[wheels]

> It's about making yourself look like a total asshat by copying someone else's writing verbatim and passing it off as your own.

There's a famous line by Igor Stravinsky. "Good composers borrow. Great composers steal."

If you're working on something, and you see someone else that's got part of it righ, by all means copy them!

I don't mean plagiarize them, but emulate what they're doing and figure out the parts that you're good at. If you read through what this co-op is about there's some interesting stuff there. They're trying to get people in Seattle for a year, are offering more funding and trying to build integration between the companies they're investing in. This is a good thing. Ask them to reword their questions if you must, but cheer these people on! Comparing this the Indian proposal from a little while back is just silly.

[mwerty]

>"Good composers borrow. Great composers steal."

Interestingly, he probably stole that quote from T.S Eliot: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal"

[wright]

It was Picasso and artists.

[wright]

> I don't mean plagiarize them, but emulate what they're doing and figure out the parts that you're good at.

They DID plagiarize. Nobody's objecting to other seed investors, just the plagiarizing.

What they SHOULD have done is asked YC for permission to use their application, then said "we are using YC's application with their agreement in order to make things easier for applicants".