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Getting forked by Microsoft

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#661

Post by mytailorisrich »

cogman10 wrote: post #586
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.

> 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.

This is not an HR decision. This is a Director or VP decision in the relevant business line... BUT those guys can absolutely be 'canny' enough to suggest trying to get the person to do it for free first.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#662

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Zambyte wrote: post #61
skywhopper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving off the attribution makes it stolen. They stole credit for the code, in violation of its license.

No it doesn't. It makes it copied without authorization. Stolen means the original owner does not have access which is not the case[0]. This idea that copying is theft was propaganda invented by the MPA[1], and we ought to stop parroting it, even when it's Microsoft doing the unauthorized copying. [0] https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car

The idea that piracy is theft was not invented by the MPAA. I arrived at that conclusion myself, and indeed most people I've interacted with find it to be pretty reasonable. It's only ever been a minority of giga-nerds who try to claim that "stealing" cannot cover situations involving a non-scarce resource.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#663

Post by bigstrat2003 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #223
sneak wrote: post #178

Publishing free software is giving away a gift. People using that gift is the point. Forks aren’t just permitted, they are encouraged. That’s why we release free software. You aren’t in competition with Microsoft and their fork. There is no such thing as marketshare when there is no market.

Keeping his name in the license note is required by the terms and that is an expectation, even if you get the software for free.

That's certainly true, but that is by no means the only complaint the author has. His complaint that they aren't properly attributing the copyright is valid. His complaint that they are a "competitor" is not.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#664

Post by shortrounddev2 »

vasco wrote: post #6
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…

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.

Seems more like a networking opportunity personally

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#665

Post by dman »

davidcatalano wrote: post #626
echelon wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source has been hijacked by trillion dollar hyperscalers. It's time we switch to "fair source" or "equitable source". Put MAU/DAU/ARR/market cap limits in your license. Open to everyone with a market cap under $1B or revenues under $100M. All others, please see our "business@" email. Place viral terms like the AGPL that requires that all other systems touched by your code to be open - especially the backend/serv…

Yes when projects like Alpine Linux are in the ropes due to lack of funding something needs to change.

Wait what? I didnt realize this was the case and I say this as a huge alpine fan. Will look into whether there is an option to setup a recurring donation and will do so if its the case.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#666

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

pjmlp wrote: post #214
ixwt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft at it again with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

MIT License.

I've been downvoted for it before, but I still say that permissive licenses are charity to megacorps. If you want your work to get turned into a proprietary program without any compensation to you, use a permissive license. If you want to at least have a chance they'll contribute back & maybe pay you for a proprietary license, pick a free-software license.

If you pick a corporate charity license, don't act surprise when corporations take the charity!

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#667

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

Nemo_bis wrote: post #332
pjmlp wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding the copyright notice to be in compliance, does not change the fact that the author has chosen a licence that allows anyone, including Microsoft, to do whatever they feel like, without giving back. So eventually, with this bad publicity, they will add the copyright notice, and move on with whatever else they are doing, in full compliance.

Microsoft did not bother to respect even the MIT license, so clearly the license is not the problem.

That doesn't mean that they would have completely ignored all implications of any other license. The author of the code chose a license that explicitly allows exactly what happened, other than Microsoft did not include a text file that nobody is going to read.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#668

Post by timewizard »

WD-42 wrote: post #382
NobodyNada wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Hacker News. Temporarily embarrassed billionaires who want to vouchsafe evil behavior in case their own future offers them an opportunity to steal from the community on a similar scale.

If you lose open source you lose a major resource. You should be looking for ways to protect these authors instead of explaining how "technically it's all actually their fault for being generous in the first place."

This position is absurdly scummy.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#669

Post by timewizard »

WalterBright wrote: post #540
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.

The D programming language code is all Boost licensed and billion dollar companies are welcome to take advantage of it.

How much consulting revenue does it generate for you?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#670

Post by nickelpro »

jeanlucas wrote: post #614
alphazard wrote: post #606

There's a lot of blame being assigned to Microsoft, the entire corporation. But I doubt this was a heavily contemplated decision by a room full of executives, or voted on by the shareholders. More likely, this is a way for someone to get ahead in their career at Microsoft by passing off a successful open source project as their own accomplishment. They can steal users from the original project and justify using Micro…

Yeah, but Microsoft's response to this will actually be a company official position. It's a space to keep watching.

A flash in the pan about a random fork they have on Github with It baffles me that HN has no idea how large organizations work. The boss's boss's boss has no idea what random worker bees are doing.
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