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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#801

Post by LtWorf »

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…

When legal reads "GPL" they go completely crazy. Had it been GPL they'd have most likely told the developers to stay really really far away from that code.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#802

Post by LtWorf »

mvdtnz wrote: post #702
baq wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a megacorp using my GPL library internally. They've even blogged about it.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#803

Post by spiritplumber »

lachie83 wrote: post #722

Hi Philip, I'm Lachlan from the Cloud Native Ecosystem team at Microsoft. Our team works in the cloud native open-source community with a goal of being great open-source collaborators in these projects and communities, and I’m sorry that this happened. We appreciate your leadership and collaboration on Spegel and see your project solving a real challenge for the cloud native community. I wanted to thank you for your…

Do better next time, eh?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#804

Post by pessimizer »

hinkley wrote: post #602
bogwog wrote: post #395

This sucks and I feel for the maintainer, but it really is their own fault for publishing as MIT. However, that is a pretty common mistake that most people never learn until they've been screwed by it. The OSI have done a good job at convincing devs to open themselves up to exploitation for the benefit of big tech companies, and I find it hard to fault people for falling for that. The social pressure is very high. Bu…

Open source is very much like a party. You are perfectly entitled to expect the host to be gracious and the guests not to steal things. “It’s your fault for inviting them in” is victim blaming and horizontal aggression. The people at the top of the pyramid love it when the peasants fight each other. Saves them getting callouses.

Open source is a licensing scheme, not a party.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#805

Post by epanchin »

wilg wrote: post #790
tacker2000 wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that you got caught you are fixing it and writing fancy PR fluff. An org the size of MS should have clear policies and processes of how to handle open source forks like this. Unless we assume “bad faith” here. This is a pretty bad look. I wonder how many other projects are not attributed correctly. Are you checking up on them also or just waiting for the next HN post? That said, the author of Spegel should have u…

I mean what else are they supposed to say or do to correct a mistake other than "sorry, here's what happened, we have fixed it, we are taking steps to reduce the chances of it happening again"? Sometimes you just have to correct an error.

Ideally a list of other projects they have since found and attributed.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#806

Post by Zambyte »

Zambyte wrote: post #44
sublimefire wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and they do redistribute under MIT as well, there is no foul play here

https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/LICENSE I don't see "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" (the "above copyright notice" in https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/main/LICENSE ) anywhere. Where do you see it?

Funnily enough, they did add the copyright notice now, and since I didn't permalink to the commit, this looks a bit silly :P

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#807

Post by qingcharles »

guywithahat wrote: post #776
kyleee wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe as a show of good faith you could send the original creator 10 or 20k usd as a thank you. Talk is cheap

This sounds like a good idea but getting the checkbook out at a company like Microsoft probably takes 3-5 meetings, and saying you want to donate because you accidentally stole their code and put the company at (theoretical) risk of a lawsuit seems like a bad conversation starter with management. I like the thought though

Not my experience with MS. They seemed to be pretty low on the "red tape" scale.

Maybe they should have 3-5 meetings before forking OSS projects though :)

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#808

Post by qingcharles »

jxf wrote: post #161

In distant times (before Microsoft's Satya era) I was the maintainer of a popular OSS product that scratched an important itch for specialist people who were doing work in the early cloud days. It solved my own problems, and I didn't want to make a business out of it, so I was content to release it as OSS. A Microsoft director who ran a portfolio of product teams reached out to ask about a "collaboration". I said I'd…

They definitely will open the checkbook pretty quick for small, well-defined projects like this. Stuff where they don't want to waste their internal resources; stuff that has an end game, like "build this complete widget and then go away."

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#809

Post by NewsaHackO »

epanchin wrote: post #805
wilg wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean what else are they supposed to say or do to correct a mistake other than "sorry, here's what happened, we have fixed it, we are taking steps to reduce the chances of it happening again"? Sometimes you just have to correct an error.

Ideally a list of other projects they have since found and attributed.

From the tone of the response to Microsoft response, people will not be happy unless Microsoft publicly executed the engineers that did it.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#810

Post by mogwire »

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…

Licenses don’t matter and are rarely challenged in court.

This is the nature of OSS. Out right theft in hopes you will never know until it’s too late.

Very rarely do large corporations contribute their fair share back to any project.

Does this make me money and/or solve a problem quickly? Fork it and it’s mine.

Until we stop giving money to large corporations that profit off the free work of others, then it will never stop.

And it won’t because we like low cost solutions that work.

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