A quick note on OmniWM, open source, and why giving credit matters · BarutSRB OmniWM · Discussion #497

3 min read Original article ↗

​I don't consider it stolen, because I was one of them at one time when I was making GhosttyFetch. I simply instructed AI at that time to analyze fastfetch and see if it uses AppleScript or how it fetches that info, and then I guided it to write an app in Zig to display sys info while I focused on the animation system. I didn't notice until later that it basically ripped off fastfetch, but rewrote it literally in Zig.
​As for examples, I have many, but due to the nature of programming, it's very rare that you can compare code byte for byte as proof. But I notice, for example, a person forks a repo and then deletes it while submitting a PR to another WM with the new feature I released for OmniWM. There is absolutely no way for the creator of that WM to know, as he would just review the code and not go into other repos to see their commits, and this happens a few times.
​Sometimes a commit by someone else that is not the owner gets merged and gets the exact same bugs as OmniWM. I know because during that time I noticed the bugs and fixed them, and then I see exact issues opened up about the bugs I literally fixed, while at the same time noticing a commit with a feature I just introduced to OmniWM being merged a few days or hours later.

But where I was 100% certain is at times I purposely gave AI an open "vibe code" prompt to refactor or completely rewrite something while I secretly worked locally on true main and then I saw PRs some merged some denied with exactly the vibe coded stuff. For example was the zig rewrite push it was very bad, obvious to someone who would look at it yet some PRd stuff from it, and when I pushed pure swift code and reverted it back you can tell that it was intentional as at that time at least no AI can within 24h revert and push a full swift rewrite of the zig parts, but this is that reverse engineering side of me, where you are used to fake leads, so I just utilized it differently to see of my suspicions were right. None the less, I truly think if all creators of all macos WMs got together we can achieve sonething truly stunning while still respecting each other's philosophy as we can have different type of releases for example minimal for people that just want a pure wm, stable for people that want a DE Linux experience and an experimental one for people that like that Gentoo/Void or early Arch Linux vibe of bleeding edge high risk yet the rush of what's possible on being on bleeding edge.