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Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

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Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#171

Post by dragonwriter »

_0ffh wrote: post #117
37ef_ced3 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can "donate" someone else's code, knowing Microsoft will violate a use-with-attribution license. You can do it, but it's WRONG. Copilot is trained on public GitHub repositories of any license: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot#Technology We must all stop using GitHub.

I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects.

> I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects.

If Microsoft's theory is correct, under US law it is impossible to forbid this with a license, because a license is just an offer of additional permissions beyond what is available automatically under law, and Microsoft's theory is that ingesting code into GitHub is fair use and therefore permitted under law as an exception to copyright without any license from the copyright owner.

If Microsoft's theory is not correct, pretty much any license with an attribution requirement (among others, for other reasons) would work.

The idea that a special license is needed or of any use doesn't seem to have any justification, even in theory. (As is the idea that hosting publicly but not on GitHub changes the legal parameters.)

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#172

Post by colejohnson66 »

toxik wrote: post #160
colejohnson66 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because “Microsoft Bad”. When a company gets big enough, there will always be a portion of the population you can never please, and Microsoft reached that size a long time ago.

Microsoft has a long and dark history. I think you’re brushing aside the real contention. People who were around before MS decided to open-source-wash their brand KNOW what Microsoft’s DNA is. They had a literal playbook to crush Linux.

From twenty year ago. You say it’s in their DNA, but I’ll bet that the majority of people there now were not there 20 years ago. Old habits die hard, yes, but they do die.

Microsoft has committed to open source. Maybe it’s self fulfilling reasons, but that doesn’t mean we should brush it off. If some higher up decided to go open source for PR reasons, who cares? We should be embracing it. Shunning it will just make other companies think twice about open sourcing.

Also, this was done by a bot. Microsoft is big enough to have their own in-house council, and I can’t imagine them being stupid enough to risk everything over a copyright lawsuit with evidence like this that the whole world can see.

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#173

Post by dragonwriter »

leephillips wrote: post #149
emilengler wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Because this does not prevent having the code to land on GitHub at the of the day assuming it is published under a free license. Now it depends on how you interpret the "MUST". My logic only makes sense if you consider it to a dogmatic-like prevention.

The statement you tagged as “wrong” was: > The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. Why is this wrong?

It is wrong as a specific statement about GitHub, because regardless of current practice, the legal theory for Copilot applies to any code anywhere, so anything that is publicly accessible would involve the same risk. It's not dependent on use of GitHub even if Microsoft has initially started their because it's easier for them.

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#174

Post by dragonwriter »

jen20 wrote: post #85
rustc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. How would self hosting your code prevent Microsoft/GitHub from using it in the Copilot training dataset? If using content from GitHub irrespective of their license to train Copilot is legal, so is training from code available on your website.

Because it isn’t in compliance with the terms of many popular licenses to create derivative works without attribution. Therefore the only possible claim Microsoft have to do so is via terms and conditions, which would not apply to code hosted on a stand-alone website. It might be time for popular licenses to update themselves for this new-found threat.

> Therefore the only possible claim Microsoft have to do so is via terms and conditions

No, Microsoft's claim is fair use, not GitHub terms and conditions. You don't have to speculate on what you think their possible claims are, when they've publicly stated their actual claims.

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#175

Post by Strom »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #168
Strom wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not intentional? To me it seems very clear that someone designed this bot to specifically alter the LICENSE file so that it matches some sort of predefind Microsoft file. Edit: To give a bit more nuance, I would guess that the actual bot changing the LICENSE files is not a mistake, but working as intended. What could, however, be a mistake is thinking that licenses can be legally overwritten. It wouldn't be…

Because a bot like this could never used on internal libraries that are about to be open sourced?

I'm sure it could be used, however that would probably be a similar problem. Microsoft has internal libraries with all sorts of licenses. Replacing the actual licenses with a template wouldn't be the correct move there either.

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#176

Post by soheil »

gortok wrote: post #114
zenexer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. You don’t own the code just because you forked it. The original copyright holders retain ownership, and you must abide by their license. You can’t swap out the license unless they explicitly allow you to do so.

That’s not true. You can change the license if the license allows you to. It’s copyright you can’t change unless the author assigns the copyright to you.

This comment highlights the ignorance of a lot of people in this thread jumping to conclusion and view MS instantly as an aggressor and themselves as victims of the obvious and horrible crime of copyright infringement.

A) Do you know it was not an honest mistake?

B) Why a complete understanding of esoteric legal copyright laws created by non-programmers all of a sudden so important to a mainly programmer HN audience?

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#177

Post by doubled112 »

misnome wrote: post #163
Tepix wrote: post #154

I don't think that just because some "bot" did this Microsoft is to be excused. Someone decided that using a piece of software to automatically alter license files. This is a genuinely stupid idea. And they already fucked up in the same way with the CUPS project. Will they learn without someone taking them to court over this? I don't think so.

I think people should be as forgiving as Microsoft would be if someone “accidentally” changed the licence of Microsoft software and started distributing it.

My copy of Daz's Windows Loader accidentally activated my Windows pre-upgrade.

It was just accidentally run in a script. No worries right?

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#178

Post by osolo »

The attitude in these threads always boggles my mind. When YOU, your teammates or someone else you know makes a mistake, then it’s just a mistake. But when someone at Microsoft makes a mistake it’s because Microsoft is evil and by extension so is the person who offended.

“It’s a big company”, you say. They should have a process! And I’m sad to say, they do/will have a process exactly because of this attitude. Then, everyone wonders why it takes forever to fix that bug they’re furious about or why features are slow to come.

Full disclosure: I work for MS, though have nothing to do with this. It’s a huge company. I know hundreds of people and most of them are upstanding and try to do the right thing.

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#179

Post by ghoward »

dragonwriter wrote: post #171
_0ffh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects.

> I wonder what kind of language you would need to add to your license in order to explicitly forbid the ingestion of your code by Copilot and/or like projects. If Microsoft's theory is correct, under US law it is impossible to forbid this with a license, because a license is just an offer of additional permissions beyond what is available automatically under law, and Microsoft's theory is that ingesting code into Gi…

You are correct.

I just want to say that I believe the fair use argument only applies for training, but not for distribution. I make the case for that in [1].

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/copilot.pdf

Re: Microsoft forked MIT licensed repo and changed the copyright [fixed]

#180

Post by junon »

osolo wrote: post #178

The attitude in these threads always boggles my mind. When YOU, your teammates or someone else you know makes a mistake, then it’s just a mistake. But when someone at Microsoft makes a mistake it’s because Microsoft is evil and by extension so is the person who offended. “It’s a big company”, you say. They should have a process! And I’m sad to say, they do/will have a process exactly because of this attitude. Then, e…

The difference is, most engineers I know respect and understand licenses. If you work at Microsoft - a software company - you should too.
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