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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#141

Post by rikroots »

koiueo wrote: post #19

> 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 maki…

> 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".

My JS canvas library is licensed using MIT. From my personal perspective, I wouldn't have any problem with some $MegaCorp coming along and forking it, and even claiming it as their own creation. But ... why? Because one of the main drivers for my development of the library over the past few years is to proof-of-concept the idea that 2D Canvas API based infographics and interactives can be made - with the help of a JS library - performant, responsive and (most importantly!) as accessible to every end user as reasonably possible. My ideal outcome would be to embarrass other JS canvas library maintainers into taking canvas responsiveness and accessibility seriously. If that needs a $MegaCorp to come along and fork the library to bring my dream closer to reality then I ain't gonna stand in their way!

Of course I'd still continue to develop my version of the library - it's become my passion and obsession and there's always improvements to be made, new ideas to be explored.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#142

Post by throwaway277432 »

ryao wrote: post #77
gwerbret wrote: post #59

I suspect that what's happening internally (at Microsoft) is that someone's leveraging your work towards their next promotion packet. They went to their manager with "hey I've got this great idea" and followed it up with your code a few weeks later. Of course, this only works if they claim they were "inspired" by Spegel to "write their own code".

The commit histories for the LICENSE files in the two repositories are rather interesting. The original author placed a single copyright notice in that file. Microsoft on the other hand published it with their copyright notice and a Apache 2.0 license in place of the original copyright notice and MIT license. They also put copyright Microsoft and license apache 2.0 headers on all files. They then changed the Apache 2…

>chore: change to MIT license

What does "chore" mean in this context? Is the license just leftover from some MS open source template? If so there is perhaps some leeway, and the author maybe just didn't realize he needed to use the original MIT license file including the notices and not just a template one grabbed from the internet.

Any other explanation for such a "relicensing" would be extremely worrisome.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#143

Post by chii »

LtWorf wrote: post #134
chii wrote: 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.

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

If i ahead of time decided to give my next dollar to the next guy begging, why not?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#144

Post by jeremyjh »

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…

GPL/AGPL might have improved the attribution, but they would not have prevented anything else from happening because Microsoft is publishing the source code.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#145

Post by mikeortman »

ryao wrote: post #54

I initially was going to say: Failing to abide by the MIT license is copyright infringement. My advice is to contact these guys: https://softwarefreedom.org/ They likely can file a cease and desist on your behalf. However, I took a closer look at the files in question. The MIT license requires that they retain and provide copyright notices, but you never put copyright notices in your files. The only place where you a…

Just the absence of a license generally means the creator has all right reserved by default. You don’t need a license in every file because in much of the world copyright is given by default to the creator. A licensed file is permission to do something with that copyright material.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#146

Post by akdev1l »

ryao wrote: post #120
pyfon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it crummy? Open source benefits big tech now. Especially for cloud based stuff. Only open source it if it fucks big tech. E.g. bittorrent or an alternative browser. Or an app on your local machine as a SaaS alternative.

Blobs violate clause 2 of the Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd We are no longer talking about open source software if you distribute blobs in place of source code.

They could distribute source code under AGPLv3 while also offering paid/propietary pre-compiled binaries

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#149

Post by cmrdporcupine »

gwd wrote: post #48
koiueo wrote: post #19

> 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 maki…

I initially had the same reaction to the MIT license; but it sort of looks like the GPL (or AGPL) wouldn't have really prevented this behavior. Microsoft (it sounds like) is making the code available; they've just extended and renamed the project. They could have done exactly the same thing (fork, rename, release under the same license), with the same effects he's complaining about (free-loading the consulting time,…

MS would have gone nowhere near said project if it had a GPL license on it. Simply because those companies have fears of virality.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#150

Post by veltas »

johnisgood wrote: post #80
ryao wrote: post #54

I initially was going to say: Failing to abide by the MIT license is copyright infringement. My advice is to contact these guys: https://softwarefreedom.org/ They likely can file a cease and desist on your behalf. However, I took a closer look at the files in question. The MIT license requires that they retain and provide copyright notices, but you never put copyright notices in your files. The only place where you a…

> but you never put copyright notices in your files. I thought having a LICENSE file in the project's root directory was sufficient. Is it not the case?

Sufficient but a good idea to put copyright in all files.

Technically if there's no license found then it should be considered automatically copyrighted, with no permissions to copy. So leaving copyright license out actually makes it less open source.

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