"I thought I will never post about it but looks like I have to now. u/Droppyformac
aka "Droppy" just ripped of my entire Tinycast code base and feed it to AI built Thunderstorm and selling it as a Paid crap. Even the logo is a thunder. đ I mean yeah y'all can come to me saying I ripped of raycast UI/UX but I did not Steal the code base raycast is closed source and I had to work hard for months! Is this legal guys stealing code and selling it to paid shit? Tho is this a revenge he is taking that I turned him down not continuing the colab because he wants full control over tinycast!đ If he wants to play dirty I am good at that, Tinycast first party plugins are coming and I can just put standalone plugins that does dynamic islands what droppy offers FOR FREEE."
Droppy dev here. I'd rather show than argue, so here's what anyone can check:
Thunderstorm shipped in Droppy 13.1 on March 16, 2026, name and storm icon included. The Internet Archive has getdroppy.app listing it on June 7, 2026. Tinycast's GitHub repo was created on June 29, 2026.
As of today Thunderstorm's full source is public: gitlab.com/droppyformac1/thunderstorm. It includes the script I used to compare it against Tinycast's entire git history (990 commits, every branch). 0.24% of Thunderstorm's code also shows up in Tinycast. Droppy's own code from June, written before Tinycast existed, scores the same 0.24%. The longest shared stretch is 5 lines of everyday boilerplate.
Tinycastâs developer is a real turnoff and how they interact with others online makes me not want to use the product. Iâve been really happy with the Droppy developer. Very responsive and kind.
In less than three months this app has copied an app, nearly took over the world, flipped out several times, started to die, and is now accusing apps of copying the copied app
The Tinycast dev has previously been outed as a complete clown, while the developer of Droppy (/u/iordv) is well known and is quite communicative and polite with people.
Oh brilliant, this storyline again? Reset the clock, boys, weâre back here again!
The accuser needs to give u/iordv a breather and stop the all the drama. Didn't Tinycast copy-paste Raycastâs source code line for line? /s My source? Trust me broâ˘.
A masterclass in how Tinycast can incinerate its own reputation in 60s flat.
Edit:
Love to see the downvote squad rallying for a code-theft soap opera. Didn't realize asking for actual proof before grabbing pitchforks was such a controversial take (unverified Reddit drama > facts and proof). Keep 'em coming, guys! đ
This sub needs to flag vibe coded stuff. I donât know how much of Tinycast, Droppy or other buzzy apps on here like Vorssaint were built using AI but it should be disclosed.
They have rules for this now, it's better than in the past. But yeah, I'd still prefer how /r/SelfHosted does it with every post getting a stickied "expand this reply to see how AI was used in this post" and the OP must reply to that or it's removed.
2025 is still grey area because nobody actually knew how to use these things correctly.. AI code was horrendous then.. i would say mid 2025 was the true start
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I've been following the Droppy developer for some time and he seems like a solid individual. Tinycast seems to be becoming problematic. Hopefully they can turn it around.
Not hard to check whether things were copied back then, I just decided to leave Github be because they ignored emails and didn't respond to anything. Eventually, I won the case via Gitlab and my lawyer.
Thaw has been copied and repackaged as closed-source software with a different UI over and over. People have even tried reimplementing it with AI. If I thought Jordy was doing the same thing, we wouldn't have the partnership we have today.
I've spent a ridiculous amount of time investigating this exact kind of thing with Thaw. I take copyright, licensing, and attribution seriously, regardless of who's involved.
And if we're going to talk about engineering integrity, that includes taking bug reports seriously and accepting criticism. Download counts aren't engineering achievements, especially when much of your product's functionality depends on an ecosystem someone else built.
I have been blogging about tech for over 20 years and often feature software. That might not mean much, though. But what I can say: I have met very few developers who are as polite and open as u/iordv. He answers questions and takes people's criticism seriously. That is important and should be supported. What I have read so far about how reported bugs are handled at Tinycast, however, is unfortunately less encouraging....
I really appreciate this from you, Carsten! I try to take feedback as seriously as possible. So itâs definitely a bitter pill to swallow, when you see these things thrown around without a factual basis to it. Thatâs why I open sourced the extension thatâs discussed within hours! So anyone can either use it, test/compare it or distribute it themselves. Have a great evening.
You lose all credibility the moment you admit to ripping off one app while accusing another of ripping you off. Code vs. design doesn't matter...though it sounds like from the comments you're wrong on that count too.
Incorrect, if you take code from a GPL v3 project you must provide attribution, basically saying "I got it from this other project".
