33 ms·

Getting forked by Microsoft

• akagusu 1y ago
  Microsoft doing this is expected, it is what big tech companies do, but what is surprising is the growing number of people defending its behavior and blaming the developer for what happened.
• hondo77 1y ago
  > As a maintainer, it is my duty to come across as unbiased and factual as possible... Sez who?
• glenngillen 1y ago
  Hey, this sucks. Unfortunately the MIT license doesn't do much to prevent this and (I think?) their licensing transgression is they haven't kept "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" in the LICENSE file. I suspect if you call them out on it that'll be the remediation. Did you manage to reach out to any of the people at MSFT you originally spoke to to ask wtf?
  • diggan 1y ago
    > Unfortunately the MIT license doesn't do much to prevent this Seems both you and Microsoft needs to actually read through the MIT license, it isn't that long or complicated :) > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. That part is even in it's own paragraph and everything, really hard to miss for anyone who even glances at the license.
    • dtech 1y ago
      So if both versions use the same MIT license, the only difference is the line parent highlighted...
    • gortok 1y ago
      Define “substantial”? What percentage of copying is “substantial”? That’s the problem with concisely written licenses, the legal world thrives on definitions and terms of art, and when you leave something open to interpretation you invite the probability that a nefarious (or even sufficiently amoral actor like a large corporation) actor will point to the language you use and interpret it differently. To win any argument in a court of law you must now spend time and money to win the argument. Something an open source maintainer likely doesn’t have, and since the license doesn’t specify damages, there’s no way to even write in a penalty for failure to adhere such that a court of law would consider it under contract law, and then you have to prove damages. At least in Virginia, each party pays their own lawyers fees, even if they win. You can only collect lawyers fees when statutes allow you to, or there has been sufficient bad faith from the other side that the court uses its own power to sanction. Oh, and let’s say you win and somehow you are able to prove damages. Now you have to spend money to collect on the judgment. That’s money you’re not getting back. The point here is that we’ve written software licenses as contracts that assume good faith and do not punish bad actors, when we would need to treat corporations as if they are bad actors and write licenses accordingly.
    • john_the_writer 1y ago
      What they likely mean is that MS says "Good luck enforcing this. Have you met our legal team?" Nothing they can't walk around, or drown you in legal fees while they smile.
  • phillebaba 1y ago
    Any copies of the code should include the notice according to the MIT license. I do agree that I could have used a less permissive license, and it is something that I am now considering to change. The reality is that licenses do not mean anything unless you are actually able to enforce it. So I really do not think the license would have mattered in this case.
    • elteto 1y ago
      Licenses absolutely matter, that’s the whole point of using them! Big corps will absolutely not risk being sued over infringement, it’s not worth it to them. For the litigation cost they’ll throw a couple engineers and redo your project from scratch. Sorry it happened to you but it seems like you just picked the wrong license.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• diggan 1y ago
  > As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers. Seems it isn't the first time Microsoft leads open source maintainers on, trying to extract information about their projects so they can re-implement it themselves while also breaking the licenses that the authors use. Not sure how people fell so hard for "Microsoft <3 Open Source" but it's never been true, and seems it still isn't, just like "Security is the #1 priority" also never been true for them. Here is the previous time I can remember that they did something similar: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 - The Day AppGet Died (keivan.io) 1930 points | May 27, 2020 | 550 comments The best advice for open source maintainers who are being approached by large tech companies is to be very wary, and let them contribute/engage like everyone else if they're interested, instead of setting up private meetings and eventually get "forked-but-not-really" without attribution.
  • vasco 1y ago
    If a megacorp wants your help to explain ANYTHING to them, you better be paid handsomely per hour. Wtf are people doing charity for trillion dollar empires.
    • keepamovin 1y ago
      Not just a megacorp. Anyone for a commercial purpose
      • freeamz 1y ago
        Hmm, think we ought to judge on a case by case basis. However, for megacorp and especially banks that has almost 0 to 1% access to cost of capital, vs rest of us who at at 20 - 30 % ( for credit card, loan sharks), then there should be a different license for these people. There should be a GLP type license adjusted to the cost of the capital.
• benwilber0 1y ago
  Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence and certainly not one that doesn't provide copyleft. This is all very well established at this point and yet somehow the GPL seems to have gone out of vogue.
  • diggan 1y ago
    > Don't use one of the most permissive licenses in existence Does it matter what license you use if they actively ignore the terms in the license you did chose? MIT requires attribution, but they didn't. Why would any other terms be different? You surely could have put "You must license your project the same as the one you forked from" and they still would have ignored it, not sure what the difference would have been.
    • bayindirh 1y ago
      MIT doesn't need attribution. Original BSD does, but revised and most widespread BSDs do not. GPL/AGPL would prevented this somehow, requiring proper attribution via mandatory source code release, and allowing to track project origins. This would make it harder to label it as a "a Microsoft Product from Ground Up", and prevent Sherlocking the original application to a greater degree. As a result, this would probably forced Microsoft to develop a new one from scratch, because they're allergic to GPL, because if they have breached GPL, they would be forced to comply, since GPL is court tested already. So, write Free Software. Not Open Source. Esp. for your personal projects.
      • Zambyte 1y ago
        > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Source: the MIT license. https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/ https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/
        • bayindirh 1y ago
          There's no writing in that license which I can't change the copyright after forking the code. There's a copyright line, check. There's the permission notice, check. The rest is just goodwill and ethics, which is not a very valuable currency in software in these days.
• keepamovin 1y ago
  Forked up the wazoo. That said, Microsoft provides extremely generous Startup Assistance (to the tune of > 150K of Azure credits). Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with MS but I did their program, also did the Gcloud and AWS programs back in the day. No negative comparisons, but off the top of my head the Azure program is awesome. I really enjoyed working with Azure, and it does what it says on the tin. You can apply here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups/ Or here: https://foundershub.startups.microsoft.com/signup https://foundershub.startups.microsoft.com/signup
  • taormina 1y ago
    Oh boy, credits that only work in their cloud. That’ll cover rent.
  • Amekedl 1y ago
    This might as well be a LLM generated ad roll performance
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• hardwaresofton 1y ago
  The future continues to be AGPL https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source-is-agpl/ https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source...
  • phillebaba 1y ago
    I agree with this. It seems to be one of the licenses out there that scares the big three cloud providers.
    • hardwaresofton 1y ago
      And just to be really clear -- it's not actually a solution to cloud providers not reusing the code for profit (which I assume is the context you're implying, could be wrong here), because AGPL is free software, so people are free to reuse your code for commercial purposes. AGPL at least prevents making private improvements to open source networked code without contributing back. I think in this situation it might have convinced Microsoft to contribute rather than fork... But then again, it's Microsoft. Also, they're well under their right to fork and keep the changes as long as the license stays the same, etc. I think another important point might be that "free software" aims to protect the users of free software, not necessarily the profit-maximizing (I mean to use that phrase neutrally) ability of software developers.
      • ryao 1y ago
        The AGPL doesn't require them to contribute back. It only requires them to provide the code to end users upon request. No license as far as I know requires people to contribute back. In many cases, project maintainers would not want the changed code anyway because it does not align with their vision for how things should be done. Linus Torvalds and his subsystem maintainers, for example, do not want people to send them code dumps containing the hacks people have done to private Linux source trees. They want proper commits that are done well and have been modified to comply with any feedback that they provide. What the project maintainer here wanted were collaborators who would work with him as a team (which is not much different than what most OSS developers what), but no license requires that and it is rare to get that.
• hresvelgr 1y ago
  While Microsoft is certainly in the wrong for removing the copyright notice, I think the author has zero basis for complaint otherwise. If you're going to release software with one of the most permissable licenses, you need to accept that for all it entails. Consider what you're comfortable with and pick an appropriate license relative to your values.
  • skywhopper 1y ago
    Did they complain about anything else?
    • hoistbypetard 1y ago
      Mostly no, but I read the overall piece as a complaint that they got a fork when they were hoping to get a collaborator.
      • masswerk 1y ago
        Anyways, the real question should be: what is the most productive form for the project/technology? Separate efforts may not the answer, we're looking for.
