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Getting forked by Microsoft

philiplaine.com

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Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#921

Post by pabs3 »

kweingar wrote: post #888
pabs3 wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL doesn't require contributing back, only contributing forward to users.

With GPL you don't have to actively work to upstream your patches, but in practice you can't withhold your patches from upstream. If you add a feature, they get to have it too. Unlike permissively licensed software, where you can add proprietary features.

Depends how savvy your users are, and what your users lose if they do send your patches upstream. For example, GRSec or RedHat both drop you as a customer (so no security updates) if you republish their patches publicly. Or a paid iPhone app's users probably wouldn't know what source code is, let alone where/how/bother to republish it for the benefit of other users.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#922

Post by palata »

saagarjha wrote: post #869
palata wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely not. How would it be infringement to write your own code from scratch?

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#924

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

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 corporations _are_ end-users. They're just using a project to make adoption of their platform easier. Just because a user passes on the benefit of their usage to more than a single human doesn't mean they're not a user.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#925

Post by spit2wind »

cryptonector wrote: post #892
spit2wind wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MIT requires attribution, but they didn't I'm confused how you and others reach this conclusion. No, it doesn't. The MIT license is one of the shortest free license that exists: Copyright (c) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the r…

> > MIT requires attribution, but they didn't > I'm confused how you and others reach this conclusion. No, it doesn't. | Copyright (c) | | ... | | The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. The copyright notice that must be preserved includes the copyright holders' names , and that is a form of attribution.

Ah okay, thank you

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#926

Post by gnuly »

hypercube33 wrote: post #385
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…

This article and your comment reminds me of the story about winget/appget https://medium.com/@keivan/the-day-appget-died-e9a5c96c8b22 Note - maybe they don't pay you the developer sometimes, however.

[dead]

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#927

Post by robertlagrant »

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…

> the public opinion might change so that juries (representing the public opinion in courts) will indeed begin to judge against Microsoft in the way that I described

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how juries shouldn't work.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#928

Post by robertlagrant »

lemper wrote: post #883
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…

yea, sure. but at least pay him for the "discussion". also, next time you people approach opensore maintainers, pay them for their time.

The maintainers are adults too - they can set their price.

Re: Getting forked by Microsoft

#930

Post by noobermin »

So this is a peanut gallery esque reply, but this sort of thing is what GPL was meant to avoid. I know GNU has had a lot of detractors and criticism, but you cannot and should not expect large orgs to respect community norms around open source. Permissive licenses are NOT better in this world where different players have different levels of power relative to each other.

Sometimes I wonder if all the shitting on free software in general is in fact cynical and in bad faith by actors who want your labour for free.

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