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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]

#211
It seems people are outraged because they don't like it, but they don't seem to be talking about whether it's actually legal.

IANAL, but the MIT license specifically does not say you have to redistribute with the same copyright owner notice. It says the copyright notice and terms must remain, and that you can sublicense it. It doesn't say you can't change the copyright notice.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not, and have never been a Microsoft employee. You can search online for my name / username to find my open-source contribution history, if you would like. I hope that sufficiently answers your query.

Quoted post unavailable.

I own zero shares of anything directly or indirectly.

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

#213
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…

In my opinion, this gets a strong reaction because:

1. They made similar mistakes in the past.

2. They didn't fix it for half a year.

3. They can expect strong financial benefits from making these mistakes.

4. They've recently burned a lot of goodwill by deliberately infringing licenses on a large scale when they trained Copilot.

5. They could have easily prevented this kind of mistakes.

My summary would be that Microsoft deserves to be punished for making this mistake. If nothing bad happens now, then we'll have the same discussion again in half a year from now.

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

#214
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…

This is their process. Very hard to argue these are all mistakes: ippsample (Apache -> MIT) https://github.com/microsoft/ippsample/commit/938bff17c72868... huggingface-transformers (Apache -> MIT): https://github.com/microsoft/huggingface-transformers/commit... health-cards-tests (MIT changed) https://github.com/microsoft/health-cards-tests/commit/5649b... CUPS (Apache -> MIT) https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit…

This is a bot that is supposed to configure the right license when employees start a new repo in the Microsoft GitHub org.

It seems the automation is also triggered when Repos are forked into the Microsoft GitHub org which isn't correct behavior.

This isn't a deliberate action. If it were plenty of employees (myself included) would be outraged. I assume it's a bug in the bot - an edge case that was not considered. It is very rare to fork something into the Microsoft GitHub org after all.

I'll pass it along to some people I know.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So this sense of “wrong” is similar to “correct”. Also, I don’t see how this is true. Code on my website is publicly accessible, but not in the public domain, nor licensed for re-use, unless I say that it is.

Licensing matters for things that would be forbidden without permission by copyright law. Fair use is an exception to copyright law. Microsoft's explicit legal theory around Copilot is that ingesting code for it (and ingesting content to train ML models more generally) is fair use. If there theory is correct, license is irrelevant, there is no legal (at least copyright-based) barrier to them using any source code they can get their hands on to train Copilot.

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

#216
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…

This isn’t just one person making a silly mistake. This is a catalogue of failings. Where’s the peer review? Are you suggesting that anything published in the main branch on Microsoft’s GH org gets commit without any branch protection? And as pointed out by others, this isn’t even an isolated case.

A healthy org doesn’t blame individuals, it blames failures in process. Thus Microsoft should own this mistake. Stating it’s the fault of an individual sounds more like your team operates a blame culture. Which, frankly, is a major red flag for a failing organisation.

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

#217
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…

In my opinion, this gets a strong reaction because: 1. They made similar mistakes in the past. 2. They didn't fix it for half a year. 3. They can expect strong financial benefits from making these mistakes. 4. They've recently burned a lot of goodwill by deliberately infringing licenses on a large scale when they trained Copilot. 5. They could have easily prevented this kind of mistakes. My summary would be that Micr…

What financial benefits do they stand to gain by changing the name on an MIT license?

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

#218
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is running a bot to change copyright notices a /mistake/? > Full disclosure: I work for MS It is difficult to see the reality distortion field you are in from the inside.

I used to work for MS and... it's still easy to see it from the inside lol

I don't work at Microsoft but I can confirm. There are so many "suggestions" for Microsoft Teams. I don't know if there exists another company whose employees are more critical of Microsoft Teams than Microsoft.

My personal conspiracy theory is Teams would have died long ago if not for strong support from the top.

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

#219
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?

https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/8100595a3a3a6d5c7d0...

That's not a bot.

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

#220
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…

if I did this to microsoft do you think I’d be granted the same leeway? could I tell them they need to cut me some slack because i’m one person and “there’s a process”?
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