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Microsoft rips off Plurk

blog.plurk.com

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Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#41

Post by eob »

amix wrote: post #5

Being the co-founder and lead dev of Plurk I can tell you this sucks :-( But we are looking at our legal options, thought legal war with Microsoft and especially legal war at Microsoft in China would require a lot of resources. I think this will become a major concern for all startups that are doing lots of client-side stuff. If people have determination they can copy your code (even if all your code is obfuscated, w…

Amix,

I feel for you, man. This is really awful to wake up and see.

China has totally different laws though -- do you know if this kind of copying is legal there? I have a number of friends who have told me that the whole web startup scene in Beijing is totally different than the US because the rules of the market are completely different over there (rampant copying, theft, DDOS attacks among competitors, etc). One example of this I've heard is that game developers have to give away their games for free and then rely on in-game purchases to make money, because there's no chance of actually selling software upfront.

What are your thoughts?

Best of luck fighting this -- hopefully this will just be a funny war story in a few months time.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#42

Post by clemesha »

eob wrote: post #40
jf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just started working for Microsoft so that I can be a voice inside the company for startups. I'm forwarding this thread to my legal contact.

Was that really the prime motivator in joining MS? How do you mean "be a voice for startups"? Cool. People usually cite this reasoning for joining the government -- an organization whose mandate is toward the greater good of its people, but I've never heard it applied toward a corporate entity, whose mandate is solely profit. Would you mind posting a bit more about your motivations and thinking? I would really like t…

Here's some more info: http://jf.posterous.com/after-5-years-of-using-linux-and-mac...

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#43

Post by potatolicious »

mikeryan wrote: post #14
archon810 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the Chinese team was facing strict deadlines and in the act of desperation they ripped off the code and layout from Plurk. It's outrageous and MS needs to straight up get sued for this. Plurk has a very small team of less than 10 guys and in my eyes this is nothing less than MS bullying. This is not right.

I don't know if I can lay all the blame on Microsoft for this. The dev's knew what they were doing but I doubt the rip-off percolated very high up. As a SW manager I'm not sure how I'd know that this was ripped off wholesale if I wasn't very familiar with the ripped off site. Don't get me wrong, this is bad. But expose it to MS and let them clean house. I don't doubt that they will.

> if I wasn't very familiar with the ripped off site.

Considering the ripped off site is a chief competitor of this software, I suspect the rip-off was aware at least by mid-level managers.

Well, either they were aware of the rip-off, or they were wildly incompetent to the point where they didn't even know their chief competitor's site.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#44

Post by vinutheraj »

jf wrote: post #31
socratees wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds horrible. Microsoft shouldn't be blamed for this entirely though. Why wouldn't the team that created this think through before? From what I know, people inside Microsoft make sure they don't get in to any legal trouble before they make use of any code or idea that's already available. Anyways, this episode is a blatant disrespect for IP. Copying the code is something awful. I believe this case deserves th…

Legal compliance is VERY important at Microsoft, so much so that we aren't supposed to even read Open Source source code.

Well, at the other extreme the gnu people also try not to look into other code, even if it is open-source !

http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-help/2008-08/msg00009.html

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#45

Post by potatolicious »

axod wrote: post #9
phreanix wrote: post #2

Incredible, I guess in their culture this is ok (or has become so commonplace as to be ok), but shouldn't Microsoft have some sort of measures against it in their own workplaces?

By "their culture' do you mean China, or Microsoft? I really don't think for example Google China would do this.

As a Chinese guy, I have to say that the above comment is generally correct - there is fundamentally a different awareness of the concept of IP in Asia.

More frankly, this concept doesn't really exist.

It's not that the culture is more tolerant of ripping others off, but rather that when it comes to creative works, it's not seen as ripping off. Being able to take, adapt, and re-release the work of others, even for-profit, is a matter of course for the majority of the population. Many are not even aware of the moral issues surrounding it, and as far as they are concerned, none exists.

In all likelihood this wasn't so much a team under pressure and stealing out of desperation - in all likelihood someone just did it without very much thought... and it flew under the radar of those who know better.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#46

Post by ErrantX »

jganetsk wrote: post #36
ErrantX wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a somewhat knee jerk / extreme approach to the problem :) Risks stifling innovative code?

I don't think it's an extreme approach. It would otherwise be nearly impossible to prove that Microsoft's code is not derived from GPL'd works. At least without revealing their code.

I disagree; "you shouldn't read Open Source code" doesn't fix anything much because it's impossible to find out if developers are sticking to it or not (so it doesn't decrease the burden of proof). It's just as impossible to prove that MS work doesn't include GPL code with or without the rule :)

A better (more effective) one is, surely, dont reuse restricted code.... :)

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#47

Post by qeorge »

amix wrote: post #5

Being the co-founder and lead dev of Plurk I can tell you this sucks :-( But we are looking at our legal options, thought legal war with Microsoft and especially legal war at Microsoft in China would require a lot of resources. I think this will become a major concern for all startups that are doing lots of client-side stuff. If people have determination they can copy your code (even if all your code is obfuscated, w…

They can't steal what's really valuable about Plurk:

  1) Your loyal community
  2) The team that created this site in the first place
All they got was a snapshot of what you were doing yesterday.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#48

Post by ubernostrum »

ErrantX wrote: post #33
jf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal compliance is VERY important at Microsoft, so much so that we aren't supposed to even read Open Source source code.

That seems a somewhat knee jerk / extreme approach to the problem :) Risks stifling innovative code?

And yet not uncommon. We (Django) had a rather frustrating mailing-list exchange with IBM folks who wanted to build a DB2 driver for Django; they claimed their corporate policies wouldn't allow them to look at the existing Django DB backends, or anything BSD-licensed, to gather information on the API.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#50

Post by johnrob »

Interesting how javascript is turning source code theft into copyright infringement (a civil matter), when traditionally it would be trade secret theft (a criminal matter).
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