5 ms·

It's also very possible they had been working on it already and wanted to compare notes, I certainly would if I were working on something internal and found a s

It's also very possible they had been working on it already and wanted to compare notes, I certainly would if I were working on something internal and found a similar project, but I agree, ask them for a consultation fee. I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. Both projects also share in license, so I have less of an issue with it personally. They're both MIT licensed.

Maxious 2y ago
Very possible, from the in repo documentation (which credits Spegel yet again) https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/docs/design.md https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/docs/design.md it seems like there was a particular engineer at Microsoft who was working on Azure Container Registry who found it useful to integrate Azure Container Registry. If they contributed it upstream, would we be discussing a blog post "how dare evil megacorp submit a PR that only implements their API! embrace extend extinguish!"? Probably.
- diggan 2y ago
  > If they contributed it upstream, would we be discussing a blog post "how dare evil megacorp submit a PR that only implements their API! embrace extend extinguish!"? Probably. Considering how often that happens VS how little times stories like that appear on the frontpage of HN, I'd wager a guess that we wouldn't be discussing it like we're discussing the current license violation.
evantbyrne 2y ago
You are supposed to keep the original license for a fork. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license.
- WD-42 2y ago
  It seems like a pretty minor violation, to be fair. They do reference the project in the repo. The real question is why did the author choose MIT if they didn’t want allow mega corps to benefit from their work without contributing back. That’s a feature of the license, not a bug.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    It is literally the only violation that the license is concerned with therefore it is major!!! MIT and BSD type licenses say you can do almost anything you want, but just don't plagiarize, because that would be intellectual misconduct. In addition to not just removing the copyright notice from sources, the MIT license requires the copyright notice to be present in all derived works. It makes no mention that if you compile a program, the binaries don't have to have copyright notices.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    Attribution is an important aspect of open source culture. It is the only thing that most authors get out of the deal.
  - NobodyNada 2y ago
    It's not a "pretty minor violation", that's the only condition of the MIT license. Yes, they mentioned Spegel, but only to thank the authors for "generously sharing their insights" -- that's not even close to the required statement that part of the project is owned and copyrighted by the authors of Spegel.
    - WD-42 2y ago
      Ok, so MS will see this thread and re-add the missing header to a few files. You really think the author is going to then feel 100% better about it? They are just another data point in the long list of authors who chose a permissive license and are then shocked when a billion dollar company takes advantage of it.
- palata 2y ago
  > Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license. Did they remove the copyright? All the source files I checked in Spegel don't have a copyright header. To me it feels like it's the author's mistake.
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    Forks don't get to pretend that licenses don't exist just because they don't like the placement in the source.
    - palata 2y ago
      You don't understand my point (probably my mistake). If the file starts with: // <MIT header> // Copyright evantbyrne Then a fork should read: // <MIT header> // Copyright evantbyrne // Copyright Microsoft But if you did not add "// Copyright evantbyrne", the MIT license doesn't say that Microsoft should add it. I don't even know if it's legal for Microsoft to do it. You have to add your own copyright to the files where you own a copyright.
      - evantbyrne 2y ago
        I understood and this is incorrect. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. It needs to appear somewhere regardless of where exactly the license was placed in the source repository.
        palata 2y ago
        Right. So they should just copy this licence somewhere in a subfolder, saying "parts of this project derive from Spegel, with licence: <copy of the licence>"? They can still do it now, and probably they should (someone can even open a PR?).
        MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
- pstoll 2y ago
  The other thing is that Microsoft does not own the copyright for any of the code they used. Facing their work on code they don’t own the copyright to is incredibly messy from an IP point of view. It’s why con contributor licenses agreements exist in most open source popular projects.
