15 ms·
The attitude in these threads always boggles my mind. When YOU, your teammates or someone else you know makes a mistake, then it’s just a mistake. But when
by osolo 5y ago
The attitude in these threads always boggles my mind. When YOU, your teammates or someone else you know makes a mistake, then it’s just a mistake. But when someone at Microsoft makes a mistake it’s because Microsoft is evil and by extension so is the person who offended.
“It’s a big company”, you say. They should have a process! And I’m sad to say, they do/will have a process exactly because of this attitude. Then, everyone wonders why it takes forever to fix that bug they’re furious about or why features are slow to come.
Full disclosure: I work for MS, though have nothing to do with this. It’s a huge company. I know hundreds of people and most of them are upstanding and try to do the right thing.
- beervirus 5y agoY’all are not entitled to the benefit of the doubt any more than obviously-evil companies like Facebook are.
- voakbasda 5y agoFor those of us that remember the “old” Microsoft, they are still obviously evil. Nothing they have done will change that view. Incidents like this prove that this zebra cannot change its stripes. Never. Trust. Microsoft.
- beervirus 5y agoI mean yeah. But for a few years there, they were at least not as obviously horrible as they used to be, or as some other companies were.
- Dylan16807 5y ago> Never. Trust. Microsoft. Good advice. > Incidents like this prove that this zebra cannot change its stripes. Nope! This was a simple mistake that would have gained them nothing.
- dang 5y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop (most recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29501677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29501677). If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We particularly don't want the online callout/shaming culture here. nhttps://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=online%20shaming%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
- indymike 5y agoMicrosoft has lawyers and more layers of management than grandma's lasagna.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Brave-Steak 5y ago
- junon 5y agoThe difference is, most engineers I know respect and understand licenses. If you work at Microsoft - a software company - you should too.
- nomel 5y agoRespecting a license is completely orthogonal to the unintended behavior of an automation used on something it wasn’t really meant for (fork rather than a new repo)
- drnonsense42 5y agoYeah, get that promotion! Developers, developers, developers!
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoI think your comments does not add anything meaningful to discussion. Yes, Microsoft screwed up. Yes, a Microsoft employee is trying to make excuses for them. This does not mean we couldn't have a civilized discussion, though.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hackertux 5y agoAll discussions are civilized until you start throwing stones at each other.
- dang 5y agoPosting like this will get you banned here, so please don't. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aynyc 5y agoThere are genuine mistakes, and there are some due to incompetency. Both can be somewhat execused. However, if you look at the changelog, I don't know how you are gonna say with a straight face that it's a "mistake".
- bakul 5y agoHow is running a bot to change copyright notices a /mistake/? > Full disclosure: I work for MS It is difficult to see the reality distortion field you are in from the inside.
- yawnxyz 5y agoI used to work for MS and... it's still easy to see it from the inside lol
- newjersey 5y agoI don't work at Microsoft but I can confirm. There are so many "suggestions" for Microsoft Teams. I don't know if there exists another company whose employees are more critical of Microsoft Teams than Microsoft. My personal conspiracy theory is Teams would have died long ago if not for strong support from the top.
- tyrrvk 5y agoTeams is garbage, every time I use it I loathe computing in general.
- fault1 5y agoteams seems important strategically for microsoft however, if it truly wants to remain as the standard 'operating system' for enterprises. but yeah, friends of mine who work at github say the worst thing about the acquisition was Teams
- windexh8er 5y agoMicrosoft, a collective group of people trying to do the right thing, has made many choices over their time. Many of those choices have been in direct violation of things like, but not limited to, the spirit of the Internet, anti-competiton, spying on their customers, and many other negative things. Should we have let those things slide because Microsoft employs others that weren't involved? No. You can say this may have been a mistake but that is a slippery slope. Microsoft deserves negative press on "mistakes" because this acts as a balance to keep the power they wield in check. Beyond that you have a significant bias against biting the hand that feeds.
- throwaway277432 5y agoThis is their process. Very hard to argue these are all mistakes: ippsample (Apache -> MIT) https://github.com/microsoft/ippsample/commit/938bff17c7286823c4bb5e5097313f5ef90a02e6 https://github.com/microsoft/ippsample/commit/938bff17c72868... huggingface-transformers (Apache -> MIT): https://github.com/microsoft/huggingface-transformers/commit/1d5d50bad9afb6ffafb71a1073d9e496996188a5 https://github.com/microsoft/huggingface-transformers/commit... health-cards-tests (MIT changed) https://github.com/microsoft/health-cards-tests/commit/5649b54a56e1f62da3c7dfe489579dc4cfd1fa8f https://github.com/microsoft/health-cards-tests/commit/5649b... CUPS (Apache -> MIT) https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/ad69bcc78bdea3fea3f09fe56674daea821bb407 https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/ad69bcc78bdea3fea3f... Credit to this reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/roa9xz/comment/hpx67x2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/roa9xz/comment/...
