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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#151

Post by jeremyjh »

throwaway277432 wrote: post #142
ryao wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"chore" just means the type of change; as opposed to a fix, a feature, refactoring, there are some things that you have to do in the repo that can be called "chores".

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#152

Post by gus_massa »

pyfon wrote: post #63
kstrauser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I released a fun personal project under GPLv3 and the first filed issue was someone saying I should change the license to something friendlier to business interests. Hell no. If they want to profit off my work, pay me. This is something I'm doing for fun, on my own terms. It’s Free for anyone to use as they want, so long as they keep it Free, too.

At this point I'd include some of the code as binary blobs and "pay me for the source!". In addition to GPL!

GPL does not allow binary blobs. MIT and BSD doe.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#153

Post by philipwhiuk »

talkingtab wrote: post #84

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…

> My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community.

It exists: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#155

Post by chii »

kstrauser wrote: post #60
martin-t wrote: post #26

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…

> I wish an even stronger license existed which allowed the original author to dictate who can build on top of the project Such licenses exist. They're just not Free or Open Source. They can't be, by definition.

Yep. This is called a commercial license.

What people who want such things really are after is the leverage to dictate a form of morality - if you dont have money, you are allowed to use the project for free, and give back advertising/clout. But if you have money, or could get a lot of money for said project, then they want their pay day.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#156

Post by eriksjolund »

talkingtab wrote: post #84

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 license would no longer be open source if you limit use to only community.

See "6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" in The Open Source Definition https://opensource.org/osd

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#157

Post by wizzwizz4 »

chii wrote: post #143
LtWorf wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's a really silly precommitment. If you were sensible, your actual commitment should be "help the next person who requires help, provided that help can be provided in the form of one dollar".

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#158

Post by ryao »

mikeortman wrote: post #145
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.

He had a top level license file that presumably applies to all files. He would not be the first to do that and will not be the last.

That said, if Microsoft had forked before the LICENSE was added or stated somewhere, they were reusing all-rights-reserved code, which is definitely copyright infringement. Again, I am not a lawyer.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#159

Post by Y_Y »

diggan wrote: post #3

> As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers. Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they…

> Gates: OH, I DIDN'T GET RICH BY WRITING A LOT OF CHECKS.

> Gates: ( fiendish laughter )

https://frinkiac.com/caption/S09E14/1158256

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#160

Post by elteto »

phillebaba wrote: post #11
glenngillen wrote: post #2

Hey, this sucks. Unfortunately the MIT license doesn't do much to prevent this and (I think?) their licensing transgression is they haven't kept "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" in the LICENSE file. I suspect if you call them out on it that'll be the remediation. Did you manage to reach out to any of the people at MSFT you originally spoke to to ask wtf?

Any copies of the code should include the notice according to the MIT license. I do agree that I could have used a less permissive license, and it is something that I am now considering to change. The reality is that licenses do not mean anything unless you are actually able to enforce it. So I really do not think the license would have mattered in this case.

Licenses absolutely matter, that’s the whole point of using them! Big corps will absolutely not risk being sued over infringement, it’s not worth it to them. For the litigation cost they’ll throw a couple engineers and redo your project from scratch.

Sorry it happened to you but it seems like you just picked the wrong license.

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