      • wat10000 1y ago
        I mean, the title is “Getting Forked by Microsoft,” not “Microsoft Removed My Copyright Notice.” They don’t even outright state that the fork is missing the required attribution, you have to infer it.
    • bigstrat2003 1y ago
      Yes, he complains in the last few paragraphs that he feels like this form is a competitor. Says that users sometimes come to him asking for help with the Microsoft fork, etc. Those all very much fall into the domain of "what did you think MIT meant exactly", imo at least.
  • layer8 1y ago
    No legal basis. They still might have an ethical basis regarding Microsoft's behavior, because law != ethics.
• koiueo 1y ago
  > I default to using the MIT license as it is simple and permissive What's good about being "permissive"? I keep hearing this argument, but I still don't understand, what's the incentive for authors of one-man projects to choose anything "permissive". Do you enjoy your project getting forked, walled off and exploited for profit by someone who has never done you any good? AGPLv3 still allows forking, still allows making profit (if your business model is sane). But it is at least backed by some prominent figures and organizations, and there are precedents where companies were forced to comply.
  • skywhopper 1y ago
    I don’t mind sharing my software with others, even folks who want to make a profit. Of course, that’s easy for me to say since I’ve only released a few small projects open source. But when I do, I make my projects fully public domain. I’m not interested in feeling any sense of obligation to those who try the software out, so I free them from any obligation to me as well. That said, I fully support larger projects being GPL, which I think is a more reasonable license for projects that involve dozens or hundreds of contributors and are depended on by millions around the world. But the role of the MIT and Apache style licenses has always felt a little more confusing.
    • sublimefire 1y ago
      This makes no sense, you want to make sure software gets updated in the future, however small. Permissive licensing allows companies to hide improvements and this in the long term erodes the original. Individuals on the other hand are not bound by legal teams and can work with GPL and similar.
      • LegionMammal978 1y ago
        The idea behind permissive licensing like this is that you don't particularly care about "eroding the original": you don't see its ineffable status in relation to others' work as something that must forever be maintained. I've also leaned toward CC0-style licensing for some of my smaller projects, that are shared for explanatory or artistic purposes. The reasoning is that GPL-style licenses give the code its own 'weight' as a unit, that keeps others from lifing good ideas from the code and incorporating them into their own projects as they wish, at any point in the next ~135 years. (The barriers aren't just the stereotypical "how dare they make me share my code!" but also the realities of license compatibility, having to make sure never to lose any version of the source, and so on.) I agree with GP that this isn't necessarily the best idea for large projects that exist for their own sake and that companies might find great profit in copying. But it's not like all projects fit that description.
• asdefghyk 1y ago
  Microsoft does, it because they know they can get away with it. Its in Microsofts DNA in my opinion. The company has a long history of such practices, decades. Occasionally they meet someone who has a enough clout to hold them to account. Sometimes they have even tried to copy patented information and get away with it. ( Example Microsoft tried to steal the idea of product activation. The owner had deep pockets enough for the court case cost ~$15M and won several hundred million from Microsoft.) Also, Many companies that disclosed information to Microsoft under NDA found Microsoft developed very similar products
• skywhopper 1y ago
  Not just forked. Microsoft stole the code without attribution, violating the license terms. Truly shameful behavior. Best case, it was a single engineer who was tasked with duplicating the functionality, but chose the lazier, fraudulent route and was even too lazy to clean things up entirely. Still, MS should own up, correct the record, and make this right.
  • Zambyte 1y ago
    Copied, not stole. It's unfortunate that the two are so often conflated.
    • skywhopper 1y ago
      Leaving off the attribution makes it stolen. They stole credit for the code, in violation of its license.
      • Zambyte 1y ago
        No it doesn't. It makes it copied without authorization. Stolen means the original owner does not have access which is not the case[0]. This idea that copying is theft was propaganda invented by the MPA[1], and we ought to stop parroting it, even when it's Microsoft doing the unauthorized copying. [0] https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car
        • bitblender 1y ago
          Plagiarism is theft because it does take something away from the original author (attribution). Plagiarism and piracy are different concepts. Making a copy and forking the code is not what they did wrong, that part was authorized. Deleting the author's name and pretending it was their original work is the issue.
        • bigstrat2003 1y ago
          The idea that piracy is theft was not invented by the MPAA. I arrived at that conclusion myself, and indeed most people I've interacted with find it to be pretty reasonable. It's only ever been a minority of giga-nerds who try to claim that "stealing" cannot cover situations involving a non-scarce resource.
• CommenterPerson 1y ago
  Could people say they used "AI" to build the new code?
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• martin-t 1y ago
  I wish people would seriously consider (A)GPL for their projects more often. It hasn't happened here, though has certainly happened in the past without anyone knowing - (A)GPL would make it hard for them to make a closed source "fork". In fact, I wish an even stronger license existed which allowed the original author to dictate who can build on top of the project to avoid exactly these kinds of situations where a powerful actor completely disempowers the authors while technically following the license (I assume MS will "fix" their error by fixing the licensing information but will continue to compete with Spegel with the intent to make it irrelevant).
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    > I wish an even stronger license existed which allowed the original author to dictate who can build on top of the project Such licenses exist. They're just not Free or Open Source. They can't be, by definition.
    • chii 1y ago
      Yep. This is called a commercial license. What people who want such things really are after is the leverage to dictate a form of morality - if you dont have money, you are allowed to use the project for free, and give back advertising/clout. But if you have money, or could get a lot of money for said project, then they want their pay day.
  • nathabonfim59 1y ago
    Have you seen the license of llama models from Meta? > 2. Additional Commercial Terms. If, on the Llama 2 version release date, the monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee's affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from Meta... ref: https://github.com/meta-llama/llama/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/meta-llama/llama/blob/main/LICENSE But again, not open source...
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• Zambyte 1y ago
  > Software released under an MIT license allows for forking and modifications, without any requirement to contribute these changes back. This sentence is true but a bit confusing, because there are no licenses that require anyone to contribute changes back upstream.
  • hoistbypetard 1y ago
    A bit. There are licenses that require people to publish their changes, though, and that is almost certainly what the poster meant.
    • Zambyte 1y ago
      No there aren't. You can make changes to AGPLv3 software without publishing it anywhere. The only requirement is that you make your changes available in source form to anyone that you distribute changes to, which may be entirely private, or involve no one besides yourself.
      • hoistbypetard 1y ago
        The AGPL requires that your publish your source to the people who use your software over the network.
        • Zambyte 1y ago
          The AGPL requires that you publish a notice that the source is available on demand to the people who use your software over the network. The easiest way to do this is usually to just publish your changes so you can link everyone to it, but that is not a requirement of the license. You can run derivative AGPLv3 software to service the public without distributing your changes to the source code without violating the license as long as nobody asks for the code.
          • hoistbypetard 1y ago
            From the text of the AGPL: > The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version. If you're interpreting that as something different than "publish", I think you're splitting hairs.
• znpy 1y ago
  > Spegel was published with an MIT license. Software released under an MIT license allows for forking and modifications, without any requirement to contribute these changes back. If that's what the license says, why is the author complaining? Microsoft is complying with the license. That's what you get for not picking the one of the license from the GPL family. > However, I am not the first and unfortunately not the last person to come across this David versus Goliath-esque experience. Again, this situation was completely avoidable. Stallman had foreseen this kind of situations literally forty years ago. That's why the Free Software movement exists. Tangentially related: has anyone notice how the whole Grafana ecosystem is going strong and unaffected by forks and corporate take-overs? I'm pretty sure that the AGPL license is playing a big role into that.
  • ABS 1y ago
    if only you had kept reading 2 more sentences after the one you quoted you'd know: "The license does not allow removing the original license and purport that the code was created by someone else. It looks as if large parts of the project were copied directly from Spegel without any mention of the original source"
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  • krupan 1y ago
    Exactly. Microsoft has been doing exactly this kind of crap since their very founding. The counter to it has existed for decades: GPL. And now AGPL for web stuff. How do you think the Linux kernel and GNU runtime have survived this long without the MS Embrace and Extend? GPL.
