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

Post by tptacek » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #367

tptacek wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened here was obviously a mistake. The thread is full of lurid accusations, because those are fun to write and talk about, but it shouldn't take even a minute's thought to see how dumb a heist this would have been. The thread would have been a lot more fun if we could have spent it talking about what prompted your team to build this thingy, and bounce other people's approaches to the same problem off, and ma…

> The thread is full of lurid accusations, because those are fun to write and talk about, but it shouldn't take even a minute's thought to see how dumb a heist this would have been. Another good reminder that Hacker News is not above assuming the worst and gathering pitchfork mobs like any other social media. The issue looked like a mistake from the start to anyone paying attention (committed by a bot, changes were c…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #201

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.

Post by HugoDaniel » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #358

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…

What happened here was obviously a mistake. The thread is full of lurid accusations, because those are fun to write and talk about, but it shouldn't take even a minute's thought to see how dumb a heist this would have been. The thread would have been a lot more fun if we could have spent it talking about what prompted your team to build this thingy, and bounce other people's approaches to the same problem off, and ma…

Post by 3np » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

victorvscn wrote: post #366

j4hdufd8 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really sorry you had to deal with this during the festive period. I certainly understand how scandalous this looks to crowds like Hacker News. But this seems a little bit blown out of proportion, as if Microsoft just forked the kernel or something and put their name on the license.

>I certainly understand how scandalous this looks to crowds like Hacker News. I don't. I'm with the Microsoft employee who was pissed at how people think it's edgy to diss on Microsoft. What were the chances that Microsoft was openly doing that? Some dude who has now deleted his post said Microsoft was trying to "create a monopoly of web IDEs". These are clearly people who barely have a passing knowledge of how Micro…

Post by throwaway277432 » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

verst wrote: post #362

throwaway277432 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. So these are in fact all mistakes. I looked at some of the other forked repos (95 out of 4.5K repos) and all the human commits from MS I saw seem to care about getting the licenses right. So it really is just a broken bot. I hope the bot can be fixed soon and I'm going to put my figurative pitchfork down now.

I reached out to Jeff Wilcox who runs the Open Source Programs Office now earlier (see Tweet https://twitter.com/berndverst/status/1474789173882089472?s=... ). He since commented on this post with a lot more detail.