Lately, he claims to be."Open Source"Cursor"AI Programming ToolsPearAIannounced that it has received $500,000 (about Rs. 3.5 million) in financing from YCombinator.
PearAI founder Duke Pan admits that the product is actually a clone of another AI editor, Continue. While Continue itself is based on the Apache Open Source License, PearAI is attempting to build on that foundation by releasing it under a self-created closed source license called the "Pear Enterprise License," which it even says is generated through ChatGPT.
This is based on the code editor of VSCode and Continue, whose founders, Pan Avocats, did “supplicate” other open-source projects, but claimed that the product was more productive than C0pilot and more open-source than Cursor. Pan also mentioned that 49% of PearAI ' s code came from open source communities and indicated that the project had more than 100 contributors, including the VSCode and Continue projects。
These statements have been questioned by netizens. The debate was not about whether to recognize “learning” behaviour, but whether the more than 100 contributors were really independent of the VSCode and Continue projects, which were fork. The view was expressed that PearAI appeared to be using the halo of the projects to enhance its value。
In the face of skepticism, Pan emphasized that he never considered contributors to the upstream project as contributors to PearAI. To prove that there were real contributors to the project, he also published a list of developers involved in the development of PearAI. After some debate, some of the skeptics found Pan's explanation reasonable, but also suggested that he should be more careful in his expression in the future to avoid misunderstanding.
The case of PearAI also exposes some problems in tech startups. Under the pressure of pursuing rapid development and financing, some entrepreneurs may overstate the uniqueness and contribution of their projects.
Both of PearAI's founders are influential Chinese-American YouTube bloggers with extensive technical backgrounds and large followings.Pan has worked at Meta and Tesla, while the other founder, Ang, has a master's degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Reference: https://x.com/CodeFryingPan/status/1840464744626675719