- throwaway277432 5y ago(deleted)
- Tyriar 5y agoMS acquired that extension, Don works at MS now.
- throwaway277432 5y agoYou're right. Saw the reviewer on that PR but you were too quick and I couldn't delete my comment anymore.
- Tyriar 5y agoMS dev here. Thanks for calling this out. I contacted the GH@MS admins to look into this and to consider adding some safeguards to the tooling so this doesn't happen in the future.
- ordiel 5y agoAnd so ther revert the ones done in the past I hope...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- caslon 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- GrinningFool 5y agoMost processes for that type of thing come about only after someone has made a mistake. Source: experience in the industry. Including having made a similar mistake myself a couple of years back (and receiving a fair bit of internet hate for it)
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoProcesses are built ahead of time if people take a risk seriously.
- GrinningFool 5y agoThis is also true and is not mutually exclusive. People and organizations are fallible - much process is developed from learning.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fxtentacle 5y agoIn my opinion, this gets a strong reaction because: 1. They made similar mistakes in the past. 2. They didn't fix it for half a year. 3. They can expect strong financial benefits from making these mistakes. 4. They've recently burned a lot of goodwill by deliberately infringing licenses on a large scale when they trained Copilot. 5. They could have easily prevented this kind of mistakes. My summary would be that Microsoft deserves to be punished for making this mistake. If nothing bad happens now, then we'll have the same discussion again in half a year from now.
- tptacek 5y agoWhat financial benefits do they stand to gain by changing the name on an MIT license?
- fxtentacle 5y agoIn some cases, they changed other licenses to MIT. That would then allow them to train their AI models on this source code, or redistribute a closed-source monetized GPL rip-off. Team A) makes a mistake and changes the license. Team B) uses the fork under its new license and forgets to check the original branch's license. Two honest mistakes leading to a de-GPL-ed library.
- tptacek 5y agoHere, they're changed the name on an MIT license. What financial benefit do they stand to accrue from doing so? That's the question I'm asking.
- laumars 5y agoThis isn’t just one person making a silly mistake. This is a catalogue of failings. Where’s the peer review? Are you suggesting that anything published in the main branch on Microsoft’s GH org gets commit without any branch protection? And as pointed out by others, this isn’t even an isolated case. A healthy org doesn’t blame individuals, it blames failures in process. Thus Microsoft should own this mistake. Stating it’s the fault of an individual sounds more like your team operates a blame culture. Which, frankly, is a major red flag for a failing organisation.
- res0nat0r 5y agoIt's an automated bot, and it's an edge case that wasn't considered and is going to get fixed soon.
- timeon 5y agoIs forking on Github edge case?
- res0nat0r 5y agoApparently forking a 3rd party repo INTO the Microsoft github org is, yes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- laumars 5y agoI’m satisfied that the situation has been, or at least will be, resolved.m however there is still the unanswered question of who audits the changes the bot makes. There is a definitely lesson to be learnt here that bots aren’t infallible themselves and thus need reviewing too. Automation undoubtedly enhances our developer experience but we do need to ensure that automation doesn’t make unchecked changes. This is something a great many engineers can learn from too.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoif I did this to microsoft do you think I’d be granted the same leeway? could I tell them they need to cut me some slack because i’m one person and “there’s a process”?
- hatware 5y agoThe road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- jrmg 5y agoBut when someone at Microsoft makes a mistake… For many it’s not just Microsoft. Many assume negative intent from others most of the time. It much be such a frustrating, draining way to live.
- dpweb 5y agoYou have to take "companies doing good" always with a grain of salt. They're profit seeking companies, who act aggressively in their own interests. It doesn't have to be a debate on "good vs evil" I've always hated those terms applied in these contexts, it's childish and for the naive. Fix the problem and move on.
- gausswho 5y ago'Profit-seeking companies' begs a common pejorative that actively reduces the variety in the pool of companies. It may not be descriptive of the companies for which this is not an overarching motivation. Many of them really want to make a happy customer by crafting as good a thing possible for the price they charge, and be well by their employees. That said, I can relate the the cynicism especially for the giants. But painting them all as 'profit-seeking corporations' may deaden a satisfaction that comes from being a customer for a company you believe is good.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- michaelmrose 5y agoA company is merely a useful legal and organizational fiction. It's all people all the way down and those people don't act in a different moral context when they act on behalf of a company.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y agoIf you had a history of behaving as badly as Microsoft, I'd be as harsh on you as I am on Microsoft.
