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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]

#101

Post by coliveira »

peter_retief wrote: post #77
37ef_ced3 wrote: post #44

The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. In return, you receive hosting from GitHub. The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Here is an example. This Go program (a compiler) generates and serves its own website: https://NN-512.com It runs on a Linode shared CPU cloud instance that costs $5 per month: h…

This seems to be the new reality. Sad we get fooled over and over by the same companies.

I have good memory. I always stood one mile from anything that MS does. The new generation that is easily scammed by flashy stuff like VS code is in for a treat.

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

#102

Post by mradmin »

motoboi wrote: post #99
mradmin wrote: post #95

Seems like a mistake to me. Microsoft recently adopted one of my Open Source projects and part of the agreement was they would keep the original license. This was a request on their part, I had no choice in the matter. They know what they're doing, I don't think they would do this deliberately. (Licence here: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-gradle/blob/main/LICENSE... )

Microsoft is not a person. And, by its size, is not a single entity with homogeneous values and procedures. You interacted with one part of Microsoft, maybe we are seeing the works of another part.

Sure, could be. I guess i'd expect Microsoft to have company-wide processes and practises when working with OSS though. Could be wishful thinking.

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

#103

Post by kenjackson »

CyberShadow wrote: post #8

The account which did the change has this description: > This is the open source management service account used for performing key GitHub operations on behalf of Microsoft employees and users. Combined with the nonsense README change, this looks like a bot mis-use accident. Edit: to clarify, in no way am I saying that this is a "honest mistake" which does not deserve scrutiny.

No judgment from me since I suspect it is also an accident and I’ve made enough in my life that I don’t get super judgy in most cases. But what purpose is there for a bot that forks and makes changes like adding template files? Copyright aside, I don’t understand the value of this bot.

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

#104

Post by defen »

jen20 wrote: post #85
rustc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. How would self hosting your code prevent Microsoft/GitHub from using it in the Copilot training dataset? If using content from GitHub irrespective of their license to train Copilot is legal, so is training from code available on your website.

Because it isn’t in compliance with the terms of many popular licenses to create derivative works without attribution. Therefore the only possible claim Microsoft have to do so is via terms and conditions, which would not apply to code hosted on a stand-alone website. It might be time for popular licenses to update themselves for this new-found threat.

What happens when some random person uploads your code (acquired from your website) to GitHub?

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

#105

Post by phendrenad2 »

webmaven wrote: post #92
judge2020 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since MIT has this line: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. MS would be in the wrong to redistribute this code without the notice that includes '(c) 2020 LesnyRumcajs' - however, just changing the line doesn't constitute copyright infringement or fraud if MS reverses the change and/or simply appends the original MIT license…

> MS would be in the wrong to redistribute this code without the notice that includes '(c) 2020 LesnyRumcajs' - however, just changing the line doesn't constitute copyright infringement or fraud Given that this change was committed to the main branch, if I download the code right now, haven't Microsoft redistributed it?

Things get philosophical rather quickly I'm afraid. If I misconfigure an FTP server, and you download some MIT code that I stripped the copyrights from, does that count as redistribution?

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

#106

Post by emilfihlman »

anonymousab wrote: post #58
emilfihlman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true, u64 add26562(u64 value) { return(value+26562); } is not copyrightable.

If that function always returned, say, the AACS key then it would likely be violating copyright in the US. Regardless of whether it was the result of a computation or statically defined.

I'll press x on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...

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

#107

Post by y4mi »

CyberShadow wrote: post #96
37ef_ced3 wrote: post #44

The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. In return, you receive hosting from GitHub. The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Here is an example. This Go program (a compiler) generates and serves its own website: https://NN-512.com It runs on a Linode shared CPU cloud instance that costs $5 per month: h…

> Here is an example. This Go program (a compiler) generates and serves its own website: https://NN-512.com Not a very good one - clicking the link produces a download dialog on Firefox (I'm guessing because the website neglects to indicate a Content-Type). Ironically this is an argument against trying to do everything yourself - you might waste time chasing the long tail of thousands of little details that had been…

It does work with Firefox on my end...

Also hosting it yourself doesn't mean that you do everything yourself.

It would definitely spawn build plugins that do most of what you need if this practice actually establishes itself.

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

#108

Post by echelon »

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #44

The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. In return, you receive hosting from GitHub. The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Here is an example. This Go program (a compiler) generates and serves its own website: https://NN-512.com It runs on a Linode shared CPU cloud instance that costs $5 per month: h…

I'm including licensing notices in several of my private repositories to prevent inclusion in ML training data sets.

I might put this in my public ones as well.

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

#109

Post by coliveira »

CyberShadow wrote: post #8

The account which did the change has this description: > This is the open source management service account used for performing key GitHub operations on behalf of Microsoft employees and users. Combined with the nonsense README change, this looks like a bot mis-use accident. Edit: to clarify, in no way am I saying that this is a "honest mistake" which does not deserve scrutiny.

I would't call a honest mistake some bot that is created to change code to a MS license. First of all, this kind of thing needs to be done after careful review, if they're doing it in an automated fashion there is almost the certainty that they'll take somebody else's work as their own.

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

#110

Post by fault1 »

judge2020 wrote: post #48
37ef_ced3 wrote: post #44

The larger issue is that anyone using GitHub is donating their work for re-use without attribution through Copilot. In return, you receive hosting from GitHub. The writing is on the wall. You MUST host your own code on a stand-alone website. Here is an example. This Go program (a compiler) generates and serves its own website: https://NN-512.com It runs on a Linode shared CPU cloud instance that costs $5 per month: h…

If you treat copilot like a human, and you ask it a question ( like "#find median of list") that human either (A) will put together all the things they've learned over thousands of hours of simply looking at code in the programming language and how the syntax works, then provide a new code block, or (B) remember "oh, I remember this extract string of text and what comes after it. Here's the next 10 lines from that sn…

I think the answer is: we don't know the copyright consequences of copilot yet. It's certainly a legal gray area, and it has not been challenged in court yet.

There are quite a few companies where copilot and copoilot-like technologies seem radioactive at least for the moment.

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