5 ms·

> The thread is full of lurid accusations, because those are fun to write and talk about, but it shouldn't take even a minute's thought to see how dumb a heist

> The thread is full of lurid accusations, because those are fun to write and talk about, but it shouldn't take even a minute's thought to see how dumb a heist this would have been. Another good reminder that Hacker News is not above assuming the worst and gathering pitchfork mobs like any other social media. The issue looked like a mistake from the start to anyone paying attention (committed by a bot, changes were consistent with a boilerplate LICENSE file being checked in). If someone at Microsoft wanted to steal some code, forking it on Github and then publicly documenting the history of the code in the most visible way possible would truly be the dumbest way to do it.

tptacek 5y ago
Especially here, when the smoking gun is a change to an MIT licensed project. One of the torch-holding commenters remarked that developers at Microsoft ought to know enough about how licenses work to know what a big deal this was. Physician, heal thyself.
bayindirh 5y ago
- tptacek 5y ago
  The obligation you're not living up to is to HN, not to Microsoft. If you want to participate here, the onus is on you not to be knee-jerk; avoiding knee-jerkism is the subtext of like 3/4 of the site guidelines.
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    This is veering to the meta, however, one of the best things came out of my HN experience is how to converse and discuss better. Actually I strive hard to not to be a knee-jerk person. I always take my time while writing something and try to back-up with actual events and/or facts. The point I was trying to make that for companies like Microsoft, reaching for the pitchfork is not always a knee-jerk reaction IMHO. For all the things they have done, my initial reaction is always Oof, not again..., which is actually sad for a company of this size. It's actually unfathomable to me for a company like Microsoft to not test these flows adequately and allowing this to happen. For a change, I want to see a more open computing platform, a less intrusive Windows version, or a longer maintenance window for CentOS, but we all have is a brawl.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      One big clue you have that the reactions here were knee-jerk is that they all turned out to be totally wrong. There's a lot of corncob dot gif happening in the aftermath.
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        I'm glad that my assumption proven to be wrong, by Microsoft itself, nonetheless. However, is being wrong is always equal to being a knee-jerk? Does the reputation of the company in question doesn't play a role here? Or, shall we be stateless, and evaluate every events without any prior experience? I don't think that holds a lot of water in real world, either.
        tptacek 5y ago
        Another clue that it's knee-jerkism is that the accusations make no sense. It's hard to see what Microsoft plausibly stood to gain by modifying an MIT license. I suspect a lot of the accusations here are being made by people who simply don't know what an MIT license means. For that matter: even with a restrictive license like the GPL, it's hard to make sense of this as a heist, especially since it's right there in the public git log. I don't think it's going to be possible to salvage the torch and pitchfork comments on this thread. For lack of a better way to put it: they're pretty dumb.
        bayindirh 5y ago
        > It's hard to see what Microsoft plausibly stood to gain by modifying an MIT license. Actually, not being able to find a plausible gain in five minutes doesn't automatically clear Microsoft (or any company) in my mind. From top of my head, I can list three technologies which I find suspicious in the long run: LSP, WSL, SecureBoot. All in all, I just don't trust Microsoft, and think about the worst of their actions first. They're the only company (ORACLE being a firm second) which evoke this reaction for me, and this their own making over the years. Just because I don't trust a company and assume the worst of them, and telling this openly makes me a knee-jerk person, so be it. As I said, I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I refuse to be stateless, and look every action of this company with completely neutral eyes.
dapids 5y ago
It's not just bots, it's real people: https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/8100595a3a3a6d5c7d0ced7598807bad5c6d4d6c https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/8100595a3a3a6d5c7d0...
- will4274 5y ago
  How is this commit in May related to the current thread? Your post doesn't contain enough information for me to understand your meaning.
  - dapids 5y ago
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    Apparently that's a commit made by a human re-assigning copyright of a forked FOSS project [0] to MSFT, presumably without attribution [1] [0] https://openprinting.github.io/cups https://openprinting.github.io/cups [1] MSFT moved attribution to NOTICE file, which is cleaner, but trips people who aren't paying attention: https://github.com/microsoft/cups/blob/main/NOTICE https://github.com/microsoft/cups/blob/main/NOTICE
kbenson 5y ago
> Another good reminder that Hacker News is not above assuming the worst and gathering pitchfork mobs like any other social media. I would go so far as to say almost no group is, they just have different preconceptions that encourage assumptions of malice in different ways and directions. There is no substitute for more facts about the situation, no matter how much we'd like to assume the details that aren't given.