- 3np 5y agoAlong similar lines as my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684127 ...Given that several engineers employed at Microsoft have been part of armchairing this along everyone else now, why is not one of y'all (not necessarily you but come on, this is getting absurd, holidays aside) still just busy discussing around it rather than spending the <5 minutes required per repo to start actually fixing the fallout of it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SquishyPanda23 5y agoI'm just curious, is Microsoft actually in violation of the MIT license here? All future changes to this repo are copyright Microsoft, so Microsoft's copyright should be in the statement. Arguably there should be an additional statement indicating that LesnyRumcajs holds copyright to bits of code that Microsoft hasn't changed. But (1) exactly which bits have LesnyRumcajs's copyright would have to be verified by examining source control history. Since LesnyRumcajs's copyright statement is visible on any commit where LesnyRumcajs holds copyright, this setup makes actually makes it easy to verify which portions LesnyRumcajs has copyright claims on. (2) Including LesnyRumcajs's copyright statement in repo history seems to be all that the MIT license requires. The license doesn't forbid there being another more easily accessible copyright notice that doesn't list all copyright holders. It only requires that LesnyRumcajs's statement be included in all copies of the software, which it currently is.
- esrauch 5y agoWhat you're saying doesn't make any sense. If what you're saying was true you could take any MIT repro, fork it and replace the license with a fully proprietary copyright claim or any other license. You absolutely can't take code and just change the license to anything more permissive without the original copyright holders permission. It's definitely the case that at a given snapshot of the repository which has copyrighted code owned by someone else the copyright notice has to be there at that same revision.
- SquishyPanda23 5y agoThe license wasn't changed. But yes, generally you can make changes to MIT code that aren't released under the MIT license. > It's definitely the case that at a given snapshot of the repository which has copyrighted code owned by someone else the copyright notice has to be there at that same revision. This isn't in the license. Where is this laid out?
- esrauch 5y agoMIT license is very permissive but the original author retains copyright and one of the very few restrictions is that you must maintain the original authors copyright notice. So you can use MIT code in a GPL project but you can't remove the original copyright notice and MIT license text. I don't quite follow your thinking about removing the notice but having it somewhere in history; a given snapshot/ revision will be a distribution where someone can show up and download just the master branch newest state and not the full git history. In which case you surely have distributed a copy of the copyrighted MIT licensed code without complying with the terms of the license, right?
- psyc 5y agoOk. I worked at MS from 2005-2015. As I recall, there was this huge formal legal process and due diligence around including a single line of open source code. Is that not still the case? Am I remembering it wrong?
- robbedpeter 5y agoGithub changed everything. All sorts of automation and open source involvement happened, with new bots and systems.
- psyc 5y agoY'know, it actually slipped my mind that Microsoft transformed into a much more open-source friendly company. That makes some sense now.
- bananamerica 5y agoIt is reasonable to have different expectations from large corporations with enormous resources than you would have for an independent developer.
- johncena33 5y agoYou should see how HN would react if Google has done anything remotely close to it. If it was Google your comment would be downvoted to oblivion instead of being the top comment. Not to mention you'd be disparaged for protecting your employer.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kyruzic 5y ago
- dangrossman 5y agoNobody manually changed a license. The commits were made by a bot named "microsoftopensource" that exclusively adds copies of Microsoft's license file, support file, readme file and code of conduct to every new repository under their account.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- akkartik 5y agoIt's a bug, but it's also an example of what I think of as differential accountability: * Bugs in the bot inevitably assign ownership to the writer rather than from the writer. * Bugs in the billing system invariably overcharge customers * Bugs in the image recognition system invariably select white people. Well-meaning people still follow their incentives. Corners have to get cut somewhere. I totally agree this isn't specific to MS. We have seen the enemy, and it is us.
- micimize 5y agoThis isn't true – the only billing system bug I've seen undercharged. Also if it was an overcharge, they would have made customer whole, whereas they wrote off the undercharge. Microsoft doesn't really gain anything here – there's a clear "forked from" qualifier in the repo, they aren't republishing these packages, etc. The only people who noticed noticed in a negative light.
- akkartik 5y agoTo reiterate, I'm not saying there's malicious intent in any single bug. Yes, billing errors don't lead to more revenue for the firm. I'm describing rather a systemic bias in incentives for the people doing the work (programmers) and supervising the work (managers).
