering that there is distaste for AI in every part of this llm generated book.

booleandilemma• 8 months ago

"Not generated by AI" is something that every programmer everywhere is going to say about their own work, even when it's obviously AI generated. I've started to publicly call people out when I see they've posted something on social media (LinkedIn, etc.) when I see they've made an AI-generated post. The fraud has to stop.

lillecarl3• 8 months ago

There's also the option of embracing it.

https://github.com/Lillecarl/lix/commit/9ac72bbd0c7802ca83a9...

I'm not ashamed to use AI if it improves my output, people draw the line of "acceptable use" differently just like drug addicts talk shit about each other's drugs to justify their own. I think honesty is more important than cleanliness.

nurettin• 8 months ago

I stopped using linkedin once the mediapipe epidemic started and everyone who could type pip install mediapipe could write a half baked hand and face gesture demo to show themselves as the "cool programmer".

pjmlp• 8 months ago

Kind of hard unfortunately, now when one gets evaluated how much we're improving our daily work with AI, when the annual feedback meeting comes.

The no AI devs will get a "needs improvement" report.

otabdeveloper4• 8 months ago

I just can't get over how ridicioulus the "no ai" statement is

You don't have to. I'm sure there are lots of other communities that welcome low-effort slop with no effort put into it.

omoikane• 8 months ago

The "no AI" statement reminds me of the Chinese idiom: "there are no 300 taels of silver here" (there is no money buried here). It's a clumsy way of denying something.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A4%E5%9C%B0%E7%84%A1%E...

gnarlouse3• 8 months ago

Had a conversation with the Zigbook maintainer. It’s either a young kid or somebody that has some serious growing up to do. Just generally weird behavior.

ayhanfuat• 8 months ago

Indeed: @zigbook changed the title "Fix license violations" "Im mad because you wrote code similiar to mine >:(" 3 minutes ago (https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/pull/43)

vintagedave• 8 months ago

Wow. It's also an extremely reasonable pull request, here's the only commit: https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/compare/main...SuperAugus...

gnarlouse3• 8 months ago

At one point they added a “R******D COMPLAINT” (censored for HN) ticket sticker to… idk, oppose AI-use accusations? Somebody seemingly talked them down from it though. Just bizarre. Like watching a midlife crisis through GitHub issues.

koolala2• 8 months ago

Playground wise, is Zigs wasm compiler able to compile out simd wasm in the browser? I'm trying to find the best languages that can. So far it's just assemblyscript and c/c++ and their compilers are big.

lioeters2• 8 months ago

I haven't dug deep but it seems Zig's Wasm target does support SIMD.

WebAssembly portable SIMD intrinsics

https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/src/branch/master/lib/inclu...

koolala2• 8 months ago

The issue is I think that code is based on LLVM and and I am not sure the self-hosted Zig compiler that runs well in Wasm can do it.

nmilo• 8 months ago

I remember reading the original zig book post and how weird it smelt. Even though it’s LLM written there’s more than a trivial amount of effort put into it. What could anyone possibly have to gain by doing this?

vanous• 8 months ago

@Zigtools:

Thank you for your educative post, letting the community know.

Don't let it to drag you down in any way. This is emotionally draining and takes away motivation, but keep going.

lillecarl3• 8 months ago

https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/pull/45#issuecomment-3592... Would this be grounds to report zigbook to GitHub maybe? This is wild

SSLy3• 8 months ago

zigbook edited a 3rd party comment to say "I’m autistic and sperging out over stuff on the internet that doesn’t actually matter. Don’t mind me."

Just your run off the mill AI grifter.

EDIT: https://lobste.rs/s/pbn3zy/zigbook_learn_zig_programming_lan...

"Quick research - author's actual profile is https://github.com/zk-evm, and he's a potential scammer from crypto spaces, who also happens to be running fake GitHub Organisation of the Cursor editor, along with related BuyMeACoffee claiming it being official page of the "Cursor AI Editor"."

KomoD4• 8 months ago

Quick research - author's actual profile is https://github.com/zk-evm

The account is called zig-vm now.

And here's his real github account: https://github.com/gweidart

RestartKernel• 8 months ago

That's mostly just odd. Either a young teen way in over their head or a weirdly non-functional adult.

