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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#181

Post by chii »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #157
chii wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

That's why the premise in the grandparent post is ridiculous.

But the license of a piece of software is not ridiculous - if you chose a very permissive license, you cannot then go and choose who should or shouldnt be profiting off your software. The license was a pre-commitment.

But lots of people make this pre-commitment, but then makes a moral/ethical judgement post-facto when someone rich seems to be able to extract more value out of the software than what "they deserve", and complain about it.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#182

Post by boxed »

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…

It says "copyright microsoft" in that license file. Just because THAT file is MIT is irrelevant. They didn't retain the original license file. They should have APPENDED to it, keeping the original copyright holder name, otherwise it's just blatant copyright infringement that coincidentally is released under the same license.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#183

Post by donatj »

Could file a DMCA takedown over the license violation, or you know, just file a pull request correcting the license to include your name and explain the situation. They're technically violating the MIT license as-is.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#184

Post by Panzer04 »

0xTJ wrote: post #114
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 always choose permissive licenses for personal project, and I often avoid depending on other projects that aren't permissive. If I want to know that, if I need to, I can grab the code and change something. And I want others to be able to remix what I make as needed. The more limitations added on a license, the less open it is.

Only for the next developer. They can do whatever they want, but they aren't obligated to contribute anything back.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#185

Post by jasonlotito »

gus_massa wrote: post #152
pyfon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the context of this thread (where the commenter is suggesting the author release a binary with a different license), your comment is meaningless.

The author of the GPL code can release binary-only blobs released under something other than the GPL. Suggesting that the copyright holder cannot relicense their code how they want is absurd.

Saying the "GPL does not allow binary blobs" implies that the author is not allowed to release binary blogs, which is not true in the slightest.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#186

Post by hardwaresofton »

ryao wrote: post #66
hardwaresofton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And just to be really clear -- it's not actually a solution to cloud providers not reusing the code for profit (which I assume is the context you're implying, could be wrong here), because AGPL is free software, so people are free to reuse your code for commercial purposes. AGPL at least prevents making private improvements to open source networked code without contributing back. I think in this situation it might ha…

The AGPL doesn't require them to contribute back. It only requires them to provide the code to end users upon request. No license as far as I know requires people to contribute back. In many cases, project maintainers would not want the changed code anyway because it does not align with their vision for how things should be done. Linus Torvalds and his subsystem maintainers, for example, do not want people to send th…

This is a good point, the AGPL and free software in general is really more about users than individual projects and developers.

AGPL may not have convinced Microsoft to collaborate.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#187

Post by Y_Y »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #149
gwd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree that Microsoft seems identify more with parasites, but they're no strangers to symbiotic relationships with viruses.

In fact they do distribute and contribute to lots of GPL software, including Linux. I can't be sure their involvement benefits anyone other than themselves, but theybdo at least participate.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#189

Post by veltas »

ryao wrote: post #180
veltas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The license does not necessarily need to be in the files. It could be a project level license in LICENSE, which is what the author here did.

Yes that's exactly what I said :)

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#190

Post by delusional »

vasco wrote: post #6
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…

If a megacorp wants your help to explain ANYTHING to them, you better be paid handsomely per hour. Wtf are people doing charity for trillion dollar empires.

I think that worldview leads to a much poorer world.

Normal people aren't constantly engaging in a fight for survival in every aspect of their lives, and I don't think it's a good thing to ask them to. We should expect the people we deal with to be acting in good faith. I think it would be bad actually if I had to consider if you're going to make money off of my idea when talking to you.

Asking everybody to be constantly vigilant of possible exploitation by megacorps puts an undue burden on individuals. We should have strong and durable protections against those megacorps in other ways.

What I'm saying is that this sort of copying should be criminal (not just illegal, but criminal) and Microsoft, the legal entity, should be held accountable and fined. I acknowledge that this isn't currently possible with our legal framework, but we should work to make it possible.

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