Protecting the Continue community

Continue is the leading open-source AI code assistant, already having tens of thousands of users, nearly 200 contributors, and a vibrant, growing community. We envision an ecosystem of products that build with and around Continue, and that is part of why we released our project under an Apache 2.0 license. This license, built on the work of thousands of people over decades, makes it easy to do open source the right way.

So we were disappointed to learn that the founders of PearAI apparently chose to do things the wrong way, removing our required license and misrepresenting the work of our contributors as PearAI’s own. We believe that PearAI violated both the letter of the Apache 2.0 license and the spirit of the open-source community standards that are the foundation of the ecosystem Continue is striving to build.

We appreciate that Duke Pan and Nang Ang, the founders of PearAI, have acknowledged their mishandling of the situation and taken some basic steps to fix the problems they created. But from Continue’s point of view, PearAI’s attempt to downplay the seriousness of their conduct is not only offensive but a direct threat to the open-source community.

We think that the commit history for PearAI’s code, viewed in light of PearAI’s public statements and repeated attempts to misrepresent Continue, show that PearAI’s conduct was not an innocent mistake—it seems to us that the copying, attribution stripping, and license changing PearAI engaged in were deliberate actions, not inadvertent errors.

PearAI rushing to correct license terms after public outcry does not fix the problems caused by what Continue views as PearAI’s violations of intellectual property rights and breach of ethical standards. We think it is telling that PearAI has not offered an apology to the Continue community specifically.

Our view is that PearAI should start over from scratch:

1. Make a true fork of the Continue repository rather than a copy
2. Retain the Apache 2.0 license at all times
3. Re-apply whatever changes they wish to make to Continue’s code in compliance with the license, making sure to correct any code attribution problems caused by PearAI’s initial conduct

Continue believes that anything less risks permanently tainting PearAI’s project and continuing to harm our community.

We call on all developers, contributors, and everyone that benefits from open source to stand with the principles that make it possible: transparency, collaboration, and respect for the work of others.