• asim 1y ago
  The best you could hope for in these situations is perhaps a job. It's not uncommon to see not just in open source but in business in general that the large player will try to extract business knowledge and reimplement themselves. The code isn't the value, it's the people maintaining it and the community or customers using it. I've seen it happen with Google and a real business also. So I think ultimately cooperation turns into coopetition where you're going to compete until some agreement can be reached. In a business case, Google fell flat on its face and acquired the company I was working at. In the case of open source I've raised seen it turn into an acquisition as we've seen the forks are really about code ownership for something they run as as managed services or use internally. They're rarely buying it for the people or community.
• sherburt3 1y ago
  If you don't want people to fork your code, don't explicitly give them permission to fork your code. Its like if you put your couch on the curb with a sign on it saying "FREE COUCH" and then coming home and freaking out because your couch is gone.
  • chii 1y ago
    It's that a lot pof people want to use the 'free couch' label to attract a crowd, but when they spot someone rich, they want those marks to pay.
  • ptx 1y ago
    Almost, except the sign said "Couch provided courtesy of Philip Laine as long as this sign is kept intact". And Microsoft removed the sign and replaced it with their own "Free couch from Microsoft" sign.
• znpy 1y ago
  To add some missing context: the MIT license is so small I can embed it into this post. Here it is: Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Further reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License
• CommanderData 1y ago
  That's why you release projects like these under restrictive licences. Far too many times big company's take what they choose and give you nothing. Use licenses for your advantage, heck dual license if needed. Not sure what the desire is of a Eutopia open source world view, where not everyone has the vision or plays by the rules anyway.
• ryao 1y ago
  I initially was going to say: Failing to abide by the MIT license is copyright infringement. My advice is to contact these guys: https://softwarefreedom.org/ https://softwarefreedom.org/ They likely can file a cease and desist on your behalf. However, I took a closer look at the files in question. The MIT license requires that they retain and provide copyright notices, but you never put copyright notices in your files. The only place where you appear to have placed a copyright notice is in the LICENSE file: https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/commit/23ed0d60f66dd2923ca03611c592d33e61e5ffee https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/commit/23ed0d60f66dd292... Things become interesting when I look at their LICENSE file. They appear to have tried to relicense this to Apache 2.0 before backpedaling and reinstating the MIT license: https://github.com/Azure/peerd/commit/473a26c808907f2d9f7b7f0b8924c05a95dbe144 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/commit/473a26c808907f2d9f7b7f... Unless they forked from a very early version of the project that did not even have the LICENSE file, they removed the sole copyright notice you had in the repository. That brings us back to my original thoughts, which is that they have committed copyright infringement, and you should contact OSS friendly lawyers about it. I am not a lawyer, but I do contribute to various OSS projects and all of the ones to which I have ever contributed have copyright notice headers at the top of every file to ensure proper attribution is maintained no matter where that code is used. Beyond having that sole missing copyright notice reinstated, I am not sure what else you could expect since none of your files have proper copyright headers in them. The SFLC guys would be in a better position to advise you, as they are actual lawyers.
  • johnisgood 1y ago
    > but you never put copyright notices in your files. I thought having a LICENSE file in the project's root directory was sufficient. Is it not the case?
    • ryao 1y ago
      It is a fairly standard practice in at least some open source communities to add copyright notices to files that people have changed significantly, although there is no well defined minimum threshold for how much permits them to add a copyright notice. Thus, someone else can come along, fork the project, add copyright notices to all of the files and then give the impression that they wrote them, since there is no attribution aside from the one LICENSE file that you wrote. The git history might show the truth, but if they copy the files into a fresh git repository, that metadata will be lost. Projects take files from one another all the time, so there is no guarantee that they will preserve your commit history and then anyone curious who wrote the code needs to do digital archaeology. That said, file level copyright notices are not perfect (since only the VCS shows who added what lines and that might not be preserved), but it is better than nothing and it is something that is guaranteed to persist as long as people are abiding by licenses. If they are not, that is copyright infringement and the copyright holder can do things like send cease and desist notices in response to the copyright notices being removed. Also, I must emphasize that I am not a lawyer, but one might argue that it was not willful infringement if someone removed a copyright notice from 1 file by claiming it had been a mistake. However, if they remove it from all files, then nobody is going to believe it was not willful.
• gwerbret 1y ago
  I suspect that what's happening internally (at Microsoft) is that someone's leveraging your work towards their next promotion packet. They went to their manager with "hey I've got this great idea" and followed it up with your code a few weeks later. Of course, this only works if they claim they were "inspired" by Spegel to "write their own code".
  • ryao 1y ago
    The commit histories for the LICENSE files in the two repositories are rather interesting. The original author placed a single copyright notice in that file. Microsoft on the other hand published it with their copyright notice and a Apache 2.0 license in place of the original copyright notice and MIT license. They also put copyright Microsoft and license apache 2.0 headers on all files. They then changed the Apache 2.0 license to MIT, but left their copyright notice in place of the original copyright notice in LICENSE: https://github.com/Azure/peerd/commit/473a26c808907f2d9f7b7f0b8924c05a95dbe144 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/commit/473a26c808907f2d9f7b7f... Unless they forked a very early version that did not even have the LICENSE file, such that they never removed the original notice, this looks like copyright infringement to me. That said, I am not a lawyer.
    • throwaway277432 1y ago
      >chore: change to MIT license What does "chore" mean in this context? Is the license just leftover from some MS open source template? If so there is perhaps some leeway, and the author maybe just didn't realize he needed to use the original MIT license file including the notices and not just a template one grabbed from the internet. Any other explanation for such a "relicensing" would be extremely worrisome.
      • jeremyjh 1y ago
        "chore" just means the type of change; as opposed to a fix, a feature, refactoring, there are some things that you have to do in the repo that can be called "chores".
      • 1y ago
• hobs 1y ago
  I actually worked on an open source project, the maintainer was convinced by microsoft to relicense the project for "collaboration" - I left the project for this reason and as far as I can tell msft never did anything for them except for keep giving them the "honor" of being a microsoft mvp.
• that_guy_iain 1y ago
  If you want to have the copyright license put into it do a DMCA take down. They're in breach of your copyright license and therefore do not have rights to distribute your copyrighted material.
• talkingtab 1y ago
  My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community. The problem this addresses is not that Microsoft forked this project. The problem is that when a corporation like Microsoft does this, they harm our community[0]. Open source thrives because a bunch of individuals and groups collaborate. Microsoft, is built around the concept of profit for stock owners at any cost. They may collaborate as long as their interest in profit is served, but otherwise, it is back to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" [1]. This lack of community ethic is endemic in corporations. It is also an existential threat to our community. Profit at any cost is not collaboration. It is predatory. And yes, I know, corpies and other greedist will vote this down, blah, blah, blah. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#:~:text=Microsoft%20Corporation%2C%20253%20F.,such%20as%20Netscape%20and%20Java. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... [edit clarity]
  • jeremyjh 1y ago
    The k8s community is mostly people who work for commercial interests and use k8s in their companies. If you develop a component of the k8s ecosystem, and you want people to use it, you can't really exclude businesses from using it. There just aren't enough installations outside of commercial spaces for it to be relevant.
    • talkingtab 1y ago
      Very good point. Trying to think this through. I think community source should be accessible and usable outside the community. A community license should have a provision for paid use by corporations. If Microsoft wants to use it that is fine - if they pay. But if Microsoft wants to fork things, to me that is predatory. If I can't fork windows, why should they be able to fork community software? If they argue that people should pay for their products, it just seems fair to me that they should not get community products for free. I guess the concept is playing by the same rules?
      • 1y ago
• looofooo0 1y ago
  https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_Extend_and_Extinguish https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_Extend_and_Extingui...
• looofooo0 1y ago
  The good old https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu... tactics.
• rvz 1y ago
  > How can sole maintainers work with multi-billion corporations without being taken advantage of? Use AGPLv3.
