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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#701

Post by ramses0 »

rglover wrote: post #639

This is why I wrote the SAUCR license [1] for my full-stack JavaScript framework. A lot of OSS developers get "got" by the ideological arguments of OSS and shy away from doing "source available" (which if we set down the Kool-Aid, is in effect open source because...the source is open). If you're an independent or small team and want to protect your IP as best you can while keeping source available for learning/auditi…

That's not a license, it's wishful thinking in template form.

The fact that you have "fill in the blanks here" in a "legal" document makes this actively harmful.

I respect the sentiment, but it's entirely the wrong direction. Better looking at the Creative Commons license picker/builder as a better example of a starting point.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#702

Post by mvdtnz »

baq wrote: post #430
diggan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence Does it matter what license you use if they actively ignore the terms in the license you did chose? MIT requires attribution, but they didn't. Why would any other terms be different? You surely could have put "You must license your project the same as the one you forked from" and they still would have ignored it, not sure what the difference would have been…

If you worked at a megacorp you’d know they care a whole lot about not allowing GPL code anywhere near their propertiary repos; this is usually enforced by IT security (NOT engineering) with dedicated scanners, confirmed matches are at least highest priority bugs.

Not just mega corps. Everywhere I've worked for the past 10+ years treats GPL code like leprosy. You just don't go anywhere near it for any reason. It's the first thing you look for when taking on a new external dependency.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#703

Post by andrewaylett »

ryao wrote: post #268
scosman wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they forked from before the author had a license, it’s worse. MS had no right to use it. I’ve contributed to plenty of project that don’t have the per-file copyrights. It’s a choice not a mistake.

> If they forked from before the author had a license, it’s worse. MS had no right to use it. You are right, provided he did not have a notice saying it was MIT licensed elsewhere. > I’ve contributed to plenty of project that don’t have the per-file copyrights. It’s a choice not a mistake. I would consider it to be both a choice and a mistake. The two are not mutually exclusive. There is no evidence in the fork that…

> but part of that is the original author’s fault

No: the original author could have made it easier to comply, and you could argue that he acted foolishly in not doing so, but that doesn't make it his fault.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#704

Post by franga2000 »

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…

There's a difference between what the license does/doesn't allow and what is/isn't a dick move.

MIT is commonly used for cases where you don't want to scare away potential corporate USERS by the "virality" of something like the GPL. This does not mean that the authors are completely fine with their work being repackaged and DISTRIBUTED as if the company wrote it themselves.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#705

Post by frumplestlatz »

ryao wrote: post #180
veltas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficient but a good idea to put copyright in all files. Technically if there's no license found then it should be considered automatically copyrighted, with no permissions to copy. So leaving copyright license out actually makes it less open source.

The license does not necessarily need to be in the files. It could be a project level license in LICENSE, which is what the author here did.

It really should be in all files, not because it’s legally necessary, but because it’s the best way to ensure that the correct license/copyright follows the code to which it applies.

Consider future contributions; the contributor’s copyright should apply only to the files to which they contributed.

Similarly, consider any code that you incorporate from external sources; that code’s copyright and license should only apply to the files in which it has been incorporated.

Lastly, consider the case where the code is copied out of your project to be incorporated in a different project. The license and copyright should follow with those files (and if your files don’t include copyright and license at the top, it’s very likely the person doing that copying will insert it themselves for this same reason).

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#706

Post by sundarurfriend »

joshuaissac wrote: post #554
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://discourse.writefreesoftware.org/t/anti-cla-action-wh...

For an argument from the other side, here is the GNU project's defence of CLAs: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html

> If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.

> In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment

FSF is not the average recipient of copyright assignments - I'd be much more comfortable giving copyright assignment to FSF than to pretty much any other entity:

* They're much less likely to rugpull on the contributors and change the licence to something non-free: even pessimistically assuming their leadership got subverted somehow, doing something like this would pretty much be the deathknell to FSF. So there's a known, very high cost to the negative side of CLAs.

* They're much more likely than the average project or corporation to actually use the positive benefits of copyright assignment, to pursue legal action and enforce the Free licences the way it empowers them to.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#707

Post by fragmede »

timewizard wrote: post #668
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.

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 a…

Ah yes, “temporarily embarrassed billionaires” — spoken by someone defending billion-dollar companies blowing past the only condition of a permissive license, then getting mad when people point that out.

You don’t get to posture as anti-corporate while handwaving away an actual license violation just because the license was permissive. That’s not protecting the community - that’s making it easier to exploit. You’re not railing against theft, you’re normalizing it.

Either the community’s rights matter, or they don’t. Pick a side.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#709

Post by da_chicken »

alphazard wrote: post #653
billllll wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's fine that you think corporations are supposed to work that way, and I don't necessarily disagree. But they don't in practice. They don't feel the consequences of bad actions because of legal economies of scale. They also don't backpropagate consequences from the company's bottom line to the individuals responsible. If you were to rectify this so that it works exactly as you envision, you would have made incredib…

I think the point being made is that the executives are either responsible for the company, or they're not actually running the company at all.

Like this isn't some tragedy of the commons situation. This isn't some situation where the company is a cooperative confederation of equal partners. Either shit rolls uphill, or you don't have leadership at all. You don't get to pass the buck on criticism because you made a decision out of self interest, either.

"It's not technically illegal," is the most blasé, low-effort rule for behavior. It's why only twelve-year-olds and lawyers use it as a defense for poor behaviors and poor ethics.

Being a POS earns you a reputation for being a POS, and that includes people publicly pointing you out as a POS in public forums.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#710

Post by cogman10 »

elzbardico wrote: post #673
cogman10 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Big corps like to keep the ability to pay for stuff out of the hands of individuals and isolated in bureaucratic nightmares I'd say my experience is exactly the contrary. Middle managers in my experience in mega corps have a lot of expense latitude for these kinds of things, expedited approvals, corporate credit cards. At least in the finance and tech world.

Could very well just be my company that's jaded me a bit about spending along with the work I did at HP. Both have a pretty strong penny-pinching attitude for common employees and lower-level management.
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