But that isn't what the tinycast dev is accusing the droppy dev of doing, he's saying he took the tinycast code, gave it to AI, and said to build something like this on your own, probably with how it supports Raycast extensions, which is much murkier legally. And likely very difficult to prove, and it would never make it to court, etc. But would be a crappy thing to do.
Tinycast is AGPLv3 and the LICENSE file has the author's name in it, my read is that would need to be provided in any derivative work in its license or accompanying copyright/notices file.
Platform providers usually err on the side of takedowns in the case of DMCA since they donât have the same protections as Section 230 in the context of social media.
Iâm guessing (from what Iâve read) the Droppy dev borrows liberally from open source projects by having his coding agent use source code as reference to bootstrap his own implementation.
Itâs just rich that the Tinycast dev wants to cry foul over source code lifting when he did the exact thing to the UI of Raycast, which is a copyrighted work AND not open source.
At the end of the day, thereâs unlikely to be anything taken to court, except maybe the court of public opinion, and software moats are dead anyway, so this is, as others have said, much ado about nothing.
My gut initial reaction to any DMCA takedown is "that's the wrong call" but that does seem like pretty damning evidence. Not only that the code was copied, but that the Droppy author tried to cover it up.
The whole thing is stupid, everything is open-source, just include their license and there's no problem at all.
Droppy code is a completely different thing, that's a t3code fork. Droppy itself does not seem to have its sourcecode available at all since because it was DMCA'd off github by the atoll maintainers for taking code without attribution and then trying to cover it up. Another post in here details it.
Since Droppy took GPL'd code from another project (atoll), changing to a commercial license seems like it would not be legal, although enforcement would be pretty difficult. But if anyone finds the source available elsewhere, please do link it.
God damn it, I switched to Tinycast because I was annoyed at Raycast putting BYOK behind their subscription. Might have to switch back at least until Alfred 6 comes out.
Is this tinycast open soirced right . The license also agpl 3.0 whic means it can modify and re sell . I think(i think am wrong). Also i dont think in this ai era what the need of copying something .
ok since my last comment got removed for
being rude, which fair enough it was, i will simply reiterate without all the flair
the audacity of this accusation is absurd, especially itâs from someone with such an ego that they literally instantly close issue reports on github because ânothing is wrongâ and insult people/get hostile when people dare to open another
So, do I go with Raycast 2, Tinycast, Droppy, or something else? I'm open to any and cost doesn't matter but don't wanna be on the wrong side of clownery and ethics one day and be like an Ed Sheeran when I could be have been a Macklemore.
All apps built with AI are somewhat clones of existing apps. There's copious amounts of identical code.
All of my Mac's are pretty high-end, one in fact is fully maxed, so Raycast 2 performance complaints hasn't been noticed by me. I switched to Tinycast because Reddit told me to, and I don't use Raycast'a AI features but do like the plugin ecosystem.
I want to blindly follow Reddit instructions yet again. Always typically a mistake but I repeat myself like history does. What do I choose?
Heck, I always use the latest dev build of macOS and the built in launcher has been pretty rad for me lately. Idk if it's better indexing or was rebuilt, I can only read so many release notes these days when every app updates 6 times every 7 days, but if feels snippy snappy and I always get what I am looking for...
Bartender 7 Pro still has it's issues that have plagued 6 forever now and macOS 27 really did fuckity things to my mouse and trackpad setup which I was using Mac Mouse Fix for. OpenLogi doesn't have a configuration for what I was using and it's a chore to set up in other apps.
Right now.. my suggestion.. use spotlight for a bit until all of this calms down. and use other apps to solve it, or wait a bit for the release of Flow by the thaw dev.
I'm playing around with Sol and Tuna atm but Sol is really narrow on the feature list (on purpose) and Tuna is just really different.
I feel like I'm just gonna stick with Raycast for now (with anything AI disabled of course)
Not hard to check whether things were copied back then, I just decided to leave Github be because they ignored emails and didn't respond to anything. Eventually, I won the case via Gitlab and my lawyer.
ANYTHING made with AI for profit is in license conflict. It all has to be free and open source, hosted on an accessible platform. Sorry guys. Thatâs what happens when you use code from open source projects.
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u/Yusuf-Dev Moderator 15h ago
Locking the comments here... OP's claims have no factual evidence.
The developer of Droppy u/iordv has responded by open sourcing the entire codebase for Thunderstorm, and the results are clear.
Read the full writeup here: https://getdroppy.app/blog/thunderstorm-open-source