7 ms·
Strange that Microsoft used OP's project in their game, but didn't bother to let him know.
by shadeslayer_ 4y ago
Strange that Microsoft used OP's project in their game, but didn't bother to let him know.
- drummer 4y agoVery strange indeed
- leononame 4y agoI agree - even if they're legally allowed to just take his work, it would've been nice to let OP know.
- alt227 4y agoConsidering they fully own all of the IP present in the OPs work, I would imagine they are within their full rights to just take it without asking. OP is lucky not to get a takedown notice and judging by his attitude he knows it. Good to see people playing nicely together :)
- bayindirh 4y agoIt’s MIT licensed. They don’t need to ask. They need to add his name to credits and/or send an email about what they did. It’s basic courtesy (plus MIT license, if you prefer).
- s-macke 4y agoThe games were already playable online on archive.org [1]. My project is just focussed on the old flight simulators. Especially I wanted to have a very light-weight emulator which starts within milliseconds. The major part of the emulator downloads with just 24kB compressed. I suppose I have reached the goal. [1] https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games
- Liquix 4y agoNo credit is owed, no thanks are due. This is an unavoidable effect of usuing the MIT license over something like GPL. Andrew Tanenbaum on choosing MIT for the MINIX project, which was used by Intel + the IC as a base for the Intel Management Engine (emphasis mine): "The only thing that would have been nice is that after the project had been finished and the chip deployed, that someone from Intel would have told me, just as a courtesy, that MINIX was now probably the most widely used operating system in the world on x86 computers. That certainly wasn't required in any way, but I think it would have been polite to give me a heads up, that's all." If you'd like to avoid a large company profiting off your work without attribution, don't use MIT.
- rkagerer 4y agoThanks for relaying that ought-to-be canonical example. It may not be owed/due, but common decency suggests you give a heads up. In Intel's case I'm guessing there was a contending motive in that they preferred not to draw attention to it.
- esperent 4y ago> common decency Large companies don't operate according to human social norms like this. It's important to be reminded of this fact from time to time.
- darkwater 4y agoAt some point, no matter how big the company is [1], there are humans redacting, validating and applying the policy. [1] Ok, maybe Google have just bots for this also. ;)
- 0xbadcafebee 4y agoYou can put that clause in your license! Something like: If you use this software in a commercial product, you are required to make an attempt to send me an e-mail letting me know about it, because it's just nice to know. Of course that would piss off the lawyers because now if a developer uses your software and doesn't e-mail you, you could sue them. But it's not like big companies always respect licenses anyway :)
- s-macke 4y agoYes, I was not informed about it. But I think that's fair. I didn't ask them either before I published the project. Please, don't make it a license issue. I developed it for fun.
- runetech 4y agoIn that case - please have more fun ;-) Thank you - I really enjoyed the flashback to my childhood you provided me just now!
- ilyt 4y agoWell, the MIT license worked exactly as it was written.
- low_tech_love 4y agoWhat about "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."?
- iso1631 4y agoWere the flight simulators you can play on that github page originally MIT licensed?
- low_tech_love 4y agoNo, but I was just commenting about the license itself. At any rate, this is obviously not a regular thing to begin with.
- int_19h 4y agoMost likely, it is included in some kind of ThirdPartyNotices.txt that ships with the game. It's actually pretty hard to sneak third party F/OSS under the radar in the company of this size - there's automated code scanners, among other things, and while they can't catch everything, they sure can flag a copy of a public project on GitHub.
- nerusskyhigh 4y agoI don't really know the scope of easter eggs, is the whole team supposed to know about them or just the few programmers that introduced them? Maybe they didn't want to spoil the surprise (?) In any case, congratulations to op for having their project reach the original franchise. It's a sign of a job well done!
- inglor 4y agoI work at Microsoft and unfortunately there is a “no Easter eggs” policy but sometimes they sneak by ;)
- robertlagrant 4y agoJust checked, and sadly no X-Clacks-Overhead header on microsoft.com.
- s-macke 4y agoI am grateful to the developer for doing this. This is a kind of hidden communication between fans I enjoy.
- GuB-42 4y agoMaybe Copilot did it ;) That would be appropriate for a flight simulator.
- luch 4y agoMicrosoft is not the developer here, it has been outsourced to a game studio : https://www.asobostudio.com/games/microsoft-flight-simulator https://www.asobostudio.com/games/microsoft-flight-simulator But the remark still stand, and I hope OP has been correctly credited for it.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoThis is kind of the nature of open source though; I use tons of open source software and libraries every day, also for my clients, without letting the maintainers of the software and libraries know. That said, I do advocate for companies doing financial contributions to open source where possible.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 4y agoTo be fair, OP also used Microsoft's project in his game, but didn't bother to let them know.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]