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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#861

Post by saagarjha »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #794
9_ZPK7- wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it means that all of Microsoft's software now (spiritually!) will become public domain. You have said many things like this in this thread. I don't think you understand how laws or courts or legal fees work. Good luck defending yourself against MS's army of lawyers during your court proceedings though!

> I don't think you understand how laws or courts or legal fees work. Good luck defending yourself against MS's army of lawyers during your court proceedings though! I have no hope that the courts currently (!) agree with this. But let us spread the gospel so that as many people as possible know how Microsoft's "real" stance on copyright is. If a lot of people become aware of this and this truth stays in lots of peop…

If I accidentally pick up your jacket instead of mine and apologize when you point it out this doesn't mean I give you blanket rights to steal my stuff forever. If I keep doing it, then it's probably worth looking into, but you're going to have to bring up evidence of serial abuse for that.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#862

Post by saagarjha »

isp wrote: post #795
frumplestlatz wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person that did the forking and removal of copyright text may simply not know that it needed to stay there. That person never learned what plagiarism is throughout their entire academic career, much less once they landed at Microsoft?

There are other possibilities, for example, the person may have thought that they were complying with the MIT licence by releasing the new project under the MIT licence too + including a mention of the original project in the README. This, of course, is incorrect, and a cursory read of the very short licence text would show it to be incorrect. But I, too, am strongly favouring Hanlon's razor.

Hanlon's razor can indicate an absence of malice, but that doesn't mean what they did wasn't wrong, nor should Microsoft skimp on taking steps so it never happens again.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#863

Post by saagarjha »

kassner wrote: post #819
wilg wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should neither rewrite the commits nor take the old packages offline. It's not worth a huge potential clusterfuck when the issue has been fixed on the latest version.

They should absolutely do it. They made a serious mistake and should pay for it, even if that means every Microsoft developer having to rebase all their WIP branches. The more expensive it gets the more they’ll pay attention to those things in the future.

Why not just fire the entire division? Maybe they should shut down the company?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#864

Post by saagarjha »

renewiltord wrote: post #700
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…

[flagged]

I think you misunderstand what direction leadership flows in our political system.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#865

Post by saagarjha »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #547
ryao wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but I imagine a lawyer would find it alright if they just restore the missing notice. I do not imagine there is much else that can be done here since he cannot really claim to have been significantly damaged by the absence of a single line, but these matters are best discussed with attorneys.

I imagine a lawyer sending them a settlement offer for the blatant copyright violation they committed would get them to settle for a five-digit amount, since just the cost of discovery (and potentially having the "let's just fork it" dirty email laundry aired in public court) would be much higher.

I doubt this developer has the money to burn on a lawsuit like that.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#866

Post by saagarjha »

saulpw wrote: post #613
unsungNovelty wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> the freedom to change the software to the user's needs. How is this not exactly helping end-users? Corporations are producers, not users. And no one is complaining about MSFT or any other corporation using OSS as users, but only about co-opting it as a producer.

The license discussed above explicitly tries to prevent Microsoft from using the software.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#868

Post by soraminazuki »

jenadine wrote: post #255
orthoxerox wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL without CLA, to be precise. AGPL with CLA is a trap.

What's wrong with CLA? I've contributed to project with CLA. Have been using them and then wanted a feature and the project accepted my patch. Ther are still many people contributing to project with CLA.

A CLA is what legally allowed Oracle to release the once copyleft OpenSolaris under a closed source license, including code contributed outside of the previous owner company, Sun. CLA is a tool for companies to change the deal after the deal.

There's a famous talk about this, which resulted in many us referring to Oracle and its billionaire CEO as the "lawn mower."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2482s

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#869

Post by saagarjha »

palata wrote: post #740
robmccoll wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, you would want to do one of: a) Keep any code that you've pulled in from another project in its own directory structure with a license file indicating where it came from and its licensing terms. b) If you intend to modify the code or integrate it more tightly with your own, copy the notice into each source file that was taken and perhaps put a pre-amble along the lines of "Portions of this file were copied…

Generally, what I take from this discussion is that what you want to do is get as much inspiration as you want from the code, but absolutely rewrite it from scratch such that it is yours and yours only.

That would still be infringement.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#870

Post by soraminazuki »

soraminazuki wrote: post #868
jenadine wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with CLA? I've contributed to project with CLA. Have been using them and then wanted a feature and the project accepted my patch. Ther are still many people contributing to project with CLA.

A CLA is what legally allowed Oracle to release the once copyleft OpenSolaris under a closed source license, including code contributed outside of the previous owner company, Sun. CLA is a tool for companies to change the deal after the deal. There's a famous talk about this, which resulted in many us referring to Oracle and its billionaire CEO as the "lawn mower." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2482s

And of course, someone else here already mentioned the lawn mower lol.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43755147

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