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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]

#611

Post by dang »

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #150
CyberShadow wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It works for everyone except you. The Content-Type is right there, in the header. I don't know what to tell you. It's not there. https://dump.cy.md/9b2a31fa5184397159fe42a85c197242/16404476... It is there if I check with cURL, though. Edit: looks like this bug is triggered by the absence of Accept-Encoding in the request. When the server compresses the response, it neglects to include the Content-Type of the compre…

Quoted post unavailable.

You broke the site guidelines repeatedly and extremely badly in this thread. We ban accounts that do that.

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do anything like this on HN again.

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

#612

Post by dang »

hatware wrote: post #610
dang wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks don't rise to the noble level of moral obligation. The comment plainly broke the site rules. That's not allowed here. If people have noble duties to fulfill, they can do that without breaking the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks That is how you took the comment. I took the comment to be a refreshing dose of reality. Perspective matters a lot.

Ok, but anyone could say that about any comment, so from a moderation perspective that is either an empty point or means that we shouldn't moderate anything at all.

For practical purposes, someone has to make judgment calls about these things. The way we do that is that we have a set of guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and moderators who make calls about which accounts are breaking them. We try to be as even-handed as possible when we do that, but certainly no one is going to agree with every call we make. Nevertheless, someone has to do the job, and that includes banning accounts when people break the rules and aren't interested in modifying their behavior.

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

#613

Post by dang »

bakul wrote: post #607
dang wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but garden-variety internet comments and cheap personal attacks don't rise to the noble level of moral obligation. The comment plainly broke the site rules. That's not allowed here. If people have noble duties to fulfill, they can do that without breaking the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I too don't think there is any "moral obligation" involved but I did feel it was perfectly fine to point out what I did. I quoted their "I work for MS" to provide the context for my comment, nothing more.

Sorry, but that's definitely not accurate. You quoted it as part of a personal attack: implying that someone was lying about making a mistake, imputing sinister motivations to them instead, and adding a name-calling putdown into the mix (accusing them of being inside a "reality distortion field", as if you know more about their world than they do). All that is clearly against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I'm sure you didn't intend it that way, but we have to go by effects, not intent (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intent doesn't communicate itself, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

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

#614

Post by chris_wot »

tptacek wrote: post #609
chris_wot wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the flaw? Perhaps you should actually say what it is.

Again, as was pointed out to you upthread, the license terms on that project already allow them to do the thing you claim Microsoft was hoping to do by altering the license. It's a MIT license! It's practically the least you can do beyond writing "these files are placed in the public domain". I'm sorry to beat up on you. It's not your fault, but someone upthread wrote that Microsoft's developers should have known bet…

Ah. I see, that’s fair. You aren’t beating up on me, it’s better for me to find out about an error than not at all. Thank you for explaining the problem.

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

#615

Post by kbenson »

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…

> Another good reminder that Hacker News is not above assuming the worst and gathering pitchfork mobs like any other social media.

I would go so far as to say almost no group is, they just have different preconceptions that encourage assumptions of malice in different ways and directions.

There is no substitute for more facts about the situation, no matter how much we'd like to assume the details that aren't given.

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

#616

Post by xyproto »

wongarsu wrote: post #90
xyproto wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attribution is nice, but for it to be a requirement, it needs to either be specified in the license or be plain old copyright.

The license clearly states > Permission is hereby granted [...] subject to the following conditions: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Changing the name in the copyright is a clear license violation.

Yes, I agree.

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

#617

Post by xigoi »

ghoward wrote: post #396
xigoi wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “Yzena Copyleft License” states that it's a copyleft license, but it also states that it's not a viral license. According to Wikipedia, a viral license and a copyleft license are the same thing.

Wikipedia is not the best source of information. There is a difference between "strong" copyleft and "weak" copyleft. An example of "weak" (non-viral) copyleft is the CDDL. In fact, the CDDL's Wikipedia page talks about strong and weak copyleft. You can read [1] for a breakdown of copyleft by an actual lawyer. Suffice it to say that Wikipedia's Copyleft page is woefully inadequate. [1]: https://writing.kemitchell.com…

If the Wikipedia article is misleading, it probably shouldn't be linked in the license…

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

#618

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

esrauch wrote: post #266
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just curious, is Microsoft actually in violation of the MIT license here? All future changes to this repo are copyright Microsoft, so Microsoft's copyright should be in the statement. Arguably there should be an additional statement indicating that LesnyRumcajs holds copyright to bits of code that Microsoft hasn't changed. But (1) exactly which bits have LesnyRumcajs's copyright would have to be verified by exami…

What you're saying doesn't make any sense. If what you're saying was true you could take any MIT repro, fork it and replace the license with a fully proprietary copyright claim or any other license. You absolutely can't take code and just change the license to anything more permissive without the original copyright holders permission. It's definitely the case that at a given snapshot of the repository which has copyr…

The license wasn't changed. But yes, generally you can make changes to MIT code that aren't released under the MIT license.

> It's definitely the case that at a given snapshot of the repository which has copyrighted code owned by someone else the copyright notice has to be there at that same revision.

This isn't in the license. Where is this laid out?

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

#619

Post by esrauch »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #618
esrauch wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense. If what you're saying was true you could take any MIT repro, fork it and replace the license with a fully proprietary copyright claim or any other license. You absolutely can't take code and just change the license to anything more permissive without the original copyright holders permission. It's definitely the case that at a given snapshot of the repository which has copyr…

The license wasn't changed. But yes, generally you can make changes to MIT code that aren't released under the MIT license. > It's definitely the case that at a given snapshot of the repository which has copyrighted code owned by someone else the copyright notice has to be there at that same revision. This isn't in the license. Where is this laid out?

MIT license is very permissive but the original author retains copyright and one of the very few restrictions is that you must maintain the original authors copyright notice. So you can use MIT code in a GPL project but you can't remove the original copyright notice and MIT license text.

I don't quite follow your thinking about removing the notice but having it somewhere in history; a given snapshot/ revision will be a distribution where someone can show up and download just the master branch newest state and not the full git history. In which case you surely have distributed a copy of the copyrighted MIT licensed code without complying with the terms of the license, right?

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

#620

Post by ghoward »

xigoi wrote: post #617
ghoward wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is not the best source of information. There is a difference between "strong" copyleft and "weak" copyleft. An example of "weak" (non-viral) copyleft is the CDDL. In fact, the CDDL's Wikipedia page talks about strong and weak copyleft. You can read [1] for a breakdown of copyleft by an actual lawyer. Suffice it to say that Wikipedia's Copyleft page is woefully inadequate. [1]: https://writing.kemitchell.com…

If the Wikipedia article is misleading, it probably shouldn't be linked in the license…

I link to Wikipedia as a first point of call. People should always look deeper, and I can't help that.
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