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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]

#231

Post by jrmg »

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…

But when someone at Microsoft makes a mistake…

For many it’s not just Microsoft. Many assume negative intent from others most of the time. It much be such a frustrating, draining way to live.

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

#232

Post by dpweb »

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…

You have to take "companies doing good" always with a grain of salt. They're profit seeking companies, who act aggressively in their own interests.

It doesn't have to be a debate on "good vs evil" I've always hated those terms applied in these contexts, it's childish and for the naive. Fix the problem and move on.

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

#233

Post by tptacek »

fxtentacle wrote: post #225
tptacek wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In some cases, they changed other licenses to MIT. That would then allow them to train their AI models on this source code, or redistribute a closed-source monetized GPL rip-off. Team A) makes a mistake and changes the license. Team B) uses the fork under its new license and forgets to check the original branch's license. Two honest mistakes leading to a de-GPL-ed library.

Here, they're changed the name on an MIT license. What financial benefit do they stand to accrue from doing so? That's the question I'm asking.

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

#234

Post by chris_wot »

verst wrote: post #214
throwaway277432 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you considered that the reason for the outrage is because people don't actually trust Microsoft to do the right thing? I can see this is a mistake, but surely the litany of awful business practices by Microsoft in the past precedes it?

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

#235

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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…

If you had a history of behaving as badly as Microsoft, I'd be as harsh on you as I am on Microsoft.

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

#236

Post by [deleted] »

Tyriar wrote: post #203
throwaway277432 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

MS dev here. Thanks for calling this out. I contacted the GH@MS admins to look into this and to consider adding some safeguards to the tooling so this doesn't happen in the future.

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by joshmanders »

erinnh wrote: post #136
phendrenad2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things get philosophical rather quickly I'm afraid. If I misconfigure an FTP server, and you download some MIT code that I stripped the copyrights from, does that count as redistribution?

I would say that it isnt, because you had no intent to redistribute it. But you cant make that argument here, as its a public repo, as such Microsoft did have the intent to redistribute.

But wouldn't this case fall under the same?

Your argument is that a misconfigured FTP server isn't intent to distribute.

What if this was a misconfigured fork that was meant to be private but was set public? Not intent to distribute either.

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

#238

Post by verst »

chris_wot wrote: post #234
verst wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you considered that the reason for the outrage is because people don't actually trust Microsoft to do the right thing? I can see this is a mistake, but surely the litany of awful business practices by Microsoft in the past precedes it?

I didn't say anything about the outrage of others. I said a deliberate license change would be unacceptable to employees.

I'm no official representative of Microsoft...

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

#239

Post by 3np »

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…

Along similar lines as my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684127

...Given that several engineers employed at Microsoft have been part of armchairing this along everyone else now, why is not one of y'all (not necessarily you but come on, this is getting absurd, holidays aside) still just busy discussing around it rather than spending the <5 minutes required per repo to start actually fixing the fallout of it?

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

#240

Post by phendrenad2 »

throwaway277432 wrote: post #186
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…

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…

Wrong. The more links, the easier it is to argue that it's a mistake. Automation is hard, you know? Especially if no one noticed these and called them out on it until now.
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