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How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

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Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#51

Post by hungerstrike »

dang wrote: post #42
hungerstrike wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that it wasn't Microsoft, the corporate person? They are a company of 35,000 people and I'm quite sure that they always act in unison. Also, when some random blogger contacts Microsoft and asks Microsoft to do something about something, then Microsoft better stop what they're doing and listen! Enjoy your Microsoft-hate-train all. yawn

Please don't do sports-team-style BigCorp flamewars on HN. It's not substantive and leads to worse.

You’re kidding right? I’m responding to the one that already going.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#52

Post by hungerstrike »

eeks wrote: post #25
hungerstrike wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I said - that was the only infraction. What part of my comment are you disagreeing with?? Copyright infringement is not theft.

Simple. Distributing MIT-licensed code without the original license disclosure is theft.

Incorrect.

“Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the United States Supreme Court held in Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. ” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#"Theft"

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#53

Post by hungerstrike »

bigtunacan wrote: post #40
hungerstrike wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I said - that was the only infraction. What part of my comment are you disagreeing with?? Copyright infringement is not theft.

To be clear Copyright infringement is a crime

Also to be clear it’s not theft. Its also not spitting.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#54

Post by Digital-Citizen »

eeks wrote: post #25
hungerstrike wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I said - that was the only infraction. What part of my comment are you disagreeing with?? Copyright infringement is not theft.

Simple. Distributing MIT-licensed code without the original license disclosure is theft.

The X11 license (MIT has used multiple licenses so there is no single "MIT license") does say "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." but not doing so is not theft.

The grandparent poster is correct -- copyright infringement is not theft and the two ought not be conflated. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft explains why: "Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vo...). The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says.".

The GNU Project also recommends pointing people who misuse the word "theft" in this way to https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/04/harper-lee-kil... -- "which shows what can properly be described as 'copyright theft.'".

Please don't join people in getting this wrong. Even some of the most hostile abusers of that conflation have recanted (the MPAA was denied use of that conflation per https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t... and the MPAA's Chris Dodd admitted that conflation was wrong according to https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-piracy-is-not-theft-after-all-...).

The copyright holder in this case has options including suing, but calling what happened as "theft" is not an option and is unlikely to get anywhere with a judge.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#55

Post by dang »

hungerstrike wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do sports-team-style BigCorp flamewars on HN. It's not substantive and leads to worse.

You’re kidding right? I’m responding to the one that already going.

Sure, but please don't. That's going the wrong way down a one-way street.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#56

Post by martinwoodward »

Hey – I’m Martin Woodward from Microsoft. I have talked to Jamie and are investigating his concerns and will come back to this thread with any findings. An initial review hasn’t indicated we’d previously heard about this issue. We’ve also reached out to the original copyright owner to ensure we’re taking all the needed steps. If anyone has concerns or spots an issue where a project is missing correct and full attribution then please log it as an issue with the project or contact opensource@microsoft.com and we’ll be sure to take action right away. We have over 1,800 repos in the Microsoft org and thousands of Microsoft engineers contributing to open source. We try really hard to get it right, and we take this very seriously.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#57

Post by Nomentatus »

detaro wrote: post #50
Nomentatus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "above copyright notice" must be included; i.e. the general MIT license itself, without credit to any author. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License The original BSD license did have a credit clause which led to considerable trouble and controversy, so they don't do that any more. IANAL, and this is extremely bad manners on someone's part, but no laws were broken.

> Copyright (c) That's the copyright notice. The license text is "this permission notice". So no, you can not leave the original author name off. The BSD license differs in that it requires the resulting software to display the credits, not just the source code to contain it. (Which is why e.g. phones or cars have somewhere deep in the menus a point where they show license information, to fulfill the BSD requirement)

My bad reading.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#58

Post by martinwoodward »

martinwoodward wrote: post #56

Hey – I’m Martin Woodward from Microsoft. I have talked to Jamie and are investigating his concerns and will come back to this thread with any findings. An initial review hasn’t indicated we’d previously heard about this issue. We’ve also reached out to the original copyright owner to ensure we’re taking all the needed steps. If anyone has concerns or spots an issue where a project is missing correct and full attribu…

FYI - I created this issue to track any fixes needed: https://github.com/Microsoft/web-build-tools/issues/673

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#59

Post by shanselman »

finnthehuman wrote: post #37
harrygeez wrote: post #11

What happened was truly awful, but I don't think it's fair to blame MSFT when probably what happened was a few employees trying to take all credit for code they didn't write. From the thread it seems that he did not reach out to MSFT via any official channels and only informed "people he knew at MSFT".

Under the principle-agent relationship (the concept, not the legal definition), I do think it's fair to blame Microsoft if they don't remedy this soon. Out of curiosity, who _would_ the right person to contact at Microsoft be? In my experience public channels exist to isolate the rest of an organization from having to deal with the outside (including complaints about bad behavior).

opensource@microsoft.com or make an issue in GH or tweet any one of a dozen people like Miguel or me or Martin who care deeply about this stuff. It’ll all get routed eventually to the Office of Open Source.

Re: How Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it

#60

Post by JdeBP »

> Files and directories were named the same things, it had many of the same core functions with code that I distinctly remembered writing.

Here are the respective codebases as of Christmas Day 2015, 21 days into the lifetime of one and 11 days into the lifetime of the other. They do not appear to match that description.

* https://github.com/lerna/lerna/tree/9aabe1664399d5f233a89d37...

* https://github.com/Microsoft/web-build-tools/tree/c4bb2127e6...

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