• sublimefire 1y ago
  This post is a great example why the choice of a license matters. You never know what your code will evolve into, so why give away your countless hours to a company/3rdparty that does not really care (aws, msft, goog, etc). License matters and large companies would not risk litigation and even if they do, that would be a great way to earn money down the road for the copyright holder. The only FOMO with MIT is that your code will prob not gonna be easily used by 3rd parties in production which would diminish the popularity effect. On the other hand, I think that code has more value if it uses a copyleft license and I am much more inclined to contribute to it.
• mhh__ 1y ago
  Bad form from Microsoft but maybe this is why the modern trend away from copyleft licenses isn't some piece of trivia.
• Starlevel004 1y ago
  Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own licensing choices.
• titaphraz 1y ago
  Microsoft loves open source, remember? It doesn't love you.
• shahzaibmushtaq 1y ago
  Never providing counselling free of charge for anyone.
  • croemer 1y ago
    I think you meant consulting, but it's not wrong for counselling either :)
    • shahzaibmushtaq 1y ago
      You are not wrong either, consulting can be free of charge (it shouldn't be) but in this case Microsoft played with him (because he was expecting something good or big in return) and they attributed one line to him.
• dankle 1y ago
  Bro releasing software under MIT. Others picking it up and use it under terms of MIT license. Bro gets upset. Can someone please explain why?
  • AdrianB1 1y ago
    A license term was not respected; the license allows to use, modify, etc. but not to remove the copyright message or change the copyright to Microsoft.
  • zitsarethecure 1y ago
    Too many developers don't really understand licensing. Everyone defaults to permissive to be politically correct, rather than on merit.
  • jhatemyjob 1y ago
    It's simply ignorance. For example, out of the 600 comments in this post, yours is the only one which was able to clearly articulate what actually happened. And it's all the way at the bottom. It goes to show the headspace most developers are in. This mistake will be repeated by many others until the end of time.
• OutOfHere 1y ago
  If only you had used LGPL. It has the benefits of GPL licenses without the burdens.
• panzi 1y ago
  Yeah for a program (not a library) I'd really recommend the GPL. Although it sounds like they even violated the really permissive terms of the MIT license!
• jxf 1y ago
  In distant times (before Microsoft's Satya era) I was the maintainer of a popular OSS product that scratched an important itch for specialist people who were doing work in the early cloud days. It solved my own problems, and I didn't want to make a business out of it, so I was content to release it as OSS. A Microsoft director who ran a portfolio of product teams reached out to ask about a "collaboration". I said I'd be happy to send them my consulting agreement. There was a little grumbling about the rate but I just reiterated that it was my rate. After a lot of legal back and forth, they signed, I answered a bunch of questions for them in a 2-day workshop, and they paid. If they want you badly enough, they'll pay. Don't work for free.
  • mathattack 1y ago
    And as you illustrated, for a one-off project, rate doesn't really matter. It just needs to get approved by someone senior enough, who will ask "Do we have anyone in-house that knows this?" and "How much will it cost to do all this ourselves?" If the answer to the first question is "No" then you'll be very cheap compared to the second answer no matter how much you cost.
    • hinkley 1y ago
      Before the economy tanked the last time I was at a couple of places that still sent people to conventions. I took a notebook and went to a mix of talks about stuff I was interested in and stuff my company was interested in. I don’t think there has ever been a conference that cost more to send devs to than what we cost the company for a day, so having us out of the office is the most expensive part of the deal (maybe that’s why some conferences go into the weekend). I usually came back with enough notes to save me at least a couple of weeks of work. If you know how to listen, talking to an SME can save you a ton of time. And from what I understand Microsoft is good at planning interviews to sound like they’re extemporaneous while they’ve actually worked out ahead of time what questions they need to ask you to get what they want.
    • vasco 1y ago
      Even just the salaried hourly rate of the people that work at the company that attend a 2 day workshop is already likely to be more than your megacorp rate. It doesn't matter to them, it's a rounding error to their initiative.
• 1970-01-01 1y ago
  Looks like Bill's old M.O. of embrace, extend, and extinguish has rubbed off on Satya. Except this time, MIT license has shielded the code from extinguish to emaciate.
• em-bee 1y ago
  As a maintainer, it is my duty to come across as unbiased and factual as possible i disagree with that. factual? sure, but unbiased? why? it's your project, and you have every right to be biased towards it. on the contrary, i expect you to, and i actually believe that not being biased towards your own project is very difficult so that i don't expect many people to be able to not be biased.
  • jacobyoder 1y ago
    Came to post the same thing. How can you not be biased? You built something. You want people to use it (assumption).
  • seb1204 1y ago
    I thought the same, as the sole maintainer he can be king and do as he pleases, his git, his baby.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• sneak 1y ago
  Publishing free software is giving away a gift. People using that gift is the point. Forks aren’t just permitted, they are encouraged. That’s why we release free software. You aren’t in competition with Microsoft and their fork. There is no such thing as marketshare when there is no market.
  • AdrianB1 1y ago
    Keeping his name in the license note is required by the terms and that is an expectation, even if you get the software for free.
    • bigstrat2003 1y ago
      That's certainly true, but that is by no means the only complaint the author has. His complaint that they aren't properly attributing the copyright is valid. His complaint that they are a "competitor" is not.
• donatj 1y ago
  Could file a DMCA takedown over the license violation, or you know, just file a pull request correcting the license to include your name and explain the situation. They're technically violating the MIT license as-is.
• adultSwim 1y ago
  "I default to using the MIT license as it is simple and permissive." He already gave them permission. I think he is overemphasizing the meeting they had and under-emphasizing already giving away his work.
• dusted 1y ago
  There has been many, many stories of Microsoft doing just that, invite for some talk, learn what they need to know and then do it their way. It's not a new practice, and it's not exclusive to Microsoft either, it's something every developer should be acutely aware of, in case they're interested in avoiding it.
  • hinkley 1y ago
    They’ve been accused of using interview answers in their own products as well. I’m still salty about teaching someone something they didn’t know about caching in an interview and not making it to another round of interviews after that. If it was a huge company I’d be furious.
• pjmlp 1y ago
  As usual pick carefully your license, doesn't matter if it is the neighbour down the street or Microsoft, when they play by the legalese of the license.
• andreashaerter 1y ago
  Default for copyleft licenses for open source or life with the consequences. Licenses like the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) might prevent some corporations from using an open-source project because they do not want to release the source code of their own modifications to it. Sadly, corporate compliance often prohibits the usage of copyleft projects altogether, even if nobody plans to modify anything. Especially the legal departments of large “enterprizy” organizations often prefer software with licenses like MIT as they want it simple and “risk”-free. But who cares? If these corporate users do not contribute back, there is simply not benefit in having them as users. Except you do not care about open source community but about hypergrowth. This seems not to be true for this case, but the impression comes to mind that many start-ups use open source not because of freedom but as an argument for adoption in the enterprise ecosystem. They avoid choosing (A)GPLv3 licenses to facilitate easier corporate adoption without generating enough revenue, while being funded by venture capital and without getting contributions back by organization who could easily afford giving back something. Then, after being adopted, they complain. There’s a reason why Linux (GPL licensed) is still around, growing, and making money for so many while companies behind widespread open source projects often fail financially and burning insane amounts of money. It might work out for individuals and owners when getting bought, but it hurts users and ecosystems who relied on something.
• austin-cheney 1y ago
  That is why I only choose extremes with my open source licensing. If I really don't care then I go with a CC0 1.0 license. If I want any participation or credit for the work at all then I go the other extreme: AGPL 3.0. If that, and only that, means people will refuse to look at the project then I know I have chosen wisely.
  • LtWorf 1y ago
    I get a certain sense of pride every time a developer tells me to change my license and when I say no he tells me he'll go and use something else (and I'm supposed to feel bad about this, for some reason).
• garyrob 1y ago
  Is it possible that there could be enough damages for Microsoft's violation of the license that a talented law firm would take up a lawsuit on a contingency basis?
  • not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
    FTA > A negative impact from the creation of Peerd is that it has created confusion among new users. I am frequently asked about the differences between Spegel and Peerd. I can't imagine any quantifiable damages here. No business or revenue was impacted. Just chatter in an open source project.
