4 ms·

This is a bot that is supposed to configure the right license when employees start a new repo in the Microsoft GitHub org. It seems the automation is also trig

by verst 5y ago

This is a bot that is supposed to configure the right license when employees start a new repo in the Microsoft GitHub org. It seems the automation is also triggered when Repos are forked into the Microsoft GitHub org which isn't correct behavior. This isn't a deliberate action. If it were plenty of employees (myself included) would be outraged. I assume it's a bug in the bot - an edge case that was not considered. It is very rare to fork something into the Microsoft GitHub org after all. I'll pass it along to some people I know.

chris_wot 5y ago
Have you considered that the reason for the outrage is because people don't actually trust Microsoft to do the right thing? I can see this is a mistake, but surely the litany of awful business practices by Microsoft in the past precedes it?
- verst 5y ago
  I didn't say anything about the outrage of others. I said a deliberate license change would be unacceptable to employees. I'm no official representative of Microsoft...
  - rStar 5y ago
  - chris_wot 5y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were. But no offense, so what if it isn't acceptable to employees? The decisions by Microsoft are made by the management of the company. As an example of another company with severe credibility problems, I'm sure there are plenty of employees at Facebook who don't like working there now, but they are still there. And still implementing the policies and directions of management.
throwaway277432 5y ago
Thank you. So these are in fact all mistakes. I looked at some of the other forked repos (95 out of 4.5K repos) and all the human commits from MS I saw seem to care about getting the licenses right. So it really is just a broken bot. I hope the bot can be fixed soon and I'm going to put my figurative pitchfork down now.
- verst 5y ago
  I'll consider it an unusual bug report. Hopefully the bot can be fixed soon and the affected licenses changed back. Realistically I'm not sure folks are working over the holidays, so give it a bit of time :)
- lazysheepherd 5y ago
  Things break all the time, so errors will happen. If you look at life as good & evil, you won't solve any conflicts. You should rather focus on "incentives". Correcting bugs and errors take time and other resources, therefore require incentive to prioritize. If their bots were to stamp Microsoft projects with open source licenses, there would be huge incentive for them to tackle this problem within this sprint, and make sure it never happens again. This bug profits them, or does not harm them at worst case. Therefore, by drawing attention and applying pressure, we should create the incentive for them to allocate resources to fix it, and make sure it does not repeat.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  How can someone be so bad at their job that they realize that a bot that writes to the license file needs to avoid overwriting an existing file? A certain degree of malfeasance cannot possibly be explained as incompetence.
  - jolux 5y ago
    > A certain degree of malfeasance cannot possibly be explained as incompetence. This is a missing conditional check, a mistake that is extremely easy to make and one I’m sure you’ve made at least once if you’ve been a professional programmer for any significant length of time.
akyoan 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
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micimize 5y ago
These forks may be done for security purposes for projects that use source-based build systems so that the depending project doesn't have 3rd party repo dependencies. As someone whose developed similar GH integrations, getting things right with their API is fairly tricky. What would actually be desirable is public-to-private forks so that the fork-dependency pattern is more enterprise friendly and this kind of confusion is mitigated.
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tbrock 5y ago
Why would anyone write that so it changes the license to the right one instead of just flagging it as incorrect for review?

by verst 5y ago

chris_wot 5y ago

Have you considered that the reason for the outrage is because people don't actually trust Microsoft to do the right thing? I can see this is a mistake, but surely the litany of awful business practices by Microsoft in the past precedes it?

verst 5y ago
I didn't say anything about the outrage of others. I said a deliberate license change would be unacceptable to employees. I'm no official representative of Microsoft...
- rStar 5y ago
- chris_wot 5y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were. But no offense, so what if it isn't acceptable to employees? The decisions by Microsoft are made by the management of the company. As an example of another company with severe credibility problems, I'm sure there are plenty of employees at Facebook who don't like working there now, but they are still there. And still implementing the policies and directions of management.

throwaway277432 5y ago

Thank you. So these are in fact all mistakes. I looked at some of the other forked repos (95 out of 4.5K repos) and all the human commits from MS I saw seem to care about getting the licenses right. So it really is just a broken bot. I hope the bot can be fixed soon and I'm going to put my figurative pitchfork down now.

verst 5y ago
I'll consider it an unusual bug report. Hopefully the bot can be fixed soon and the affected licenses changed back. Realistically I'm not sure folks are working over the holidays, so give it a bit of time :)
lazysheepherd 5y ago
Things break all the time, so errors will happen. If you look at life as good & evil, you won't solve any conflicts. You should rather focus on "incentives". Correcting bugs and errors take time and other resources, therefore require incentive to prioritize. If their bots were to stamp Microsoft projects with open source licenses, there would be huge incentive for them to tackle this problem within this sprint, and make sure it never happens again. This bug profits them, or does not harm them at worst case. Therefore, by drawing attention and applying pressure, we should create the incentive for them to allocate resources to fix it, and make sure it does not repeat.
michaelmrose 5y ago
How can someone be so bad at their job that they realize that a bot that writes to the license file needs to avoid overwriting an existing file? A certain degree of malfeasance cannot possibly be explained as incompetence.
- jolux 5y ago
  > A certain degree of malfeasance cannot possibly be explained as incompetence. This is a missing conditional check, a mistake that is extremely easy to make and one I’m sure you’ve made at least once if you’ve been a professional programmer for any significant length of time.

akyoan 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

micimize 5y ago

These forks may be done for security purposes for projects that use source-based build systems so that the depending project doesn't have 3rd party repo dependencies. As someone whose developed similar GH integrations, getting things right with their API is fairly tricky. What would actually be desirable is public-to-private forks so that the fork-dependency pattern is more enterprise friendly and this kind of confusion is mitigated.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

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tbrock 5y ago

Why would anyone write that so it changes the license to the right one instead of just flagging it as incorrect for review?