tptacek 5y ago

Especially here, when the smoking gun is a change to an MIT licensed project. One of the torch-holding commenters remarked that developers at Microsoft ought to know enough about how licenses work to know what a big deal this was. Physician, heal thyself.

bayindirh 5y ago

tptacek 5y ago
The obligation you're not living up to is to HN, not to Microsoft. If you want to participate here, the onus is on you not to be knee-jerk; avoiding knee-jerkism is the subtext of like 3/4 of the site guidelines.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  This is veering to the meta, however, one of the best things came out of my HN experience is how to converse and discuss better. Actually I strive hard to not to be a knee-jerk person. I always take my time while writing something and try to back-up with actual events and/or facts. The point I was trying to make that for companies like Microsoft, reaching for the pitchfork is not always a knee-jerk reaction IMHO. For all the things they have done, my initial reaction is always Oof, not again..., which is actually sad for a company of this size. It's actually unfathomable to me for a company like Microsoft to not test these flows adequately and allowing this to happen. For a change, I want to see a more open computing platform, a less intrusive Windows version, or a longer maintenance window for CentOS, but we all have is a brawl.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    One big clue you have that the reactions here were knee-jerk is that they all turned out to be totally wrong. There's a lot of corncob dot gif happening in the aftermath.
    - bayindirh 5y ago
      I'm glad that my assumption proven to be wrong, by Microsoft itself, nonetheless. However, is being wrong is always equal to being a knee-jerk? Does the reputation of the company in question doesn't play a role here? Or, shall we be stateless, and evaluate every events without any prior experience? I don't think that holds a lot of water in real world, either.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        Another clue that it's knee-jerkism is that the accusations make no sense. It's hard to see what Microsoft plausibly stood to gain by modifying an MIT license. I suspect a lot of the accusations here are being made by people who simply don't know what an MIT license means. For that matter: even with a restrictive license like the GPL, it's hard to make sense of this as a heist, especially since it's right there in the public git log. I don't think it's going to be possible to salvage the torch and pitchfork comments on this thread. For lack of a better way to put it: they're pretty dumb.
        bayindirh 5y ago
        > It's hard to see what Microsoft plausibly stood to gain by modifying an MIT license. Actually, not being able to find a plausible gain in five minutes doesn't automatically clear Microsoft (or any company) in my mind. From top of my head, I can list three technologies which I find suspicious in the long run: LSP, WSL, SecureBoot. All in all, I just don't trust Microsoft, and think about the worst of their actions first. They're the only company (ORACLE being a firm second) which evoke this reaction for me, and this their own making over the years. Just because I don't trust a company and assume the worst of them, and telling this openly makes me a knee-jerk person, so be it. As I said, I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I refuse to be stateless, and look every action of this company with completely neutral eyes.

dapids 5y ago

It's not just bots, it's real people: https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/8100595a3a3a6d5c7d0ced7598807bad5c6d4d6c https://github.com/microsoft/cups/commit/8100595a3a3a6d5c7d0...

will4274 5y ago
How is this commit in May related to the current thread? Your post doesn't contain enough information for me to understand your meaning.
- dapids 5y ago
- ignoramous 5y ago
  Apparently that's a commit made by a human re-assigning copyright of a forked FOSS project [0] to MSFT, presumably without attribution [1] [0] https://openprinting.github.io/cups https://openprinting.github.io/cups [1] MSFT moved attribution to NOTICE file, which is cleaner, but trips people who aren't paying attention: https://github.com/microsoft/cups/blob/main/NOTICE https://github.com/microsoft/cups/blob/main/NOTICE

kbenson 5y ago

> Another good reminder that Hacker News is not above assuming the worst and gathering pitchfork mobs like any other social media. I would go so far as to say almost no group is, they just have different preconceptions that encourage assumptions of malice in different ways and directions. There is no substitute for more facts about the situation, no matter how much we'd like to assume the details that aren't given.