Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 626 posts

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

#441

Post by bayindirh »

Barrin92 wrote: post #428
bmitc wrote: post #391

What's surprising to me about all the negative reactions Microsoft receives, especially on here, is that from my point of view, they are currently the most open out of all the big companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc). I cannot remember a time Apple has admitted to anything or made any effort to have anything that could be considered open, but they do no wrong in most people's eyes, where even a simple mistake by…

what surprises me the most about Microsoft related hate is that, despite the fact that they had (still have pretty much) control over the OS market they never locked their system down or charged people in any capacity. People take it for granted that you can just run what you want on your windows machine but they could have turned it into smartphone style locked down system. Imagine if every app developer in history…

No post body was provided.

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

#442

Post by tptacek »

3np wrote: post #419
tptacek wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would be far-fetched. The conspiracy theory here is self-evidently implausible. We need to stop pretending that the accusations here were made in good faith, or are anything more than wishcasting. People write about these things because it's a lot more fun for them than to write about what actually might have happened, even if what actually happened is probably a better, more lastingly valuable conversation t…

So, I'm of the opinion that a collective (for example a company) can exhibit malicious behavior despite no malicious intention of any particular individual in it. It can be emergent, and moreso the larger the organization. Along similar lines of systemic discrimination, there does not need to exist any conscious conspiracy or malintent. For better or worse, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This comment…

If there was a plausible evil plan behind this licensing silliness, I'd shut up about it. But there isn't. The insinuations being made on this thread (still! continously!) are embarrassing. It's not that I think Microsoft is incapable of putting together a solid heist; it's that observers here have such bad taste in heists.

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

#443

Post by jeffwilcox »

dapids wrote: post #401
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…

Do you mind addressing the reason why an employee did exactly what you are claiming the bot did in error? https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/8100595a3a3a6d5c7d0... Again, this is a person, not a robot. How does this play into a "software bug"?

Honestly, I'm not sure what happened here.

My guess is that they were going through a checklist of what to do when releasing open source changes, and didn't understand what they were doing.

A lot of why we've had to put some guardrails in our system has been to point people to guidance and training on open source.

I've sent the team that works on this repository an e-mail, but I don't expect to get a response on the holiday.

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

#444

Post by tptacek »

fxtentacle wrote: post #430
tptacek wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was talking not only about this specific instance of it happening, but Microsoft had similar mistakes throughout the past 6 months. Here's the one from CUPS, a Linux printing library: https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/ad69bcc78bdea3fea3f... It used to be Apache License, then it became "MIT License (c) Microsoft Corporation". Thanks to the attention that this thread got, it has now been fixed: https://github.…

I asked what Microsoft had to gain from altering an MIT license. You're answering a different question. But, fine, I'll bite: tell me how Microsoft stood to make a nickel by modifying an Apache license.

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

#445

Post by jeffwilcox »

obert wrote: post #369
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…

Thanks for clarifying. This also highlights the lack of sufficient testing, and subpar processes, eg automation should be tested against critical paths, and changing a license should require human approval.

Agree. The lack of tests has been the biggest regret of mine for this project. It started as a hackathon project a long time ago, and as it grew up, it never got the testing investment it deserved. I imagine the code coverage is about 0.001% and there's no end-to-end tests in place.

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

#446

Post by 3np »

tptacek wrote: post #442
3np wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'm of the opinion that a collective (for example a company) can exhibit malicious behavior despite no malicious intention of any particular individual in it. It can be emergent, and moreso the larger the organization. Along similar lines of systemic discrimination, there does not need to exist any conscious conspiracy or malintent. For better or worse, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This comment…

If there was a plausible evil plan behind this licensing silliness, I'd shut up about it. But there isn't. The insinuations being made on this thread (still! continously!) are embarrassing. It's not that I think Microsoft is incapable of putting together a solid heist; it's that observers here have such bad taste in heists.

Agree with you there. I see it as manifestations of fear, tribalism, and short-sighted oversimplification around complex issues. Without wanting to dive deeper into any of those topics, I believe there are similar mechanism at play on a larger scale in COVID-conspiracy theories and the re-emergence of Western xenophobia/nationalism.

It can be hard to assume good faith when your counterpart clearly isn't. But I think it can be at least as important then. We need to come together and find common ground.

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

#447

Post by bloqs »

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…

I have enormous respect for your response here.

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

#448

Post by jeffwilcox »

brobinson wrote: post #440
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…

FYI: when linking to a line of code, simply press Y on your keyboard to have Github switch from the _branchname/path/to/file.xyz_ URL to the _sha1/path/to/file.xyz_ URL. The former can result in your URL pointing to unrelated code if lines are added or removed in future commits on the referenced branch. https://github.com/microsoft/opensource-management-portal/bl...

TIL. Thanks!

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

#449

Post by wnevets »

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…

I figured something like this was the cause. I must say I'm quite disappointed by all of the negative comments before anyone from MS had a chance to explain what happened.

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

#450

Post by phillipcarter »

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…

Hugs Jeff, keep up the good work and hopefully the rest of your holidays are a lot more cheerful
Post reply on HN