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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#211
post #169

As a maintainer, it is my duty to come across as unbiased and factual as possible i disagree with that. factual? sure, but unbiased? why? it's your project, and you have every right to be biased towards it. on the contrary, i expect you to, and i actually believe that not being biased towards your own project is very difficult so that i don't expect many people to be able to not be biased.

Came to post the same thing.

How can you not be biased? You built something. You want people to use it (assumption).

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#213
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" is a common conventional commit message type, see https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#214
post #28
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…

Microsoft at it again with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

MIT License.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#215
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’ve released some utility libraries under permissive libraries. I like it when they get used. Even when it’s part of a large company’s closed-source app. Many people don’t like that, and that’s perfectly fine, that’s why there are different choices available. What I’ll never understand is people who release their project with a permissive license and then get upset when a big company distributes their own version of…

Note that in this case Microsoft has not been following the license, as they removed the copyright notice

    Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors
To replace it by their own. Despite the license says

> The above copyright notice [...] shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#217
Default for copyleft licenses for open source or life with the consequences.

Licenses like the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) might prevent some corporations from using an open-source project because they do not want to release the source code of their own modifications to it. Sadly, corporate compliance often prohibits the usage of copyleft projects altogether, even if nobody plans to modify anything. Especially the legal departments of large “enterprizy” organizations often prefer software with licenses like MIT as they want it simple and “risk”-free.

But who cares? If these corporate users do not contribute back, there is simply not benefit in having them as users.

Except you do not care about open source community but about hypergrowth. This seems not to be true for this case, but the impression comes to mind that many start-ups use open source not because of freedom but as an argument for adoption in the enterprise ecosystem. They avoid choosing (A)GPLv3 licenses to facilitate easier corporate adoption without generating enough revenue, while being funded by venture capital and without getting contributions back by organization who could easily afford giving back something. Then, after being adopted, they complain.

There’s a reason why Linux (GPL licensed) is still around, growing, and making money for so many while companies behind widespread open source projects often fail financially and burning insane amounts of money. It might work out for individuals and owners when getting bought, but it hurts users and ecosystems who relied on something.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#218
post #138

Bro releasing software under MIT. Others picking it up and use it under terms of MIT license. Bro gets upset. Can someone please explain why?

A license term was not respected; the license allows to use, modify, etc. but not to remove the copyright message or change the copyright to Microsoft.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#219
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.

You are perfectly fine to include your own binary blobs with your own GPL licensed source, you are not violating the gpl as the binary blobs was never under GPL.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#220
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (A)GPLv3 does not prevent their projects from being used. In practice, it does in many cases. Many companies have a blanket policy of avoiding these licences. But I agree that they make more sense for apps than libraries.

So they don't use Linux, bash, or GCC?

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