udev4096 2y ago
Blatantly copying the code without proper attribution is a violation. Regardless, it's not your issue to be OK with it, if the author himself is uncomfortable with it
- greatgib 2y ago
  It all depends if the code was copied for a big part or just snippets.
  - palata 2y ago
    But it doesn't here! You are totally allowed to completely copy an MIT file, modify it and add your copyright to it! You should just keep the copyright that is already present in the file! But in the case of Spegel, I don't think that the files contain a copyright header in the first place.
    - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
      Nonsense. Copyright is implicit and assigned on creation. The git history has a clear trail showing author and contributor details. An explicit copyright notice for every file isn't needed. This is a straightforward, unquestionable license violation, and no amount of corporate FUD will change that.
      - palata 2y ago
        You're talking about copyright, I'm talking about attribution. Of course, the author keeps their copyright on the lines of code. But that's completely different from how the attribution should be done.
- palata 2y ago
  > Blatantly copying the code without proper attribution is a violation Except that they did not do that. They forked it (as the MIT licence permits), added an attribution to their README, and added their own header to the files with their own copyright. It's not their fault if the original author did not add a header in the first place... Or where do you see that they actually removed a copyright header from the author? None of the source files I checked in Spegel have one.
donalhunt 2y ago
The number one rule about creating clean source (and IP) is not to look at competing implementations / patents. Was drilled in to me by legal over the years to avoid such issues. Really easy to unconsciously incorporate ideas from other projects. This is not that though. Seems to be exactly what the maintainer is asserting and that's not OK. :/
RajT88 2y ago
> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. I have seen plenty of dev managers refuse to pay for something if they didn't have to.
Beltiras 2y ago
Their trackrecord is such that if I got a similar call my first question when possible would be how I was being reimbursed. They are welcome to fork anything of mine if they observe the license attached. I will take a look at any PR. I will NOT spend time explaining anything to their engineers unless reimbursed at my regular rates.
- cschep 2y ago
  I hope by regular rates you mean your Enterprise rate that is 10-50x your regular rate. :)
spankalee 2y ago
> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. It's not the money, it's the red tape. Setting up a new vendor, finding the right account, getting the PO approved. Even in a company where that stuff is relatively easy, it's way more friction than a simple meeting where you don't have to ask anyone for permission for anything.
cogman10 2y ago
> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. Oh I do. The person that wanted to setup the meeting likely has no budget control. Big corps like to keep the ability to pay for stuff out of the hands of individuals and isolated in bureaucratic nightmares. You'd be more than reasonable to demand "$1000/hr with 1 hour minimum" for such a consulting and I'd see HR in MS doing an immediate "hell no" to that.
- ein0p 2y ago
  One of the prerequisites for a successful negotiation is the willingness to walk away. This applies to both sides. I did consulting for a few years, years ago, and you'd be surprised what people are willing to pay. You'd also never know that unless you named your rate and were willing to walk away. I'm pretty sure any manager at Microsoft could easily swing a couple K. The main complication would be that this wouldn't be just a "meeting" then, and you'd need to set up a contract etc. Not insurmountable, just onerous and time consuming. So I'd insist on a much larger minimum, and would be willing to trade that for a lower price.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    > you'd be surprised what people are willing to pay. At least in my company, it very much depends on who's initiating the meeting. If one of our VPs did, then easy, any amount could be approved. However, if it's a team lead, we'd be told to pound sand. I assumed other companies would be pretty similar.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      But realize, that from the standpoint of the OP someone who can't swing a couple of K also can't swing a couple hundred thousand K _per year_ to hire more contributors or provide other funding to the project. They are, therefore, completely pointless to talk to - the decision makers won't be in the room.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  Microsoft has mechanisms to enable exactly this kind of arrangement to happen.