    • garyrob 1y ago
      IANAL, so I am just guessing. But I wonder if an argument can be made that by flagrantly violating the license, Microsoft is devaluing the whole concept of the relevant license and similar ones. The entire body of source code that was created partly because of trusting that those licenses mean something is worth an enormous amount. So I'm guessing the perhaps there could be a class action lawsuit on behalf of the entire open source community that uses that class of license.
• anonymousiam 1y ago
  Microsoft has almost always behaved unethically. Many examples similar to yours are easy to find. Their behavior in your case immediately reminded me of this 1994 example: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-24-fi-26671-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-24-fi-26671-... They've engaged many naive people/companies, milked them of their knowledge after signing NDAs, and then stabbed them in the back, stealing eveything. They're big enough, and have unlimited legal resources to vigorously defend any legal challenge, and also to launch legal attacks at will. After the DOJ anti-trust case, they preemptively put every major law firm on retainer, so nobody else could retain them in an effort vs. Microsoft, without creating a conflict of interest. They are still evil, but less so after Gates and Ballmer.
  • hinkley 1y ago
    There’s a Simpsons episode that’s older than many of the readers here where Bill Gates destroys (literally has goons smash) a business Homer accidentally started. If Matt Groening thinks you’re a gaggle of assholes you’re probably even worse.
    • anonymousiam 1y ago
      Good stuff. Been with Matt since "Life In Hell" in the Easy Reader. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Hell
• bsnnkv 1y ago
  I feel for this person. I stopped using open source licenses a while ago, and I've recently started writing about how I've ended up where I am. One of my pieces got shared here last month and predictably didn't land with the readership. Nevertheless, I'm going to keep writing (latest piece [1]) about my post-open source journey in the hopes of clicking with a handful of people in the next generation. [1]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/on-evils-in-software-licensing/ https://lgug2z.com/articles/on-evils-in-software-licensing/ - feel free to hit me up off-platform if you want to discuss
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• api 1y ago
  Open source is becoming not much more than free labor for giant corporations and SaaS. The OSI considers any open source license that tries to restrict or disincentivize this "not open source." Look into OSI and note that it is effectively captured and controlled by these corporations.
• eptcyka 1y ago
  Seems like we need a GPL/fuck off amazon/microsoft license.
• monai 1y ago
  Reading story after story about big corporations abusing single/small group opensource developers, I think we need a license that, otherwise permissive, explicitly denies the use of the code for companies that took VC money or are worth a billion or more.
• empath75 1y ago
  Anybody know what the differences between peerd and spegel actually are and why microsoft forked it?
• klaussilveira 1y ago
  > How can sole maintainers work with multi-billion corporations without being taken advantage of GPLv3. Microsoft has been a bully for years: https://www.fsf.org/news/microsoft_response https://www.fsf.org/news/microsoft_response They can't change, regardless of how much marketing money they put into "We love opensource".
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• gavinhoward 1y ago
  Use copyleft. I know it isn't mainstream, but companies try to avoid those licenses as much as possible. Tinfoil hat: sometimes I wonder if companies astroturfed support for permissive licenses. Getting the entire Rust ecosystem to avoid copyleft was a huge win, for example. And now that copyleft Gnu tools are being replaced with permissive uutils in Ubuntu, it seems they won, whether or not they were the ones to push it.
  • indrora 1y ago
    Copyleft and the shift to static executables are incompatible. The vast majority of the rust (and Go) ecosystems is non-copyleft because you cannot satisfy the GPL in any meaningful way and satisfy your corporate legal department’s IP lawyers.
    • pjmlp 1y ago
      Hence why advocates from going back into the days of static linking should consider the how and whys we moved from them, and better pick their toolchains.
• eduction 1y ago
  This is good not bad. Their improvements are available under MIT license. They would have been fully within their rights to not release and put in a proprietary product but did not do this. Instead everyone can benefit from their improvements. Author can steal whatever he wants for his upstream. (I can’t find any details of “Microsoft MIT” and the above is premised on it being functionally MIT.)
• anonfordays 1y ago
  [flagged]
• NanoYohaneTSU 1y ago
  Open source developer now learns why open source is stupid first hand. Thank you everyone for making free software!
  • alganet 1y ago
    When you're a teenager sometimes you are into a girl that you like and she notices and acts all snobby. Then sometimes you get into a date with her, but discovers she isn't what you expected. It was the snobbiness that made you more eager to know her. Then, disappointed, you break up with her and she starts telling everyone you have bad breath, your friends are idiots, and that you are dumb and ugly (but she secretly still likes you). When you're adult you start to realize that none of it is really that important. She is probably nicer than you remember. And you were just a kid. All this HN discussion reminds me of those teenage years somehow. Like a twisted psychology distortion of it. It is kind of funny actually.
• qntmfred 1y ago
  If you write open source code, expect it to be forked. It's kind of what open source is all about. Do it because sharing knowledge is a moral good. The wealth, influence, power, etc of whoever may decide to participate in your act of open source is completely and utterly irrelevant.
• radicalbyte 1y ago
  Really poor form there from Microsoft, I hope that some of the wiser heads see this and educate the team responsible and ensure that this is made right.
• gwbas1c 1y ago
  I've been "on the other side," part of a big corporation forking an open-source project. In Laine's case, what I would suggest is to focus more on what Microsoft added and changed; try to understand why they did that; and see if you can get any value bringing it back into your project. (IE, don't let your ego run away.) Why? In my case, I was working for an industry-leading product that required a bit of reverse-engineering into MacOS. We got stuck on a new release of MacOS, so we did a bit of digging and found an open-source project that successfully reverse-engineered what we were trying to do. (Basically, integrating in the right-click menu in Finder required reverse engineering prior to 2014; and every version of MacOS required redoing the reverse engineering.) It was a legal grey area to copy how the open-source project reverse engineered MacOS, so I reached out to the open-source project and tried to collaborate. We exchanged a few emails and then I found a problem... Basically, their solution had rather large memory consumption in Finder if the user had very large folders. Our customers had very large folders. (Edit, 200,000+ files were common.) We still wanted to collaborate, so I proposed a fix that fixed the problem. But, then "radio silence" from the original authors. We forked and complied with the license. I always hoped they never begrudged us. (Ultimately, Apple released an API so we didn't have to reverse engineer MacOS.)
• croemer 1y ago
  Forking might be the wrong word, what happened here looks more like (somewhat obfuscated) plagiarism. I analyzed the 2 repositories for copy/pasted lines using PMD's CPD (copy/paste detector) - using the first commit of peerd and one from spegel that was from around the same time. There are some clear duplications, e.g. 178 lines here: https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/64b8928943ddd73691d0b5d80609a2e134a96c77/internal/containerd/mirror_test.go#L24-L205 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/64b8928943ddd73691d0b5d8... correspond to this: https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c8f4094e22402a5bb2a930c/pkg/oci/containerd_test.go#L116-L293 https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c... Also 44 lines here: https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c8f4094e22402a5bb2a930c/pkg/registry/registry_test.go#L75-L118 https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c... and https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/64b8928943ddd73691d0b5d80609a2e134a96c77/internal/oci/mirror_test.go#L75-L120 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/64b8928943ddd73691d0b5d8... but the full files are almost identical, only a few edits that break the complete equality. Also https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c8f4094e22402a5bb2a930c/pkg/oci/containerd.go#L493-L546 https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c... matches https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/64b8928943ddd73691d0b5d80609a2e134a96c77/internal/containerd/mirror.go#L72-L131 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/64b8928943ddd73691d0b5d8... I haven't looked deep enough to see how much of the differences are obfuscation and how much are meaningful changes. File names are all changed, many structs and variable names as well. See this gist for full list of duplications: https://gist.github.com/corneliusroemer/c58cf0faf957d9001b58d4ed14cb0a21 https://gist.github.com/corneliusroemer/c58cf0faf957d9001b58...