Crestwave• 8 months ago

Oh wow. Your original comment is pretty darn prophetic.

slacktivism123• 8 months ago

Would this be grounds to report zigbook to GitHub maybe?

100%.

https://docs.github.com/en/communities/maintaining-your-safe...

nusl4• 8 months ago

Grifter or not, editing user comments to make it look like they're saying something they're not isn't okay.

Edit: It appears that the repo is gone? User removed it or GitHub?

lillecarl3• 8 months ago

I reported it to Github, supplied links to the edits and to this HN thread. The canned response was:

"Our review of the account(s) and/or content named in your report has concluded. We have determined that one or more violations of GitHub’s Terms of Service have occurred and have taken appropriate action in response."

It took 2h40m, genuinely impressed how quick the turnaround was :)

p1nkpineapple• 8 months ago

your other PR made me laugh: https://github.com/zigbook/zigbook/pull/46 absolutely wild that they had the gall to report you, lol

SSLy3• 8 months ago

Fear not I've mirrored it https://web.archive.org/web/20251130091635/https%3A%2F%2Fgit...

ffsm82• 8 months ago

Sadly the important information, what was actually edited, isn't part of that mirror. (It's async fetched by the ui when clicking on the edit information on GitHub)

keyle• 8 months ago

The whole thing looks very childish, I'm not sure I even fully understand the conversation of #43. Are they troll accounts?

blks• 8 months ago

And now it’s made private.

nusl4• 8 months ago

Repo seems to be gone? User action or GitHub action?

Regardless, for visibility as to maybe-why this happened, here are screenshots of the user editing comments to insult/make them say something they never did;

https://imgur.com/a/LsvBXY1

https://web.archive.org/web/20251130091635/https://github.co...

The tool itself claims "Zero AI" (https://www.zigbook.net/) yet is very obviously A-Lot-AI.

mcintyre1994• 8 months ago

I find GitHub to be very prompt and responsive to abuse reports, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was them if people reported the comments etc.

Meneth• 8 months ago

The only public repo remaining under their github account is this VSCode-Copilot integration tool (https://github.com/zigbook/pilot).

Zambyte3• 8 months ago

It seems their whole account is gone now.

NoteyComplexity3• 8 months ago

The responds and edits are simply unprofessional and immature. I don't hate AI and in fact I use it for many research based tasks, helping me narrowing a lot of tough topics, but it is the People with these kind of attitude turns me off.

nusl4• 8 months ago

AI use is fine, though pretending you haven't used it when you obviously did rubs me the wrong way.

I get why GitHub allows editing comments of other users though for public repos I guess it allows for this kind of abuse

cardanome• 8 months ago

I don't mid the immature part, they are hate fueled. The ableism is disgusting.

andrewflnr2• 8 months ago

I think the open abuse of people raising issues with the project is morally worse than the license issues or even lying about AI usage. Fraud is already bad, but someone can do that for reasons other than pure mean-spiritedness. To pull this nonsense, you have to actively take pleasure in making other people feel bad.

arccy2• 8 months ago

probably user reports to GitHub's moderation team

jonathrg• 8 months ago

It's unbelievable to me that Github allows repo admins to edit other people's comments.

NeckBeardPrince• 8 months ago

What would be a valid reason to allow this? That just seems mind-numbingly stupid.

the84724• 8 months ago

That's a useful feature for long-running issues to include updates in the opening post. Or to improve formatting when a bug reporter isn't familiar with markdown. And that it shows in the edit history should at least discourage abuse.

xrd• 8 months ago

Did you make up A-Lot-AI? Can I suggest "A-Lott-a-AI"?

If you did, this is the greatest thing created in 3 ABC ("After Bullshit ChatGPTification"; ChatGPT launched in 2022.).

NB: Since ChatGPT is basically the new Messiah for many, I really think we should now be using dates like 3 ABC or 5 POS. POS stands for "Prior to Overlord Slop/Shit". I suggest we give up AD/BC.

