Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 1001 posts

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#691

Post by j45 »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #666
pjmlp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Thinking about what you said - how much of the cloud providers might be an open-source wrapper?

Cloud providers have long taken hard work of open-source projects and packaged it up to be a web administered solution.

There is something to be said for putting together an experience. Including that it wouldn't be possible without everything it does.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#692

Post by Mountain_Skies »

echelon wrote: post #605
siva7 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

>Open to everyone with a market cap under $1B or revenues under $100M.

That would also mirror what they do with tools like Visual Studio, which is free until you hit a certain number of developers or revenue.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#693

Post by cobbaut »

> 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.

I bet the Spyglass people had the same thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#694

Post by j45 »

lurk2 wrote: post #377
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?

Maybe AI couldn't explain it to them?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#695

Post by kstrauser »

koiueo wrote: post #314
vinceguidry wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't ship any of these anymore.

And guess what application developers install immediately after getting their MacBooks? The GPL licensed git. If I'm forced to use MacOS, I'm fine installing git, GNU make or whatever I want for myself. But I don't see any downsides in Apple being unable to distribute those applications together with their OS.

> And guess what application developers install immediately after getting their MacBooks? The GPL licensed git.

Why would they do that? I didn't, because macOS ships with version 2.39.5 as /usr/bin/git. You're free to upgrade to a newer version, of course, but the included one is recent enough for most uses.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#696

Post by jandrewrogers »

krupan wrote: post #460
jandrewrogers wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL code does not exist in a vacuum. To be maximally useful, GPL code must coexist with source code subject to different legal, regulatory, and licensing regimes. GPL use is only “not restricted” if you completely ignore that compliance with GPL can unavoidably result in civil and criminal liability. Sure, those potential users are not required to avoid civil and criminal liability but that is not a serious argument.…

I don't think you understand the difference between use and distribution, between running code and copying code. All source code is automatically copyrighted and restricted (at least in the US) and you must follow copyright laws and license agreements for all source code that you copy and distribute. GPL licensed code is not special in this regard. How you use GPL software has zero restrictions.

I understand just fine. Placing any obligations on distribution, either mandating or prohibiting, is a de facto restriction on use in many contexts. There is a lot of source code that you might want to remix with GPL code that the user has no control over the legality of its distribution. That situation comes up often enough, sometimes in unplanned or unexpected ways, to strongly incentivize the blanket bans on GPL source code you commonly see.

No one has to like it but that is the reality. Pretending these aren’t real and valid concerns, often by people who have no power to change these things even if they want to, does a disservice to the health of the open source ecosystem.

It is why I stopped releasing GPL code and went purely permissive. I’ve seen the issues it causes people who just want to use the code many times. (Ironically, even for me with my own GPL code but at least I can relicense.)

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#697

Post by armchairhacker »

echelon wrote: post #605
siva7 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Then the company just re-implements your project; they have the resources to.

Most software isn't hard to reverse-engineer, and most people aren't exceptional; if a group is big enough to create a GPL-licensed product that competes with Microsoft's, they're big enough to create an MIT-licensed product that competes with Microsoft's.

I like GP’s comment “don’t discuss anything in private and/or offer priority support without being paid”. Also:

- Ensure you get attribution, and support others who deserve attribution

- Develop open-source alternatives to paid programs

- Donate to others who write open-source

I disagree that open-source contributed much to companies becoming so rich. I believe it was more that people gave them (money and) private data, e.g. made posts and interactions that only exist on their locked-down platform. I doubt a lack of open-source and accessible development tools would’ve prevented Google and Facebook; if anything, they would've been founded by richer or more networked people. And it certainly won't prevent them now.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#698

Post by PeterZaitsev »

Not including original license may well be oversight, It is very unlikely Microsoft would intentionally to do something like this, which costs them really nothing, but not doing it can post a lot in the future in the legal costs.

For the rest - if you chose MIT license for your work you should expect it can be used by someone to create software based on it, including commercially licenses

I would treat anything you're releasing as MIT as the gift to the world. This is how Open Source suppose to work - people building on each other work, often without properly thanking authors and maintainers.

If you want to reserve some rights - chose who can use your software and for what purpose, ie ensure "Microsofts" of this world can't use your code in a way you do not approve, you should not release it as Open Source.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#699

Post by darepublic »

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…

They created the atmosphere that encourages or even necessitates shenanigans like these. Absolutely blame the corporation

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#700

Post by renewiltord »

billllll wrote: post #617
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…

Just because the shareholders didn't vote on it, or an exec didn't explicitly say "hey steal this" does not absolve the company. Leadership doesn't get to throw up their hands and say "not my fault" when something bad happens. It is ultimately the responsibility of the company and its people to create a system where things like this are discouraged or prohibited. Not doing so is tacit approval, especially in this cas…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN