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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]

#541

Post by severino »

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…

> It's code that I wrote to try to prevent other problems [...]

Don't worry, man, nobody expects people from Microsoft to write code that behaves as intended. Merry Christmas.

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

#543

Post by _zzaw »

jdsully wrote: post #518
novok wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a key reason that corps do try to avoid admitting fault, is because in a lawsuit that can be used as evidence for a guilty verdict in a civil lawsuit in some of the most slam dunk ways. If we remove this feature of common law legal systems, I think you will get far more admissions of fault like this one. If you hurt people, organizations, etc for admitting their mistakes, they're going to stop doing it.

The key take away is that apologizing and admitting fault doesn't absolve one of liability. There are a number of "amnesty" laws on the books where admitting fault can server to limit or reduce your sentence - especially with tax issues. I'm not sure how desirable such a thing would be in civil law among private parties. Especially in cases where a tort is minor to one party but a big deal to the other because of dis…

I don’t think accidentally removing credits from a software license is exactly on the level of burning someone’s house down.

In general, I wouldn’t say that causing someone harm should be dismissible with an apology, but in a situation where the harm seems pretty limited, easily reversible, and unintentional—and the apology seems genuine and even informative—I don’t see a particular benefit to causing hardship to someone who made a mistake. The communal reaction as it is should give Microsoft/Google/etc an idea of what the blowback would be if this sort of thing was a deliberate corporate practice.

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

#544

Post by windexh8er »

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…

It doesn't matter how "dumb a heist this would have been". This is Microsoft and their track record with respect to illicit and/or illegitimate behavior needs to be continually scrutinized. They put themselves in this position. They have made plenty of intentionally dishonest "mistakes" over the years.

Track records matter and Microsoft doesn't have a clean one. Scrutiny of companies of their size should be the norm. Maybe they would do more to improve "mistakes" if more people held them accountable in a continuous fashion.

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

#545

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #426
bayindirh wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to see what Microsoft plausibly stood to gain by modifying an MIT license. Actually, not being able to find a plausible gain in five minutes doesn't automatically clear Microsoft (or any company) in my mind. From top of my head, I can list three technologies which I find suspicious in the long run: LSP, WSL, SecureBoot. All in all, I just don't trust Microsoft , and think about the worst of their actions…

If you don't have anything well-considered to say about an event on HN, the best thing to do is not to say anything at all. Believe it or not, your personal distrust of a giant company isn't all that interesting to the rest of HN.

[deleted]

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

#546

Post by bmitc »

DistractionRect wrote: post #474
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…

Perhaps I'm the one misinterpreting your comment, and the others have it right. I'm assuming you mean open as in communication. Apple basically is a stone wall, facebook just spouts empty platitudes, google processes are opaque and unyielding (unless you know a someone or raise a massive community response on social media), but Microsoft continues to be staffed by humans. They aren't a shining pillar of FOSS, but the…

You didn't misinterpret and nailed it spot on. I didn't say anything specifically about open source. While that is a significant part and I personally think Microsoft is doing well, I find that Microsoft are the only ones even mildly open about their communication, documentation, and processes and actually seem to respond to negative feedback, at least more than zero like the other companies. Apple is opaque by design, Google is opaque in a sort of emergent way, and Facebook is opaque in a deceptive way, all three on purpose and working as intended. Microsoft is not perfect by any means, but people get riled up at them all the time for the simplest things and often the exact same things that Apple does, for example.

In the particular case of this post, I just can't imagine an Apple employee posting the exact link (on Christmas!) to a bug that they were responsible for to an issue that was posted on a forum. If someone would have simply made an issue on the GitHub repo instead of posting on Hacker News, it probably would have been fixed without fanfare.

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

#547

Post by bmitc »

dang wrote: post #524
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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29685852 .

Why was that done? I specifically responded to a comment.

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

#548

Post by HugoDaniel »

dang wrote: post #525
HugoDaniel wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly in your HN comments. People are supposed to get the benefit of the doubt here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No post body was provided.

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

#549

Post by 3np »

tomnipotent wrote: post #402
3np wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you're aware of other not-that-ancient incidents like these? https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180715225433/https://threadrea... It took significant public outrage and press coverage before either of those were even acknowledged, a long time after. > What were the chances that Microsoft was openly doing that? After reading the above, is it really that edgy to be assu…

> After reading the above, is it really that edgy to be assuming the worst? Yes. Neither of this are particularly damning. > doesn't that speak to a systemic and/or cultural issue No, not particularly. I think it says more about the person jumping to such conclusions considering the evidence.

To late to edit or delete my comment above but just to set it straight I just learned that the whole lerna debacle linked above was a nothing-burger aka fake news.

https://github.com/microsoft/rushstack/issues/673#issuecomme...

Sorry for using it without fact-checking it properly, I guess.

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

#550

Post by unbanned »

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!

No post body was provided.
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