• wavemode 1y ago
  Not a direct solution to your problem, but people should definitely consider Apache over MIT when reaching for a permissive license. In addition to being more robust about things like, notifying users of modifications that have been made to the original source code, it also explicitly requires that forkers maintain the NOTICE file in its entirety, and distribute that file to users receiving copies of the software (whether source or binary copies). Even if megacorp does nothing else for you, that NOTICE file can at least contain information about who you are as the original author, links to your website, etc.
  • jon_richards 1y ago
    I considered forking an MIT repo once but had no idea how to communicate which parts were under the original MIT license and which weren’t. Unless I copied it into each file and deleted the root license, it seems like it would license all my changes as MIT, too, basically becoming a copy-left license.
• aantix 1y ago
  Let's create a license where companies with X number of employees that create a fork automatically owe the original owner Y amount. It's ridiculous that companies with literal trillion dollar market caps coast on the back open source.
• unsungNovelty 1y ago
  Am a bit confused. Is Microsoft breaking MIT license here? I can see both projects are in MIT and I don't see the below Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors Which should be retained when you are forking it right? Or am I wrong?
  • croemer 1y ago
    Yes, indeed, that's missing. Though it should be: "Copyright (c) 2023 Xenit AB" as that was the license that was in place when the copy/paste took place: https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c8f4094e22402a5bb2a930c/LICENSE https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/ed21d4da925b9a179c...
    • unsungNovelty 1y ago
      Thanks for confirming.
• nwellinghoff 1y ago
  Is there a template license that says open source unless your market cap is or goes above x million? Would like companies to be able to use things to grow but then if they hit it big the have to start paying.
• atmosx 1y ago
  > Microsoft carries a large brand recognition […] Especially amongst Linux users… :-)
• throwaway2037 1y ago
  Regarding the removal of copyright notice, did anyone open an issue on the Microsoft GitHub repo to have it restored? It should be relatively simple to fix. Yes, I know, this won't dull the knife that Microsoft stuck into the back of the original author.
  • croemer 1y ago
    Yep, there's an issue with 200+ reactions: https://github.com/Azure/peerd/issues/109 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/issues/109
• vzaliva 1y ago
  Many of us dislike Microsoft and big corporations, but here’s my (possibly unpopular) take: 1. Open source worked as expected. Some MIT-licensed code was forked under the same licence, giving users more options and contributing further to the open-source codebase. 2. I don’t understand the claim about users being confused between Spegel and Peerd. These are two products with different names and maintainers. Maybe some users are also confused between Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux - so what? I’m glad users have more choices. 3. The point about the original author not being given enough credit is the only valid one. The legal side, discussed in other comments, seems to suggest they’re within their rights, but they could have done better.
• a2tech 1y ago
  Do. Not. Trust. Microsoft. Why is this a lesson that has to be learned over and over again by people? It's been extensively, exhaustively, documented over the years. The leopard doesn't change its spots. The scorpion stings the frog. Microsoft screws over people. Lessons learned in childhood that still hold true today.
• palata 1y ago
  I tend to disagree with the criticism of Microsoft here. The author of Spegel released it as MIT, which means that anyone can fork it as long as they keep the attribution. So if every file of the original project has a header containing the copyright, Microsoft has to keep it. Looking at Spegel, I haven't found a single source file containing an MIT header and copyright. Microsoft added their header with their copyright in Peerd (because now that they changed the files, they own a copyright over parts of those files). Nothing says that they must add a line for the original author, and I could imagine that it's legally a risk for them to do it. Moreover, a copyleft license wouldn't have changed anything here (except maybe discouraging Microsoft from reusing any of that code). If you don't want anyone to reuse your code, don't open source it. The whole point of open source it is that you allow others to reuse it.
  • NobodyNada 1y ago
    The MIT license doesn't say anything about headers. The attribution requirement is: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. The license is saying you have to retain the license itself; it doesn't say anything about any other attribution notices that exists in the source files or anywhere else. It doesn't specify where you have to put the license; it could be in a comment in the code, or it could be in a file next to the code, and that doesn't change anything about the terms of the license. If the original author put the license in comments, you can keep it in comments, but you could also move it to a standalone file. If the original author put it in a standalone file, you can keep it there or you can move it to a comment, but you can't remove it. If you distribute a compiled binary, you need to be sure you're including the license alongside the binary as well. If Microsoft distributes a "substantial portion" of the software, and they do not include a copy of the original license (including the copyright statement at the top attributing the original author), they're in violation.
    • palata 1y ago
      Right. So they should just add a copy of that line somewhere in the repository, saying "some parts of this project come from this licence"?
• AndriyKunitsyn 1y ago
  A lot of people in the comments blame the victim. Why isn't "go talk to a lawyer" the most common response? Are American lawyers that can read three-paragraph licenses so prohibitively expensive?
• throwaway984393 1y ago
  [dead]
• bogwog 1y ago
  This sucks and I feel for the maintainer, but it really is their own fault for publishing as MIT. However, that is a pretty common mistake that most people never learn until they've been screwed by it. The OSI have done a good job at convincing devs to open themselves up to exploitation for the benefit of big tech companies, and I find it hard to fault people for falling for that. The social pressure is very high. But giving a (presumably) free consultation to Microsoft is a self-own. History has shown that you should never give the benefit of the doubt to Microsoft, and you should certainly never trust them (unless you have a contract and a good lawyer). Not knowing this can only be the result of willful ignorance. I can't offer sympathy for that. Hopefully, this person learned the right lessons from this experience.
  • hinkley 1y ago
    Open source is very much like a party. You are perfectly entitled to expect the host to be gracious and the guests not to steal things. “It’s your fault for inviting them in” is victim blaming and horizontal aggression. The people at the top of the pyramid love it when the peasants fight each other. Saves them getting callouses.
    • bogwog 1y ago
      What a terrible take. This is the kind of "social pressure" I was talking about. Open source licensing isn't a party, it's a business decision you make as a participant in the intellectual property economy. If you make a stupid and/or uninformed decision, you're opening yourself up to exploitation. It is victim blaming because this situation is entirely the victim's fault. I don't even know what you mean by "horizontal aggression", and your comment about peasants makes no sense in this context. How does advocating that people be informed and use appropriate licenses count as in-fighting, or beneficial to big tech companies? If anything it's literally the opposite.
      • hinkley 1y ago
        You're blaming an author who offered his code to others (that's a social act) instead of a trillion dollar company. What do you think I mean by horizontal aggression?
• fefe23 1y ago
  So, let me get this straight. You published your software under a free license that stipulates they can't remove the license and are otherwise free to do as they please. They took you by your word and did exactly that. What did you think a license is for? For artistic expression? It's a contract. If you want to get paid, put that in your license. I recommend AGPL 3. Then nobody will rip you off. And if they do, you can drag them to court over it.
• qarl 1y ago
  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
• carambacreator 1y ago
  The MIT license should have a provision to permit forks (without allowing daisy chaining of fork of forks). You can then decide & allow/reject fork requests.
• cenobyte 1y ago
  Not to be mean, but if you don't like the consequences of using an MIT license then don't use it. Using it then complaining about its effects because you don't like the company is silly. Use a different license if this is important to you.
  • rexpop 1y ago
    > This experience has also made me consider changing the license of Spegel, as it seems to be the only stone I can throw. Well, yes, that seems to be the conclusion OP has come to.
    • hinkley 1y ago
      Too late though. They can keep using the code he wrote before. He’d have to rearchitect it to add new features to even make it sting now.
• glitchc 1y ago
  The solution is to change the license ASAP, add some must-have features from the pull requests (or your own imagination, you know best what's missing), and continue on your merry way. Eventually the MS fork will be so far behind yours that they will come back to talk to you. And this time, you will be prepared.
• nrabulinski 1y ago
  Why haven’t you threatened to sue yet? They very clearly violated the MIT license by getting rid of your copyright, which is literally the only requirement MIT imposes. Go after them, don’t let the corporation get away with
• AlgebraFox 1y ago
  This is not getting forked by Microsoft. This is getting forked by permissive licenses.
• devrandoom 1y ago
  This is a candidate for name and shame. Microsoft is made up of people and actual real people made these decisions. Who are they?
