Getting forked by Microsoft
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Getting forked by Microsoft
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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#2Hey, this sucks. Unfortunately the MIT license doesn't do much to prevent this and (I think?) their licensing transgression is they haven't kept "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" in the LICENSE file. I suspect if you call them out on it that'll be the remediation.
Did you manage to reach out to any of the people at MSFT you originally spoke to to ask wtf?
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#3> As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers.
Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they can re-implement it themselves while also breaking the licenses that the authors use. Not sure how people fell so hard for "Microsoft Here is the previous time I can remember that they did something similar:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 - The Day AppGet Died (keivan.io) 1930 points | May 27, 2020 | 550 comments
The best advice for open source maintainers who are being approached by large tech companies is to be very wary, and let them contribute/engage like everyone else if they're interested, instead of setting up private meetings and eventually get "forked-but-not-really" without attribution.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#4Hey, this sucks. Unfortunately the MIT license doesn't do much to prevent this and (I think?) their licensing transgression is they haven't kept "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" in the LICENSE file. I suspect if you call them out on it that'll be the remediation. Did you manage to reach out to any of the people at MSFT you originally spoke to to ask wtf?
> Unfortunately the MIT license doesn't do much to prevent this
Seems both you and Microsoft needs to actually read through the MIT license, it isn't that long or complicated :)
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
That part is even in it's own paragraph and everything, really hard to miss for anyone who even glances at the license.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#5Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence and certainly not one that doesn't provide copyleft. This is all very well established at this point and yet somehow the GPL seems to have gone out of vogue.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#6> As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers. Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they…
If a megacorp wants your help to explain ANYTHING to them, you better be paid handsomely per hour. Wtf are people doing charity for trillion dollar empires.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#7Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence and certainly not one that doesn't provide copyleft. This is all very well established at this point and yet somehow the GPL seems to have gone out of vogue.
> Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence
Does it matter what license you use if they actively ignore the terms in the license you did chose? MIT requires attribution, but they didn't. Why would any other terms be different? You surely could have put "You must license your project the same as the one you forked from" and they still would have ignored it, not sure what the difference would have been.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#8> As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers. Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they…
If a megacorp wants your help to explain ANYTHING to them, you better be paid handsomely per hour. Wtf are people doing charity for trillion dollar empires.
Not just a megacorp. Anyone for a commercial purpose
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#9> As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers. Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they…
I agree, after this happened to me I learned of a few other situations where the same thing happened to other friends.
On my end if was a mix of naivete and flattery which made me want to take the meeting. I suspect it is the same case for others. I will not make the same mistake the next time it happens.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#10Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence and certainly not one that doesn't provide copyleft. This is all very well established at this point and yet somehow the GPL seems to have gone out of vogue.
> Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence Does it matter what license you use if they actively ignore the terms in the license you did chose? MIT requires attribution, but they didn't. Why would any other terms be different? You surely could have put "You must license your project the same as the one you forked from" and they still would have ignored it, not sure what the difference would have been…
MIT doesn't need attribution. Original BSD does, but revised and most widespread BSDs do not.
GPL/AGPL would prevented this somehow, requiring proper attribution via mandatory source code release, and allowing to track project origins. This would make it harder to label it as a "a Microsoft Product from Ground Up", and prevent Sherlocking the original application to a greater degree.
As a result, this would probably forced Microsoft to develop a new one from scratch, because they're allergic to GPL, because if they have breached GPL, they would be forced to comply, since GPL is court tested already.
So, write Free Software. Not Open Source. Esp. for your personal projects.