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As I have no idea about .NET development, I don't really understand the relation between these projects and .NET Foundation. Is .NET foundation paying them mon

As I have no idea about .NET development, I don't really understand the relation between these projects and .NET Foundation. Is .NET foundation paying them money? Or what is the relationship between the projects and Microsoft/.NET Foundation? Reading the "apology" on github, it seems that .NET Foundation/Microsoft thinks those projects are essentially theirs, and they are free to put them under their enterprise account to "simplify billing" https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/39 https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/39 But reading this article, and the one below, the maintainers think otherwise? https://www.glennwatson.net/posts/dnf-problems-solutions https://www.glennwatson.net/posts/dnf-problems-solutions There are also some notes about copyright that I don't understand. Who owns the copyright? Microsoft or the maintainers? edit: From the github "apology": > Projects might not fully understand what joining the .NET Foundation means. We share a checklist with project maintainers on project changes they accept as part of becoming part of the .NET Foundation. That’s obviously not sufficient. We will post a new document that describes what you can expect when your project joins the .NET Foundation. This will include changes (observable or legal) and new benefits. It will also include changes that could occur later. ....ok? That seems scary, coming from Microsoft

rob74 5y ago
Yeah, scary, in the "you signed an agreement without reading it properly and now your souls, er, your projects belong to us" sense. And in the case of WiX Toolset, they apparently never agreed to the terms & conditions of the .NET foundation in the first place. Also, being forced by the .NET foundation to give an account admin permissions for your repos, and then having that account move your repos to GitHub Enterprise without your permission, even without informing you... I can understand how that creates mistrust. According to the article, the only thing the .NET foundation did for them was provide certificates, other than that they did nothing for a very long time. And then, of course, this...
- robmen 5y ago
  Well, the .NET Foundation also holds the copyright and provides the CLA bots. But the great bulk of your point is correct.
oaiey 5y ago
This is not about the legal ownership. This is about operational ownership. All these maintainers understood what they signed. However, they expected to be supported to do their work mostly their way. For good reasons since other foundations do it that way. The .NET Foundation is however not communicating and supporting the community but focus on legal ownership including capabilities to enforce that (that is were some of the CoC and billing comments come from). So it is mismatch of expectation. To blame is the foundation, because what you can read on the web page and the feedback of the maintainer community does not fit to their agenda so they could have understood this early and resolve it peacefully (they are the ones in power). This is about open source leadership. They screwed up. Legally this is (mostly) fine, content wise it is (mostly) fine but the way how they operate is not okay. And saying sorry is not enough
- robmen 5y ago
  This may have nailed the issue most closely yet. It took you a lot fewer words than me too. :)
emn13 5y ago
While it's easy to see how this sounds scary; the flip-side of this is that it's not clear if there's more to it than misperception/miscommunication. To take the example from the blogpost; the author was particularly scared by the move into github enterprise. I don't want to dismiss that worry; but on the other hand - the only consequence of that move seems to have been that logged in members of the project have a very slight UI change. Obviously that's not what people are worried about; they're worried about... well, what else does that mean? Well, what else does that mean? Is this really something to worry about, or is this really just a misunderstanding - or both?
- lawl 5y ago
  > Well, what else does that mean? Is this really something to worry about, or is this really just a misunderstanding - or both? It means microsoft has hijacked the repo. I don't think their intentions or anything else matters. This is imo crossing a huge line. I was always kind of wary of github, ever since MS acquired it, and I have always made sure to not get trapped by using any lock in features. But I never assumed their lock-in includes going full SourceForge and hijacking people's repos. Honestly, if GitHub/MS don't come out with a very good statement on how and why this will never happen again, I'll need to figure something out and make sure people use a different URL instead of pointing to my github. It's absolutely something to worry about. If someone breaks into your house, you should be worried irregardless of if they stole something, or not.
  - PretzelPirate 5y ago
    I’m not sure how this is related to Microsoft’s control of GitHub. This was the .NET Foundation using application-level permissions that it was granted on each repo. It wouldn’t matter what platform was used, if it supported re-organizing project hierarchy, this could have happened.
    - robmen 5y ago
      You are exactly correct here. This isn't about Microsoft or GitHub. It is solely about the .NET Foundation's actions.
smarx007 5y ago
I am really struggling to understand how those projects cannot be under .NET foundation control. If you ever worked on an Apache Foundation or Eclipse Foundation project, you know that you must use their tools for code hosting and processes for maintainer/lead election. That said, as a project lead of an Eclipse Foundation hosted project (not Eclipse IDE related), I never had the Foundation do something major to our project without properly disseminating the info about on a publicly readable mailing list in advance. P.S. I read that .NET foundation board now meets every day. I think Apache/Eclipse Foundation boards meet every 1..3..12 months, at least judging by the rarity of emails summarizing their meeting minutes. If a board needs to meet every day, something must be really wrong.
- robmen 5y ago
  Something is really wrong right now that's why they might be meeting every day. Your experience with the Eclipse Foundation is very different from how the .NET Foundation has interacted. On top of that, communication has been very poor for a long time. I believe those two differences are at or near the root of all of these issues.