• nabla9 1y ago
  I find it unlikely that this is Microsoft policy, it does not benefit them in any way. Someone fucked up or claimed glory internally. Pointing this out to their legal department might get the Copyright notice fixed.
• firesteelrain 1y ago
  First, if Microsoft used any of the Spegel code then it should provide proper attribution. A best practice is to put the LICENSE file in the root of project (both peerd and spegel do). But also, you need to put the license in the header of each file as a best practice. Like Microsoft did here https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/api/docs.go#L1 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/api/docs.go#L1 spegel did not follow best practices to put the copyright in the file itself: https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/main/internal/web/web.go https://github.com/spegel-org/spegel/blob/main/internal/web/... Ideally starting with something like this // SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
• tadeegan 1y ago
  WTF! I'd sue.
• dvektor 1y ago
  Reminds me of the scene in Silicon Valley where they team are excited to hear a VC interested in the details so they are explaining the technology on the whiteboard to the "investors" who were a team of engineers eager to copy their tech. But seriously, it sounds like a weird version of "not invented here syndrome" where you are somehow OK with copy-pasting most of it.
• indigodaddy 1y ago
  Very clever title
• mithrilskeleton 1y ago
  Consider the AGPL, it is a criminally underutilized license ideal for the current zeitgeist.
• karussell 1y ago
  Microsoft avoided any licensing issues because its code was not copied but came out of their AI. /s
• alphazard 1y ago
  There's a lot of blame being assigned to Microsoft, the entire corporation. But I doubt this was a heavily contemplated decision by a room full of executives, or voted on by the shareholders. More likely, this is a way for someone to get ahead in their career at Microsoft by passing off a successful open source project as their own accomplishment. They can steal users from the original project and justify using Microsoft's resources to maintain it, which puts more resources under their control, and gives them something to talk about during performance reviews. The open source community should have a way to enforce professional consequences on individuals in situations like this. They are motivated by professional gains after all. That's the only way this will stop happening. Professional consequences does not mean doxxing or other personal attacks, it means losing career opportunities, losing contributor privileges, and becoming known as untrustworthy. These consequences have to be greater than the expected gain from passing a project off as your own at work. I wonder if a new kind of license could be created which includes projects in some kind of portfolio and violating the license means losing access to the entire portfolio. Similar to how the tech companies added patents to a shared portfolio and patent treachery meant losing access to the portfolio.
  • jeanlucas 1y ago
    Yeah, but Microsoft's response to this will actually be a company official position. It's a space to keep watching.
    • nickelpro 1y ago
      A flash in the pan about a random fork they have on Github with <100 stars, and no significant public usage, which fails to correctly follow the reproduction requirement of the MIT license will not generate a C-suite response. It won't get outside the local management of the team responsible for the fork. Maybe a few dozen people at MS will ever know about this, and most of those from seeing it on HN; who have zero connection to the responsible team. It baffles me that HN has no idea how large organizations work. The boss's boss's boss has no idea what random worker bees are doing.
      • 1y ago
• zorrolisto 1y ago
  [flagged]
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• aydyn 1y ago
  I want to make a point that might be misinterpreted, so I want to make clear I am not at all defending Microsoft. That said, Microsoft isn't a person and has no agency by itself. It is specific persons/developers/managers violating the licenses and stringing along open source developers in bad faith. Who are these people? Why is the blame not falling on them, specifically?
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • vb-8448 1y ago
    ehm, it doesn't work this way, fortunately ... Microsoft, the corporation, is definitively responsible if there's a copy right violation. Who exactly did what it's a Microsoft internal thing, unless Microsoft demonstrates that this has been done in bad faith and Microsoft did everything what is "reasonable" to avoid this happening ...
    • aydyn 1y ago
      It absolutely does work this way.
• kshri24 1y ago
  > How can sole maintainers work with multi-billion corporations without being taken advantage of? Use AGPL, Fair Source or BSL. That's the only way forward. I for one will be using AGPL in everything. If a trillion dollar company cannot pay for services it is a fucking shame. Absolutely disgusting. Microsoft should be ashamed.
• immibis 1y ago
  Friends don't let friends release as MIT, except for trivial amounts of code. Last week I relicensed most of my previously released Minecraft mods (except those with trivial code and those with missing source code) to AGPL plus a bunch of exceptions.
• rglover 1y ago
  This is why I wrote the SAUCR license [1] for my full-stack JavaScript framework. A lot of OSS developers get "got" by the ideological arguments of OSS and shy away from doing "source available" (which if we set down the Kool-Aid, is in effect open source because...the source is open). If you're an independent or small team and want to protect your IP as best you can while keeping source available for learning/auditing, check it out. [1] https://saucr.org https://saucr.org
  • ramses0 1y ago
    That's not a license, it's wishful thinking in template form. The fact that you have "fill in the blanks here" in a "legal" document makes this actively harmful. I respect the sentiment, but it's entirely the wrong direction. Better looking at the Creative Commons license picker/builder as a better example of a starting point.
    • rglover 1y ago
      > The fact that you have "fill in the blanks here" in a "legal" document makes this actively harmful. It doesn't. At the end of the day, all legal documents are just words on a page. When in doubt, you can hire a lawyer or paralegal to review what you've written to ensure it's sound. This is why people keep getting burned. They make foolish excuses, use the wrong licenses, and then they're surprised when a big fish swallows them whole.
• iamleppert 1y ago
  If a big tech company shows any interest in your open source project, don't ever assume there are any good intentions. Never agree to any meeting or unpaid work, or do any work or go out of your way for them unless you have a contract. Be extra careful when dealing with a big company, because they have a lot of resources and do not care about you or your project.
• alexfromapex 1y ago
  There is a very long storied history of Microsoft being an extremely scummy anticompetitive company...
• neilv 1y ago
  Getting 'forked' (so to speak) by Microsoft was the norm, and might again be. Up until the dotcom boom (and in the earlier days of it), one of the questions I'd heard of software startups was something like, "What will you do when Microsoft decides to own your space?" Fortunately, the broad tech industry overall got a decade or two reprieve from that, though it might be starting to return. A long related question, when partnering with Microsoft, which sounds like it still applies, is "What's your plan for when Microsoft stabs you in the back?" Microsoft never had a self image of "Don't Be Evil", and is more a close releative of Cantrill's Lawnmower. My suspicion is that ruthlessness and the long-con have deep roots in Microsoft's culture. Microsoft only appears to play nice when it has to, and is shameless otherwise.
  • tobinfekkes 1y ago
    Obligatory Lawnmower context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2040s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2040s
• adfm 1y ago
  They all do it. Anytime a corporation comes calling, they're looking for something from you and there's an implicit quid pro quo. I'm not a lawyer, but anytime latin is involved, you better get it in writing and run it by someone who is.
• neilv 1y ago
  Obligatory "Silicon Valley" TV series clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc
• cobbaut 1y ago
  > As a sole maintainer of an open source project, I was enthused when Microsoft reached out to set up a meeting to talk about Spegel. The meeting went well, and I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers. I bet the Spyglass people had the same thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.
• PeterZaitsev 1y ago
  Not including original license may well be oversight, It is very unlikely Microsoft would intentionally to do something like this, which costs them really nothing, but not doing it can post a lot in the future in the legal costs. For the rest - if you chose MIT license for your work you should expect it can be used by someone to create software based on it, including commercially licenses I would treat anything you're releasing as MIT as the gift to the world. This is how Open Source suppose to work - people building on each other work, often without properly thanking authors and maintainers. If you want to reserve some rights - chose who can use your software and for what purpose, ie ensure "Microsofts" of this world can't use your code in a way you do not approve, you should not release it as Open Source.
• GIVEMEGO 1y ago
  [dead]
• mmaunder 1y ago
  If you want them to contribute back changes, use a license that makes them contribute back changes, like GPL. Don’t ever “default to” a license.
  • alganet 1y ago
    Defaulting to a license is the default behavior.
  • sokoloff 1y ago
    GPL only requires you to contribute changes if you distribute the program (not if you just use it internally).