But, please, I'm not the messiah! (hopefully you have watched Life of Brian!)

nusl4• 8 months ago

Follow-up: seems they've been banned

networked• 8 months ago

I notice again I haven't internalized how much https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpec... really happens.

kklisura• 8 months ago

There should be something of an OFAC Sanction List for SWE for people who blatantly transgress moral and ethical lines.

kyleee• 8 months ago

Ahh good idea; like the Brady list for bad police officers in US. Just have to figure out how to ensure it has teeth and doesn’t become a witch hunt

kshri24• 8 months ago

Gets worse: https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/6395

andrewflnr2• 8 months ago

Already gone. https://web.archive.org/web/20251130101438/https://github.co...

Havoc• 8 months ago

I could see LLMs copying code as innocent mistake, but identical sha256sum on wasm files...jikes

dangoodmanUT• 8 months ago

Wtf is happening in the zig world this week

znpy• 8 months ago

The only stupid thing here is that the zigtools playground is mit licensed, so all zigbook had to do was acknowledging original copyright.

b800h• 8 months ago

Whenever I hear anything about Zig it seems to be drama. Very bizarre, will avoid.

jamiejquinn• 8 months ago

Ditto... I love Zig as a language but I worry the high-level community builders (including Andrew) are a little too antagonistic to foster a positive, tolerant, patient community in the long term. In saying that, my infrequent interactions in the reddit and discord are always pleasant.

Zambyte3• 8 months ago

Actual Zig community spaces like Ziggit is very pleasant as far as programming language forums go. I think Zig just occupies a unique space in the language ecosystem (a very performance oriented, production oriented language that is not afraid to rapidly try things and throw them out if it doesn't meet expectations in practice - not many languages sit in the middle of this venn diagram) and people see it as an opportunity to gain a social foothold in something potentially great.

It seems like it might be in the nature of a language with these goals and this development process to attract people like this, no matter how warm and welcoming the community leaders are.

yoyohello13• 8 months ago

I don’t think Andrew is a bad guy, but his tone seems to attract a certain kind of person. All the technical people I’ve interacted with in the Zig community have been awesome, but for whatever reason it also attracts a lot of people who are just there to shit on anything mainstream.

myko• 8 months ago

This is the first drama I've heard related to Zig, and seems to have nothing to do with the project itself–this is someone writing an online book about Zig

baranul• 8 months ago

Zig has previously been involved in all kinds of drama. Including involving money, battles among developers, attempts to split/fork the language, and self-pushed conflicts with other programming languages. This is just the latest, in the long series.

pityJuke• 8 months ago

This isn’t anything to do with Zig though, it just happens to be the language that this crook chose.

They’ve could’ve picked Nim and done this whole spiel there (you’d want to pick a fledgling language that isn’t saturated with documentation, so the stalwarts aren’t usable).

jhgb• 8 months ago

Funny, because it's the exact opposite for me. You sure it's not just your news source preferences?

defen• 8 months ago

There's nothing inherently Zig about this - it's some random person who is not affiliated with the project in any way. They could have done the exact same BS copyright-infringing AI slop project in any language.

PaulRobinson• 8 months ago

Disappointing.

When zigbook first appeared here, I took a cursory scan, and it looked pretty solid and a useful resource. Seems it duped me and got me good. I was even defending the use of AI a little - although the claim needed to go.

Seems they just were just trying to do over a nascent community that I'm interested in seeing growing and wasn't a member of yet.

Good riddance, then.

gnarlouse3• 8 months ago

I’m doing AoC on Zig this year. Zigtools will be my reference. Cheers!

conartist6• 8 months ago

Our rules are so easy to follow but I'm not sad that the the consequences for breaking them are serious, in terms of your social reputation at least

robertwpearce• 8 months ago

I decided to start learning Zig this past week, and typing in "zig book" to a search engine led me to that project. After a handful of pages, I had no clue what was going on and couldn't follow it (that said, I am new).

I quickly found https://ziglang.org/learn/, and the guide is great. For ziglings, make sure you're on the latest dev build (as it says in the README)! (Edit: or get the tagged release for the version you have!)

poetril• 8 months ago

I went down the same path last week, and found Zigbook to be a very poor resource for learning. +1 for ziglings, that's been my favorite so far

flykespice2• 8 months ago

This is just a vibe coder who tried spin his business onto a growing language. They don't care about their product (code) quality as long as it sells.

Zigbook Is Plagiarizing the Zigtools Playground

Related Stories