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Microsoft rips off Plurk

blog.plurk.com

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Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#111

Post by dangrossman »

davepeck wrote: post #61
credo wrote: post #12

Microsoft should be held accountable for this, but assuming the blog is correct, I'm assuming that the deliberate ripoff (described on plurk's blog) wasn't a high-level Redmond decision.It was probably a decision taken at the junior management levelin Microsoft, China. It will be interesting to see Microsoft's response, but suspending the MSN club service is probably the best immediate response, if plurk's blog is co…

Precisely. This was a junior dev somewhere far away from Redmond making a terrible mistake. It's about to get thrown up to the highest level, and I can pretty much guarantee you that MSFT takes the site down.

It wasn't even that. It was a third party contractor hired by the Chinese company Microsoft partnered with to create "MSN China". So this was beyond just a hierarchical separation within the company, it was several degrees separated from the company itself. Only through contract is this even owned by Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#112

Post by viraptor »

colbyolson wrote: post #95
blasdel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU (U+03C4), GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON (U+03BF)

Yea, I know what they are, just curious as to why they're there.

Just guessing: he's got a layout where alt_gr+t produces a small tau and is typing quite quickly hitting space+alt_gr by accident. I know that's the reason some of my k-s at the beginning of a word are ĸ-s. (you can just miss it while reading later)

OTOH, I may be completely wrong :)

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#113

Post by betterlabs »

mikeryan wrote: post #16
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…

Look I doubt anyone very high up at MS knows of this and when they do you might be able to get some scratch out of this. They're really going to have 3 ways to deal with this. 1. pull down the existing site while they retool. 2. Pay you a licensing fee while the rewrite from scratch. 3. Do nothing and get a ton of bad press See if you can get 1 or 2 and maybe make some money off the deal.

I agree. Its highly unlikely that this was done on purpose with complete transparency to higher management. But I still wonder how the manager or the manager's manager of the project didn't see this happening. I am pretty sure the team and their 1 or 2 levels up researched plurk and its success in the region enough to recognize that it was copied. The product manager could not have missed this. I am sure a lot of people are under fire for this.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#114

Post by rgrieselhuber »

potatolicious wrote: post #45
axod wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-pr…

When you put it that way, it does make the arguments of software publishers sound much like those of other media companies struggling with IP management.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#115

Post by uriel »

vinutheraj wrote: post #44
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.

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

And it shows...

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#117

Post by netcan »

clemesha wrote: post #42
eob wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

What an excellent place to start (this thread/problem). This certainly requires some diplomacy.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#118

Post by ericd »

alttab wrote: post #99
jonmc12 wrote: post #62

Not condoning MS, but does anyone else find it ironic that a chinese company is accusing MS of piracy?

Your comment is both funny, and correct! At least, I think so. But I seem to understand that here, that type of humor seems to be discredited even if its insightful (especially if its not).

a) It appears to be inaccurate based on a number of comments here saying that Plurk is Canadian.

b) The comment is not adding anything to the conversation, it's just snarky. HN values insights, not snark.

There are plenty of places on the internet for trading snark, this isn't intended to be one of them.

Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk

#120

Post by jf »

thefool wrote: post #105
jf wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not hired to replace Don Dodge. I was hired because the person who previously held my role moved internally. I actually don't know much about Don Dodge - I haven't met him yet. All that I know is that he is well liked and respected. I can only hope to earn a similar level of respect from the startup community.

were you hired, or were you moved internally? Its cool that they have someone devoted to worrying about these issues.

I was hired: http://www.linkedin.com/in/joelfranusic
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