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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

131–140 of 1001 posts

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#131
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the incentive for authors of one-man projects to choose anything "permissive". The incentive is generally that people enjoy having their projects used, be that by commercial companies or otherwise.

(A)GPLv3 does not prevent their projects from being used. That's the point! GPL family of licenses would've made a difference in this aspect for libraries (because afair if you link to GPL code, you must be GPL). But for an app? You can use it, fork it, modify it... Just make sure you make your changes available under the same license. Seems very fair to me.

Apple famously migrated away from bash (stuck on 3.2 in macOS 15) to zsh to avoid the GPLv3 'problem'.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they complain about anything else?

Mostly no, but I read the overall piece as a complaint that they got a fork when they were hoping to get a collaborator.

I mean, the title is “Getting Forked by Microsoft,” not “Microsoft Removed My Copyright Notice.” They don’t even outright state that the fork is missing the required attribution, you have to infer it.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#133

If you don't want people to fork your code, don't explicitly give them permission to fork your code. Its like if you put your couch on the curb with a sign on it saying "FREE COUCH" and then coming home and freaking out because your couch is gone.

It's that a lot pof people want to use the 'free couch' label to attract a crowd, but when they spot someone rich, they want those marks to pay.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#134
post #97
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, think we ought to judge on a case by case basis. However, for megacorp and especially banks that has almost 0 to 1% access to cost of capital, vs rest of us who at at 20 - 30 % ( for credit card, loan sharks), then there should be a different license for these people. There should be a GLP type license adjusted to the cost of the capital.

There should not be any difference between small or large entitise in how you deal with them as an opensource maintainer. Just because someone has more money (or less), should not automatically mean you treat them with more leniency or ethics. You set up your standard, and stick to it whomever comes.

So you're equally like to give your change to a poor beggar and to a guy begging from inside his rolls royce?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#135

I wish people would seriously consider (A)GPL for their projects more often. It hasn't happened here, though has certainly happened in the past without anyone knowing - (A)GPL would make it hard for them to make a closed source "fork". In fact, I wish an even stronger license existed which allowed the original author to dictate who can build on top of the project to avoid exactly these kinds of situations where a pow…

Have you seen the license of llama models from Meta?

> 2. Additional Commercial Terms. If, on the Llama 2 version release date, the monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee's affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from Meta...

ref: https://github.com/meta-llama/llama/blob/main/LICENSE

But again, not open source...

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL requires that your publish your source to the people who use your software over the network.

The AGPL requires that you publish a notice that the source is available on demand to the people who use your software over the network. The easiest way to do this is usually to just publish your changes so you can link everyone to it, but that is not a requirement of the license. You can run derivative AGPLv3 software to service the public without distributing your changes to the source code without violating the li…

From the text of the AGPL:

> The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

If you're interpreting that as something different than "publish", I think you're splitting hairs.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#137
post #97
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, think we ought to judge on a case by case basis. However, for megacorp and especially banks that has almost 0 to 1% access to cost of capital, vs rest of us who at at 20 - 30 % ( for credit card, loan sharks), then there should be a different license for these people. There should be a GLP type license adjusted to the cost of the capital.

There should not be any difference between small or large entitise in how you deal with them as an opensource maintainer. Just because someone has more money (or less), should not automatically mean you treat them with more leniency or ethics. You set up your standard, and stick to it whomever comes.

Companies are never just money. There is a monumental difference between:

1. A small company which is barely profitable but is building something which aligns with your values and you see as a positive to the world.

2. A massive mega corporation whose only purpose is profit, mistreats employees, and you view as highly unethical.

You shouldn’t treat those the same way. It’s perfectly ethical to offer your work for free to the first one (helping them succeed in creating a better world) and charging up the wazoo (or better yet, refusing to engage in any way with) the second one.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#139

My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community. The problem this addresses is not that Microsoft forked this project. The problem is that when a corporation like Microsoft does this, they harm our community[0]. Open source thrives because a bunch of individuals and groups collaborate. Microsoft, is built around the concept of profit for stock owners a…

The k8s community is mostly people who work for commercial interests and use k8s in their companies. If you develop a component of the k8s ecosystem, and you want people to use it, you can't really exclude businesses from using it. There just aren't enough installations outside of commercial spaces for it to be relevant.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#140
post #119
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should not be any difference between small or large entitise in how you deal with them as an opensource maintainer. Just because someone has more money (or less), should not automatically mean you treat them with more leniency or ethics. You set up your standard, and stick to it whomever comes.

Interacting with faceless entities with the power to buy multiple countries the same way you'd interact with some interested independent young person wanting to learn. Interesting moral proposition, I doubt you'd get many followers. I think it's perfectly reasonable to treat people differently from corporations, and random small and medium corporations differently than huge megacorps without losing any sleep. Special…

> charging more to those that can pay more is a very common approach.

and all consumers dislike price discrimination. Airlines is the classic example.

It's just that those companies do this because they can. And i hate it. I much prefer a static, single price for a product.

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