Ask HN: Why are people buying GitHub repositories?
> I came across acheong08/ChatGPT on GitHub (27,954) and noticed it's archived and no longer receiving updates. Really well-built project. I run a small team that acquires codebases like this — we maintain them, keep attribution, and compensate the original creators fairly. Would you be open to a quick conversation about what a handoff might look like? No pressure — just exploring.
The contents make no sense.
1. It is not a well-built project. It's spaghetti code I wrote when I was 16.
2. There is no way for them to maintain the codebase. It requires so much work in terms of getting past Cloudflare, paying to solve Arkose's captchas, and whatever that it'll literally be cheaper to just pay for normal API pricing
3. There's no profit to be made there
I struggle to see what they get out of it. A supply chain attack? But nobody uses the library anymore. For the GitHub stars? There are easier ways to buy stars.
Email came from a company that looks semi-legit: https://joinhandshake.com/ so at least not a Chinese state actor or whatever?
Old memory: Back in ~2022, a Chinese company did reach out offering to pay $20k for me to proxy traffic to their back-end for data collection. Didn't take the offer,