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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#371

Post by palata »

I tend to disagree with the criticism of Microsoft here.

The author of Spegel released it as MIT, which means that anyone can fork it as long as they keep the attribution. So if every file of the original project has a header containing the copyright, Microsoft has to keep it. Looking at Spegel, I haven't found a single source file containing an MIT header and copyright.

Microsoft added their header with their copyright in Peerd (because now that they changed the files, they own a copyright over parts of those files). Nothing says that they must add a line for the original author, and I could imagine that it's legally a risk for them to do it.

Moreover, a copyleft license wouldn't have changed anything here (except maybe discouraging Microsoft from reusing any of that code).

If you don't want anyone to reuse your code, don't open source it. The whole point of open source it is that you allow others to reuse it.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#372

Post by krupan »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #352
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…

The great thing about permissive licenses is that it maximizes the utility of the code. I don’t care if someone makes a mountain of money by forking my permissively licensed code, that is in some sense the objective and I lose nothing by it. This strain of rent-seeking behavior by some that open source their code but then believe they are entitled to compensation or forced contributions if the wrong people use it per…

I'm sorry, but you are way off base. Use is not restricted by GPL licenses. People have expressed desires to restrict use of GPL code (what if terrorists or pedophiles or Republicans use this code??) and Stallman and it's defenders have not allowed any restrictions of use.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#373

Post by NobodyNada »

WD-42 wrote: post #345
evantbyrne wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are supposed to keep the original license for a fork. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license.

It seems like a pretty minor violation, to be fair. They do reference the project in the repo. The real question is why did the author choose MIT if they didn’t want allow mega corps to benefit from their work without contributing back. That’s a feature of the license, not a bug.

It's not a "pretty minor violation", that's the only condition of the MIT license.

Yes, they mentioned Spegel, but only to thank the authors for "generously sharing their insights" -- that's not even close to the required statement that part of the project is owned and copyrighted by the authors of Spegel.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#374

Post by kergonath »

WD-42 wrote: post #345
evantbyrne wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are supposed to keep the original license for a fork. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license.

It seems like a pretty minor violation, to be fair. They do reference the project in the repo. The real question is why did the author choose MIT if they didn’t want allow mega corps to benefit from their work without contributing back. That’s a feature of the license, not a bug.

> It seems like a pretty minor violation, to be fair.

Quite the contrary. The licence does not have many constraints, but this one is important. Volunteer developers let their code being used in closed source commercial programs. Recognition is the only thing they expect and the whole point of the licence.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#375

Post by palata »

udev4096 wrote: post #233
giancarlostoro wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also very possible they had been working on it already and wanted to compare notes, I certainly would if I were working on something internal and found a similar project, but I agree, ask them for a consultation fee. I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. Both projects also share in license, so I have less of an issue with it personally. They're both MIT licensed.

Blatantly copying the code without proper attribution is a violation. Regardless, it's not your issue to be OK with it, if the author himself is uncomfortable with it

> Blatantly copying the code without proper attribution is a violation

Except that they did not do that. They forked it (as the MIT licence permits), added an attribution to their README, and added their own header to the files with their own copyright. It's not their fault if the original author did not add a header in the first place...

Or where do you see that they actually removed a copyright header from the author? None of the source files I checked in Spegel have one.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#376

Post by matkoniecz »

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…

> What's good about being "permissive"?

it is good if you do not plan to go for violators anyway

I made some photos and published them on Wikimedia Commons (say, of random bicycle infrastructure).

I am fine with people using them without attribution, I expect that their use overall furthers my goals rather than damages it and if I would release it on CC-BY-SA 4.0 or similar I would not go to court over missing attribution.

Therefore I selected CC0, no reason to make things more complicated only to people following license.

I selected AGPL/GPL for some software where I would be happy to burn pile of money in case of license violation, up to and including litigating it in court for 10 years.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#377

Post by lurk2 »

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…

> Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they can re-implement it themselves while also breaking the licenses that the authors use.

Can’t they just read the source themselves? Why do they need the maintainer?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#378

Post by ohgr »

yownie wrote: post #234
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…

The cultural amnesia about how these companies have operated in the past and continue to operate just continues to boggle me. It's as if we've learned nothing about exploitative corporation behavior for the last 20-30 years even though it's in the news EVERY other day.

Yeah. I remember the big hoo haw on here a few years back that Satya turning up was the table turning event that would fix all evils. Literally rainbow unicorn shit levels of brigading. I got downvoted to oblivion for suggesting we hold off judgement.

And here we are …

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#379

Post by palata »

evantbyrne wrote: post #199
giancarlostoro wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also very possible they had been working on it already and wanted to compare notes, I certainly would if I were working on something internal and found a similar project, but I agree, ask them for a consultation fee. I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. Both projects also share in license, so I have less of an issue with it personally. They're both MIT licensed.

You are supposed to keep the original license for a fork. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license.

> Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license.

Did they remove the copyright? All the source files I checked in Spegel don't have a copyright header. To me it feels like it's the author's mistake.

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