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

Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 1001 posts

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#11

Post by phillebaba »

glenngillen wrote: post #2

Hey, 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?

Any copies of the code should include the notice according to the MIT license. I do agree that I could have used a less permissive license, and it is something that I am now considering to change.

The reality is that licenses do not mean anything unless you are actually able to enforce it. So I really do not think the license would have mattered in this case.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#12

Post by keepamovin »

Forked up the wazoo.

That said, Microsoft provides extremely generous Startup Assistance (to the tune of > 150K of Azure credits). Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with MS but I did their program, also did the Gcloud and AWS programs back in the day. No negative comparisons, but off the top of my head the Azure program is awesome. I really enjoyed working with Azure, and it does what it says on the tin.

You can apply here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups/

Or here: https://foundershub.startups.microsoft.com/signup

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#13

Post by dtech »

diggan wrote: post #4
glenngillen wrote: post #2

Hey, 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 li…

So if both versions use the same MIT license, the only difference is the line parent highlighted...

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#14

Post by liveafterlove »

diggan wrote: post #7
benwilber0 wrote: post #5

Don'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…

Is this really true? Whats the point of even licensing our repo then?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#15

Post by gortok »

diggan wrote: post #4
glenngillen wrote: post #2

Hey, 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 li…

Define “substantial”?

What percentage of copying is “substantial”?

That’s the problem with concisely written licenses, the legal world thrives on definitions and terms of art, and when you leave something open to interpretation you invite the probability that a nefarious (or even sufficiently amoral actor like a large corporation) actor will point to the language you use and interpret it differently.

To win any argument in a court of law you must now spend time and money to win the argument. Something an open source maintainer likely doesn’t have, and since the license doesn’t specify damages, there’s no way to even write in a penalty for failure to adhere such that a court of law would consider it under contract law, and then you have to prove damages.

At least in Virginia, each party pays their own lawyers fees, even if they win. You can only collect lawyers fees when statutes allow you to, or there has been sufficient bad faith from the other side that the court uses its own power to sanction.

Oh, and let’s say you win and somehow you are able to prove damages. Now you have to spend money to collect on the judgment. That’s money you’re not getting back.

The point here is that we’ve written software licenses as contracts that assume good faith and do not punish bad actors, when we would need to treat corporations as if they are bad actors and write licenses accordingly.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#17

Post by hresvelgr »

While Microsoft is certainly in the wrong for removing the copyright notice, I think the author has zero basis for complaint otherwise. If you're going to release software with one of the most permissable licenses, you need to accept that for all it entails. Consider what you're comfortable with and pick an appropriate license relative to your values.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#18

Post by john_the_writer »

diggan wrote: post #4
glenngillen wrote: post #2

Hey, 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 li…

What they likely mean is that MS says "Good luck enforcing this. Have you met our legal team?" Nothing they can't walk around, or drown you in legal fees while they smile.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#19

Post by koiueo »

> I default to using the MIT license as it is simple and permissive

What's good about being "permissive"?

I keep hearing this argument, but I still don't understand, what's the incentive for authors of one-man projects to choose anything "permissive".

Do you enjoy your project getting forked, walled off and exploited for profit by someone who has never done you any good?

AGPLv3 still allows forking, still allows making profit (if your business model is sane). But it is at least backed by some prominent figures and organizations, and there are precedents where companies were forced to comply.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#20

Post by Zambyte »

bayindirh wrote: post #10
diggan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Source: the MIT license.

https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/

Post reply on HN