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Getting forked by Microsoft

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#581

Post by unsungNovelty »

saulpw wrote: post #445
unsungNovelty wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community. You are going exactly against the OSS philosophy. OSS shouldn't restrict the use of software just because you don't like it. It was created to fight exactly this. This is also why source available BS (like BSL) is against OSS. OSS is literally about being about hacking and changing software to suit you…

The OSS philosophy was conceived to help end users, not for-profit corporations. Then for-profit corporations co-opted the "Open Source"(tm) label to ensure they could benefit from all this free labor. You and many others are falling for it, and doing their work for them by scolding OSS developers for "going against the OSS philosophy". So screw this corporate "OSS philosophy", and stop telling people what they "shou…

> The OSS philosophy was conceived to help end users, not for-profit corporations

I beg to differ here. OSS and Free Software movement was conceived for the freedom to change the software to the user's needs. The entire meaning of free as is freedom means as long as I abide by the license properly, I can do whatever I want with it. Whether you like it or not, this means Microsoft can make money out of curl project if they want to. This is the same way we used to burn Ubuntu cd's and resell it back in the early 2000s. It's allowed and IIRC Ubuntu cd cover used to proudly advocate burning, sharing those cds.

This big tech and money in OSS is a new phenomenon. I am neither against them or with them. But just that it is not the reason why OSS or Free Software movement happened.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#582

Post by danudey »

NobodyNada wrote: post #431
WD-42 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so MS will see this thread and re-add the missing header to a few files. You really think the author is going to then feel 100% better about it? They are just another data point in the long list of authors who chose a permissive license and are then shocked when a billion dollar company takes advantage of it.

I can't speak for the author, but I when I release code as open-source I think carefully about the license that I use (usually either MIT, GPL, or CC0). If I choose MIT, then it's because I'm fine with companies "taking advantage" of my code. I'd probably mainly feel glad that I created something useful to someone. What I'm not OK with is a company doing that without attribution. If XYZ company's product is built on…

This is fundamentally my thoughts on it as well.

If I write something useful and convenient for people, something that makes peoples' lives better, it's probably not going to see a lot of use realistically speaking. I'm not out there making a name for myself, I'm just doing some stuff.

If Microsoft takes my code, turns it into a separate project with a separate name, distributes it as part of their own commercial offering, uses it in their marketing... great! It means that my ideas are making people's lives better. Yes, it's enriching a giant soulless megacorp who, at a high-level, does not actually care about how people feel and only cares about making money off my work, but I care about how people feel, and if it means that my work gets to make people's lives better then that's great - I wasn't going to make money off it anyway, so I lose nothing.

Unless they take implicit or explicit credit for what I made. I don't need my name on the marketing or an invitation to a launch party, but at least make a note in the docs somewhere that "this project was forked from ...." so that I can point to it and say hey, look at this cool thing I helped make happen.

I guess what would really irritate me, when it comes down to it, is not that the giant corporation did this, but that the individual developers did this - some dev out there found my project, decided to use my code, and made the conscious decision to strip out my attribution and claim it as their own. That's what would actually hurt.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#584

Post by oehpr »

asddubs wrote: post #532
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bizarre to me how, despite people criticizing the GPL and GNU as too ideological, the people you refer to - the permissive people - somehow seem even MORE ideological. The GPL to me seems pragmatic - sure technically a minimal license like WTFPL (ignore all its legal issues for now) is some kind of minimalist idea of pure objective freedom. But the GPL has some key "restrictions" that aren't really restrictions…

well, it's worth noting that since microsoft is also releasing the source code, the same thing could have happened with GPL. Though I suspect the author would be even less happy if they had done all the same stuff (minus removing the copyright notice, even) and then not released the source, so that's not me arguing against the GPL I also think in practice microsoft would have been less likely to actually take the cod…

Just wanted to highlight your last point so that it's clear. Microsoft reimplementing the authors project was exactly what they wanted! To see a different implementation. A different "take".

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#586

Post by cogman10 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #118
vasco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it.

Oh I do.

The person that wanted to setup the meeting likely has no budget control. Big corps like to keep the ability to pay for stuff out of the hands of individuals and isolated in bureaucratic nightmares.

You'd be more than reasonable to demand "$1000/hr with 1 hour minimum" for such a consulting and I'd see HR in MS doing an immediate "hell no" to that.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#587

Post by __turbobrew__ »

nosequel wrote: post #165
gwerbret wrote: post #59

I suspect that what's happening internally (at Microsoft) is that someone's leveraging your work towards their next promotion packet. They went to their manager with "hey I've got this great idea" and followed it up with your code a few weeks later. Of course, this only works if they claim they were "inspired" by Spegel to "write their own code".

> I suspect that what's happening internally (at Microsoft) is that someone's leveraging your work towards their next promotion packet. It just so happens that the Microsoft engineer who originally changed the license in GitHub went from Senior to Principal engineer at Microsoft in the past two months (according to LinkedIn). So you probably aren't far off.

Dang, that is too good.

There is definitely a type of person who cheats, lies, throws people/teams under the bus, breaks the rules, and cuts corners to get ahead. The ones who are able to not get caught are rewarded.

This is not only a software phenomenon, but almost all aspects of life.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#588

Post by [deleted] »

siva7 wrote: post #579
vasco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, charity. That's exactly what these trillion dollar empires think of those open source maintainers. Microsoft pulled this same stunt multiple times on os maintainers.

[deleted]

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#589

Post by riquito »

diggan wrote: post #533
zamadatix wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters because the only thing which can be claimed to have been ignored here is missing the line "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" in the main license file. Now that it's brought up https://github.com/Azure/peerd/issues/109 that'll probably be fixed. What remains after full compliance with the MIT license choince will be the bulk of the complaints in the article.

> It matters because the only So if the author instead used GPL, this wouldn't have been a problem? Call me pessimist, but I don't think Microsoft would have cared if it was MIT, GPL or even missing a license (so copyrighted by the author), they would have made the same choice as they just now did. I'm sorry, but it's really hard to understand what you mean here, how choosing GPL would have somehow lead to a differen…

For the copyright part, it wouldn't have lead to a different outcome. What could have been different is that Microsoft could have had difficulties in working on a GPL fork which is harder to resell (you can, but people are sometimes afraid for good or bad reasons) and so Microsoft could have proposed to the author to sell them a copy with a different license.

But reading the article, the author appears to be more disgruntled by the fact that a behemoth forked his project than the mishandling of the copyright that can be fixed with one PR (he is right to be pissed about that, but that's an easily solvable problem, I doubt Microsoft will stand against it).

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#590

Post by aftbit »

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…

It means that more people and companies can use your software. Plenty of orgs will avoid GPL and especially AGPL software out of an abundance of caution or because they legitimately need to link and customize the software for it to be useful for their business case, but do not want to release these (often very small & customer dependant) modifications.
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