- m3047 5y agoI believe "moral hazard" is the term of art for what you describe.
- akkartik 5y agoApproximately. Moral hazard typically refers to sins of commission. Deliberately taking on more risk because you're insured. Here I'm thinking more of sins of omission. You just forgot to do something. You didn't have enough attention to devote to the task, so you rationally apportioned the attention budget to the areas most likely to be checked by others.
- DarkmSparks 5y ago
- productceo 5y ago+1 This is the peril of the imaginary "corporation" identity. People expect a company to be one coherent and consistent entity, but although a company can be managed well, establish culture and processes, and progress towards cohesion, it can never become as coherent as one person. And a person is not that coherent in the first place. I am sure I subconsciously make the same mistake when I think about other companies. But I am making conscious effort to get better, take a more forgiving view on the humankind and give people as well as corporations chance to try again and be a better version of themselves, build the mental capability to remember that corporations are comprised of real people, and people make mistakes, and reasonable people who make up the majority of the population are constantly seeking (just struggling) to be better versions of themselves.
- halayli 5y agoI am finding it hard to accept that it is an honest mistake. From my personal experience, every software engineer that works in a company of this scale is obligated to take a training course on software licensing and understand the differences, and the "dos and don'ts". If Microsoft doesn't have such a program in place then that's a big problem and should expect harsh criticisms when such events take place and if they do then it probably needs to be revised because it doesn't seem adequate. On the other hand, outside the context of MS, if a software engineer doesn't feel they are doing something dirty as they are replacing the license or the thought of I might get in trouble with legal doing that doesn't cross their mind, then they probably shouldn't be allowed to be at the front line taking actions that represents the company's name.
- wtetzner 5y agoIt was a bug in a bot, not someone deliberately changing the license.
- curious_cat_163 5y agoThere is not an attitude for the whole thread. Understandably you feel defensive but there is no need to. If you care about this issue, try to get it fixed within your company and move on.
- michaelmrose 5y agoFew people are likely to know <insert employee here> but many people are very familiar with decades of bad behavior undertaken by Microsoft not as isolated misdeeds but as a matter of policy. Lacking personal context misdeeds or mistakes are extremely apt to be interpreted in context of literal decades of bad behavior by Microsoft. I mean come on the seismic change in leadership at Microsoft is just former lower echelon leaders during the time frame that MS was doing wrong now moving up and taking the helm. We are after all talking about the company that tried to destroy the competition by funneling money into a fraudulent lawsuit/pr campaign that was a front for a pump and dump. The only thing separating MS leadership and felony charges is meeting notes between them and SCO and the fact that important people don't go prison in the US if can at all be avoided. Lest we forget the current CEO was at this time an executive VP as well. Maybe it boggles your mind merely because you yourself are an ethical person who comports themselves properly professionally and would want people to see your efforts good and bad in context of who you are. This is entirely reasonable but people don't know you personally whereas your company makes headlines for bad behavior.
- IsThisYou 5y ago
- tiahura 5y agoFS I’m not sure about. Office goes into massive nag mode. What’s your point?
- lostsoul8282 5y agoI highly agree with this. Everytime I've taken the route that there is some evil, no good as come out of it but when you give a group of people the benifit of the doubt, I would argue the majority of the time it's just a mistake.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
- skywhopper 5y agoFolks who work at mega corporations with outrageous amounts of power have a correspondingly large responsibility to the communities they interact with. Their mistakes have a much larger impact. Honest mistakes by hugely powerful entities are not mere trivia. They have an effect on the rest of the world commensurate with their power. Thus they should be held to a much higher standard than everyone else.
- blihp 5y agoMicrosoft is a rather special case of a company that has virtually no goodwill in the open source world. These are the dividends that result from statements and actions over decades. So when something like this occurs, the default reaction is often 'of course... it is Microsoft after all'.
- faangiq 5y agoMS and other bigcos have a history of being evil. It’s the correct assumption.
- victorvscn 5y agoI feel like the only people with an attitude against Microsoft these days are teenagers trying to look edgy and critical thinking or pretending they are insiders. I don't work for Microsoft.
- johnisgood 5y ago> I know hundreds of people and most of them are upstanding and try to do the right thing. How can you work for Microsoft AND do the "right" thing? I guess it depends on your role, but still...
- PascLeRasc 5y agoA third way: individual people can make an honest mistake and Microsoft is still evil.
- PascLeRasc 5y agoYou can't ascribe one attitude to a thread of hundreds of commenters and then shame us for ascribing an attitude to a company.