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

Post by Dylan16807 » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #282

tptacek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MIT license puts essentially no restrictions on them that they would need to relicense out from under. They can't un-MIT it. So I'm still not clear on how you propose for them to make money by doing this. Do you have an answer to my question?

If they can change the copyright ownership from an individual to themselves, then they could (however unlikely) change the license on subsequent revisions to no longer provide the software free of charge, and could prevent anyone from using the software and associated documentation files in an unrestricted form.

Post by Dylan16807 » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

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.

Post by jdsully » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

_zzaw wrote: post #543

jdsully wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

Post by lionkor » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 2:06 AM 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 prvc » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

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!