[deleted]
Getting forked by Microsoft
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that it scares away also others. Personally I avoid such projects for any purpose, they simply don't exist for me. I also don't understand the cloud hosting argument, when we had a great whole era of Apache/PHP/MySQL stack based on exactly this idea of commercial hosting.
> The problem is that it scares away also others. Personally I avoid such projects for any purpose, they simply don't exist for me. I think this isn’t a problem — not everyone has to contribute to any project! People sometimes struggle with the choice between GPL and MIT for similar reasons of popularity. People who want the widest possible usage/corporate adoption can pick licenses that reflect that and embrace the…
> People who want the widest possible usage/corporate adoption can pick licenses that reflect that and embrace the tradeoff
This subthread started with the implication that people shouldn't be doing that. But you are right, that's exactly what most are doing.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#263I 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.
I am not a lawyer, but I imagine a lawyer would find it alright if they just restore the missing notice. I do not imagine there is much else that can be done here since he cannot really claim to have been significantly damaged by the absence of a single line, but these matters are best discussed with attorneys.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#264As 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.
I thought the same, as the sole maintainer he can be king and do as he pleases, his git, his baby.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#265Open source is becoming not much more than free labor for giant corporations and SaaS.
The OSI considers any open source license that tries to restrict or disincentivize this "not open source." Look into OSI and note that it is effectively captured and controlled by these corporations.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#266If 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.
Almost, except the sign said "Couch provided courtesy of Philip Laine as long as this sign is kept intact". And Microsoft removed the sign and replaced it with their own "Free couch from Microsoft" sign.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#267Seems like we need a GPL/fuck off amazon/microsoft license.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#268I 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…
If they forked from before the author had a license, it’s worse. MS had no right to use it. I’ve contributed to plenty of project that don’t have the per-file copyrights. It’s a choice not a mistake.
> If they forked from before the author had a license, it’s worse. MS had no right to use it.
You are right, provided he did not have a notice saying it was MIT licensed elsewhere.
> I’ve contributed to plenty of project that don’t have the per-file copyrights. It’s a choice not a mistake.
I would consider it to be both a choice and a mistake. The two are not mutually exclusive. There is no evidence in the fork that he is the copyright holder of the original code and it looks like Microsoft is. Part of that is Microsoft’s fault, but part of that is the original author’s fault for not including per file copyright notices, such that Microsoft could add theirs and be the sole one listed in every file.
I would not be surprised if Microsoft’s legal department doing a scan of public repositories for stolen code mistook him for infringing on “their code” given that they have no information that he authored it rather than their employee. It sounds absurd, but it has happened. I know for a fact the sg3 utils author added copyright notices to his code examples because he was getting contacted by companies, whose engineers incorporated his code into their projects without attribution, that thought he had stolen their code:
https://github.com/doug-gilbert/sg3_utils
I know that because he told me by email in 2013.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#269Reading story after story about big corporations abusing single/small group opensource developers, I think we need a license that, otherwise permissive, explicitly denies the use of the code for companies that took VC money or are worth a billion or more.
Re: Getting forked by Microsoft
#270Anybody know what the differences between peerd and spegel actually are and why microsoft forked it?