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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]

#331

Post by uda »

radicalbyte wrote: post #119
stillicidious wrote: post #38

Someone has pushed a button and it's run the equivalent of cookiecutter on the repo. Original author could send a DMCA, or they could simply enjoy Christmas and assume a ticket will undo this sometime in January.

This, the reason why we have the DMCA is to protect copyright holders, now the copyright holders should exercise their right.

What? no, this goes entirely against the idea of laws.

Copyright laws have one major purpose: protect the right holders. It does so by giving them tools to mitigate their loses by deterring people from infringing.

If a right holder has to invest more time in complaining on people about infringement than actually having time to do other stuff, like creating, then we've got it all wrong.

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

#332

Post by beervirus »

voakbasda wrote: post #209
beervirus wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y’all are not entitled to the benefit of the doubt any more than obviously-evil companies like Facebook are.

For those of us that remember the “old” Microsoft, they are still obviously evil. Nothing they have done will change that view. Incidents like this prove that this zebra cannot change its stripes. Never. Trust. Microsoft.

I mean yeah. But for a few years there, they were at least not as obviously horrible as they used to be, or as some other companies were.

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

#333

Post by gautamcgoel »

jeffwilcox wrote: post #321

I lead the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office team. I'm sorry this happened. We have merged a pull request that restored the correct LICENSE file and copyright, and are in touch with the upstream author Leśny Rumcajs who emailed us this morning. We'll look to revert the entire commit that our bot made, too, since it updated the README with a boilerplate getting started guide. The bug was caused by a bot that was d…

A lot of commenters are sharpening their pitchforks, but this comment, in my opinion, makes it very likely that it was an honest mistake. Amazing what taking personal responsibility and earnestly apologizing can do to restore trust and credibility!

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

#334

Post by dangrossman »

michaelmrose wrote: post #319
dado3212 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when $new_repo in $msft_github: echo $standard_license > LICENSE.md Could just be normal practices, and doesn’t check if a license already exists because it’s usually handling non-forked OSS repos. What’s the phrase? “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”.

Quoted post unavailable.

They forgot that a bot may overwrite the license when they fork a repo. That's different from forgetting to check if a license exists.

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

#335

Post by tptacek »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #333
jeffwilcox wrote: post #321

I lead the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office team. I'm sorry this happened. We have merged a pull request that restored the correct LICENSE file and copyright, and are in touch with the upstream author Leśny Rumcajs who emailed us this morning. We'll look to revert the entire commit that our bot made, too, since it updated the README with a boilerplate getting started guide. The bug was caused by a bot that was d…

A lot of commenters are sharpening their pitchforks, but this comment, in my opinion, makes it very likely that it was an honest mistake. Amazing what taking personal responsibility and earnestly apologizing can do to restore trust and credibility!

It was obviously a mistake. Still nice to have someone involved give the backstory.

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

#336

Post by IgorPartola »

nexuist wrote: post #284
doubled112 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My copy of Daz's Windows Loader accidentally activated my Windows pre-upgrade. It was just accidentally run in a script. No worries right?

I don't know what point you're trying to prove here, since I don't think I've ever heard of Microsoft suing individuals for illegal Windows keys and certainly not in the past 10 years. If you start an LLC and attempt to commercialize on piracy then you'll probably get sued, but regardless they are a lot more lax than, say, Oracle on this issue.

FWIW it does look like a bug in a bit and not company policy to me. But having said that the equivalent situation would be some larger than Microsoft copying their work. For example the US Federal government distributing Windows under the MIT license.

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

#338

Post by dangrossman »

kyruzic wrote: post #279
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Nobody manually changed a license. The commits were made by a bot named "microsoftopensource" that exclusively adds copies of Microsoft's license file, support file, readme file and code of conduct to every new repository under their account.

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

#339

Post by ModernMech »

jeffwilcox wrote: post #321

I lead the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office team. I'm sorry this happened. We have merged a pull request that restored the correct LICENSE file and copyright, and are in touch with the upstream author Leśny Rumcajs who emailed us this morning. We'll look to revert the entire commit that our bot made, too, since it updated the README with a boilerplate getting started guide. The bug was caused by a bot that was d…

Thank you for being transparent about this and dealing with it appropriately, even on Christmas. I think that goes a long way.

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

#340

Post by 3np »

jeffwilcox wrote: post #321

I lead the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office team. I'm sorry this happened. We have merged a pull request that restored the correct LICENSE file and copyright, and are in touch with the upstream author Leśny Rumcajs who emailed us this morning. We'll look to revert the entire commit that our bot made, too, since it updated the README with a boilerplate getting started guide. The bug was caused by a bot that was d…

Really appreciate the prompt and transparent response, Jeff. Especially at a time when I assume you were not expecting to jump in on duty.

I hope that despite all the harsh words, you can have sympathy with that behind them are legitimate concerns and suspicion stemming from past bad behavior from various part of your organization. Due to this, and Microsoft's position of power, you have a much, much lower budget for these kinds of mistakes compared to the most other orgs.

Even if there was nothing intentionally malicious at play here, it would not be far-fetched for an outsider to interpret as "implicit maliciousness through neglect".

Here's hoping that 2022 will be a year of bridging the divide and sincere alignment.

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