    • davidkwast 1y ago
      I think AGPL2 or newer and GPL3 helps a little too
    • mmaunder 1y ago
      This project was. “A negative impact from the creation of Peerd is that it has created confusion among new users. I am frequently asked about the differences between Spegel and Peerd.”
  • pabs3 1y ago
    The GPL does not require you to contribute back changes, only to contribute changes forward to your end users.
• joshka 1y ago
  https://github.com/Azure/peerd/pull/110 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/pull/110 > fix: amend copyright attributions #110 > > This commit amends copyright attributions that were omitted due to an oversight on part of the Peerd authors. Copyright header attributions in a few files have been updated to include "2023 Xenit AB and 2024 The Spegel Authors". The attribution in the LICENSE file has also been updated to reflect the same.
• touristtam 1y ago
  FWIW one of the maintainer just added this to comply with the license: https://github.com/avtakkar/peerd/commit/57ebeeb853effb211ae71f544814e273418fa3b5 https://github.com/avtakkar/peerd/commit/57ebeeb853effb211ae...
• lachie83 1y ago
  Hi Philip, I'm Lachlan from the Cloud Native Ecosystem team at Microsoft. Our team works in the cloud native open-source community with a goal of being great open-source collaborators in these projects and communities, and I’m sorry that this happened. We appreciate your leadership and collaboration on Spegel and see your project solving a real challenge for the cloud native community. I wanted to thank you for your blog post https://philiplaine.com/posts/getting-forked-by-microsoft/ https://philiplaine.com/posts/getting-forked-by-microsoft/, let you know what we’re doing, and address a few points. We’ve just raised a pull request https://github.com/Azure/peerd/pull/110 https://github.com/Azure/peerd/pull/110 amending the license headers in the source files. We absolutely should have done better here: our company policy is to maintain copyright headers in files – we have added headers to the files to attribute your work. I also wanted to share why we felt making a new project was the appropriate path: the primary reason peerd was created was to add artifact streaming support. When you spoke with our engineers about implementing artifact streaming you said it was probably out of scope for Spegel at that time, which made sense. We made sure to acknowledge the work in Spegel and that it was used as a source of inspiration for peerd which you noted in your blog but we failed to give you the attribution you, that was a mistake and I’m sorry. We hear you loud and clear and are going to make sure we improve our processes to help us be better stewards in the open-source community. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention. We will improve the way we work and collaborate in open source and are always open to feedback.
  • dustedcodes 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • unixhero 1y ago
      I think the response is sincere and adequate.
      • aleph_minus_one 1y ago
        It is indeed sincere: > We absolutely should have done better here: our company policy is to maintain copyright headers in files – we have added headers to the files to attribute your work. This is a more than clear corporate statement from Microsoft's side that Microsoft is perfectly fine if copyrights are violated (implicitly including Microsoft's), as long as, if they get caught, people start giving proper credits. This implicitly implies that Microsoft promises that from now on they will only sue for getting proper attribution in case of copyright violations, and not for monetary compensation for damages. I find this implicit statement really nice from Microsoft's side - actually more than what I could ever have wished for. :-)
• detective_bosch 1y ago
  They just updated the license and attribution. https://github.com/Azure/peerd/pull/110/files https://github.com/Azure/peerd/pull/110/files . Overall, it does not sit right with me. How can you be at the position you are and make a very obvious non-attribution mistake. I want to side on incompetence and give benefit of doubt but malice (for personal gains) is on the table as well.
• dustedcodes 1y ago
  This is not the first or last time this has happened. Microsoft does it intentionally and when they get caught they then give a fake apology and pretend it was a mistake. These mistakes keep happening and the pattern is always the same, MS teams engaging with a developer to learn all about their business idea and then they steal it: https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/ https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/
  • matheusmoreira 1y ago
    I'll never understand why they didn't simply hire him.
• spiritplumber 1y ago
  This happened with me and Google (Antbot/Cellbots stuff, circa 2011). The difference is that the Google person in charge of the fork of my project was actively hostile to me. He told me that I was just a hobbyist and that my product didn't exist. So I put a PCB of my product in his hand (it had some through-hole components), and squeezed it really hard, and asked him "If it doesn't exist, why is it making you bleed?" All this at a meeting/presentation where my bot was literally running circles around theirs because mine worked and theirs stalled. I think I have video of this somewhere, but there's no audio. The guy left Google a year later, tried to sell bots independently, and folded. I on the other hand am still here. It was a bit of a weird interaction overall. Why would someone say "this doesn't exist" while staring at it? I figured that haptic feedback would help with their solipsism at the time.
• ncr100 1y ago
  Hahahahah this sounds very much like what Microsoft did to one of my employers. Meet for a week. Bring in one of their grey beards. Learn all our deets in anticipation of acquisition. Then silence...according to my understanding, not being privy to executive level discussions. A bit later, release their own take on the problem area ... tragic. It was very bad for us.
  • devnullbrain 1y ago
    For the layman, acquisition rumours are almost always bad news. Even as a premise. Your domain is enough of a concern for Bigcorp to spend executive time on. Bigcorp wants to acquire your employer because and they think they can get more value out of it than the asking price. Your own executives will ignore the threat that due diligence means to your business in the case a deal fails to be completed, because this is their promotion cycle. But you are a potentially redundant cog that is unlikely to be a more efficient part at Bigcorp. After all, you don’t already work for them.
• agarren 1y ago
  He got Jeff’d. Or maybe Bill’d (or Satya’d). Regardless, any kind of non-gnu open-source collaboration with the Powers That Be in the tech world is just begging for punishment. Amazon will just blatantly rebrand something, but Microsoft seems especially comfortable wasting a dev’s time mining for details before stealing or copying their work entirely. Boo Microsoft. Winget still sucks. I read recently that Microsoft is adopting rust more and more. I think that’s a step in the right direction for an OS with such a huge marketshare. That said, I’m just waiting for Rust.Net or Managed Rust to get excreted in a thinly veiled attempt to split the community, steal mindshare, and take over the project.
• Animats 1y ago
  That's why you want to use a GPL license.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• wyldfire 1y ago
  "Can this feature land upstream?" "No." <Fork happens> :shrug: - of course, the failure to preserve the license is an egregious error which amounts to infringement. But it's easily remedied. And if the downstream project has a popular feature that can't / shouldn't land upstream, then that's okay - that's what everyone prefers. "$BIGCO shouldn't be using my software, certainly not outside of how I intended it to be used!" - this attitude is totally contrary to both Free Software and Open Source IMO. If you don't like it then you should probably consider a more restrictive license.
• simultsop 1y ago
  To every SE out there: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
• GenshoTikamura 1y ago
  Pictures/oatmeal/exposure.png
• spongebobstoes 1y ago
  This is why when I'm at work, I advocate for a closed fork rather than an open one. That being said, it's not cool to remove the attribution even internally. Then again, I use MIT without the attribution clause for this very reason.
  • dmesg 1y ago
    That's a sensible choice, especially when it's not ready for production and a public release. Do your projects often later get made public too?
• interludead 1y ago
  Kudos to the author for sticking with Spegel and continuing to support the community, even after that kind of demoralizing experience
• deafpolygon 1y ago
  Honestly? Stop using MIT licensing. Use a GPL of some form, whichever one is up to you.
• rep_movsd 1y ago
  This is why Stallman is so vehement on GPLv3 Commercial entities will always exploit your work - you need to force them to give back, they will never do the positive sum game by default
• zoobab 1y ago
  Use GPLv3.
• noobermin 1y ago
  So this is a peanut gallery esque reply, but this sort of thing is what GPL was meant to avoid. I know GNU has had a lot of detractors and criticism, but you cannot and should not expect large orgs to respect community norms around open source. Permissive licenses are NOT better in this world where different players have different levels of power relative to each other. Sometimes I wonder if all the shitting on free software in general is in fact cynical and in bad faith by actors who want your labour for free.
• goffley3 1y ago
  It's like when someone says they want to go birding with you and they really just want to get you alone in the woods so they can steal your binoculars. Ref: https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc https://youtu.be/JlwwVuSUUfc