rob74 5y ago

Yeah, scary, in the "you signed an agreement without reading it properly and now your souls, er, your projects belong to us" sense. And in the case of WiX Toolset, they apparently never agreed to the terms & conditions of the .NET foundation in the first place. Also, being forced by the .NET foundation to give an account admin permissions for your repos, and then having that account move your repos to GitHub Enterprise without your permission, even without informing you... I can understand how that creates mistrust. According to the article, the only thing the .NET foundation did for them was provide certificates, other than that they did nothing for a very long time. And then, of course, this...

robmen 5y ago
Well, the .NET Foundation also holds the copyright and provides the CLA bots. But the great bulk of your point is correct.

oaiey 5y ago

This is not about the legal ownership. This is about operational ownership. All these maintainers understood what they signed. However, they expected to be supported to do their work mostly their way. For good reasons since other foundations do it that way. The .NET Foundation is however not communicating and supporting the community but focus on legal ownership including capabilities to enforce that (that is were some of the CoC and billing comments come from). So it is mismatch of expectation. To blame is the foundation, because what you can read on the web page and the feedback of the maintainer community does not fit to their agenda so they could have understood this early and resolve it peacefully (they are the ones in power). This is about open source leadership. They screwed up. Legally this is (mostly) fine, content wise it is (mostly) fine but the way how they operate is not okay. And saying sorry is not enough

robmen 5y ago
This may have nailed the issue most closely yet. It took you a lot fewer words than me too. :)

emn13 5y ago

While it's easy to see how this sounds scary; the flip-side of this is that it's not clear if there's more to it than misperception/miscommunication. To take the example from the blogpost; the author was particularly scared by the move into github enterprise. I don't want to dismiss that worry; but on the other hand - the only consequence of that move seems to have been that logged in members of the project have a very slight UI change. Obviously that's not what people are worried about; they're worried about... well, what else does that mean? Well, what else does that mean? Is this really something to worry about, or is this really just a misunderstanding - or both?

lawl 5y ago
> Well, what else does that mean? Is this really something to worry about, or is this really just a misunderstanding - or both? It means microsoft has hijacked the repo. I don't think their intentions or anything else matters. This is imo crossing a huge line. I was always kind of wary of github, ever since MS acquired it, and I have always made sure to not get trapped by using any lock in features. But I never assumed their lock-in includes going full SourceForge and hijacking people's repos. Honestly, if GitHub/MS don't come out with a very good statement on how and why this will never happen again, I'll need to figure something out and make sure people use a different URL instead of pointing to my github. It's absolutely something to worry about. If someone breaks into your house, you should be worried irregardless of if they stole something, or not.
- PretzelPirate 5y ago
  I’m not sure how this is related to Microsoft’s control of GitHub. This was the .NET Foundation using application-level permissions that it was granted on each repo. It wouldn’t matter what platform was used, if it supported re-organizing project hierarchy, this could have happened.
  - robmen 5y ago
    You are exactly correct here. This isn't about Microsoft or GitHub. It is solely about the .NET Foundation's actions.

smarx007 5y ago

I am really struggling to understand how those projects cannot be under .NET foundation control. If you ever worked on an Apache Foundation or Eclipse Foundation project, you know that you must use their tools for code hosting and processes for maintainer/lead election. That said, as a project lead of an Eclipse Foundation hosted project (not Eclipse IDE related), I never had the Foundation do something major to our project without properly disseminating the info about on a publicly readable mailing list in advance. P.S. I read that .NET foundation board now meets every day. I think Apache/Eclipse Foundation boards meet every 1..3..12 months, at least judging by the rarity of emails summarizing their meeting minutes. If a board needs to meet every day, something must be really wrong.

robmen 5y ago
Something is really wrong right now that's why they might be meeting every day. Your experience with the Eclipse Foundation is very different from how the .NET Foundation has interacted. On top of that, communication has been very poor for a long time. I believe those two differences are at or near the root of all of these issues.