Maxious 2y ago

Very possible, from the in repo documentation (which credits Spegel yet again) https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/docs/design.md https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/docs/design.md it seems like there was a particular engineer at Microsoft who was working on Azure Container Registry who found it useful to integrate Azure Container Registry. If they contributed it upstream, would we be discussing a blog post "how dare evil megacorp submit a PR that only implements their API! embrace extend extinguish!"? Probably.

diggan 2y ago
> If they contributed it upstream, would we be discussing a blog post "how dare evil megacorp submit a PR that only implements their API! embrace extend extinguish!"? Probably. Considering how often that happens VS how little times stories like that appear on the frontpage of HN, I'd wager a guess that we wouldn't be discussing it like we're discussing the current license violation.

evantbyrne 2y ago

You are supposed to keep the original license for a fork. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license.

WD-42 2y ago
It seems like a pretty minor violation, to be fair. They do reference the project in the repo. The real question is why did the author choose MIT if they didn’t want allow mega corps to benefit from their work without contributing back. That’s a feature of the license, not a bug.
- kazinator 2y ago
  It is literally the only violation that the license is concerned with therefore it is major!!! MIT and BSD type licenses say you can do almost anything you want, but just don't plagiarize, because that would be intellectual misconduct. In addition to not just removing the copyright notice from sources, the MIT license requires the copyright notice to be present in all derived works. It makes no mention that if you compile a program, the binaries don't have to have copyright notices.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  Attribution is an important aspect of open source culture. It is the only thing that most authors get out of the deal.
- NobodyNada 2y ago
  It's not a "pretty minor violation", that's the only condition of the MIT license. Yes, they mentioned Spegel, but only to thank the authors for "generously sharing their insights" -- that's not even close to the required statement that part of the project is owned and copyrighted by the authors of Spegel.
  - WD-42 2y ago
    Ok, so MS will see this thread and re-add the missing header to a few files. You really think the author is going to then feel 100% better about it? They are just another data point in the long list of authors who chose a permissive license and are then shocked when a billion dollar company takes advantage of it.
palata 2y ago
> Simply removing the copyright is a violation of the MIT license. Did they remove the copyright? All the source files I checked in Spegel don't have a copyright header. To me it feels like it's the author's mistake.
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  Forks don't get to pretend that licenses don't exist just because they don't like the placement in the source.
  - palata 2y ago
    You don't understand my point (probably my mistake). If the file starts with: // <MIT header> // Copyright evantbyrne Then a fork should read: // <MIT header> // Copyright evantbyrne // Copyright Microsoft But if you did not add "// Copyright evantbyrne", the MIT license doesn't say that Microsoft should add it. I don't even know if it's legal for Microsoft to do it. You have to add your own copyright to the files where you own a copyright.
    - evantbyrne 2y ago
      I understood and this is incorrect. > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. It needs to appear somewhere regardless of where exactly the license was placed in the source repository.
      - palata 2y ago
        Right. So they should just copy this licence somewhere in a subfolder, saying "parts of this project derive from Spegel, with licence: <copy of the licence>"? They can still do it now, and probably they should (someone can even open a PR?).
        MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
pstoll 2y ago
The other thing is that Microsoft does not own the copyright for any of the code they used. Facing their work on code they don’t own the copyright to is incredibly messy from an IP point of view. It’s why con contributor licenses agreements exist in most open source popular projects.

udev4096 2y ago

Blatantly copying the code without proper attribution is a violation. Regardless, it's not your issue to be OK with it, if the author himself is uncomfortable with it

greatgib 2y ago
It all depends if the code was copied for a big part or just snippets.
- palata 2y ago
  But it doesn't here! You are totally allowed to completely copy an MIT file, modify it and add your copyright to it! You should just keep the copyright that is already present in the file! But in the case of Spegel, I don't think that the files contain a copyright header in the first place.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    Nonsense. Copyright is implicit and assigned on creation. The git history has a clear trail showing author and contributor details. An explicit copyright notice for every file isn't needed. This is a straightforward, unquestionable license violation, and no amount of corporate FUD will change that.
    - palata 2y ago
      You're talking about copyright, I'm talking about attribution. Of course, the author keeps their copyright on the lines of code. But that's completely different from how the attribution should be done.
palata 2y ago
> Blatantly copying the code without proper attribution is a violation Except that they did not do that. They forked it (as the MIT licence permits), added an attribution to their README, and added their own header to the files with their own copyright. It's not their fault if the original author did not add a header in the first place... Or where do you see that they actually removed a copyright header from the author? None of the source files I checked in Spegel have one.

donalhunt 2y ago

The number one rule about creating clean source (and IP) is not to look at competing implementations / patents. Was drilled in to me by legal over the years to avoid such issues. Really easy to unconsciously incorporate ideas from other projects. This is not that though. Seems to be exactly what the maintainer is asserting and that's not OK. :/

RajT88 2y ago

> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. I have seen plenty of dev managers refuse to pay for something if they didn't have to.

Beltiras 2y ago

Their trackrecord is such that if I got a similar call my first question when possible would be how I was being reimbursed. They are welcome to fork anything of mine if they observe the license attached. I will take a look at any PR. I will NOT spend time explaining anything to their engineers unless reimbursed at my regular rates.

cschep 2y ago
I hope by regular rates you mean your Enterprise rate that is 10-50x your regular rate. :)

spankalee 2y ago

> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. It's not the money, it's the red tape. Setting up a new vendor, finding the right account, getting the PO approved. Even in a company where that stuff is relatively easy, it's way more friction than a simple meeting where you don't have to ask anyone for permission for anything.

cogman10 2y ago

> I don't see why they wouldn't pay it. Oh I do. The person that wanted to setup the meeting likely has no budget control. Big corps like to keep the ability to pay for stuff out of the hands of individuals and isolated in bureaucratic nightmares. You'd be more than reasonable to demand "$1000/hr with 1 hour minimum" for such a consulting and I'd see HR in MS doing an immediate "hell no" to that.

ein0p 2y ago
One of the prerequisites for a successful negotiation is the willingness to walk away. This applies to both sides. I did consulting for a few years, years ago, and you'd be surprised what people are willing to pay. You'd also never know that unless you named your rate and were willing to walk away. I'm pretty sure any manager at Microsoft could easily swing a couple K. The main complication would be that this wouldn't be just a "meeting" then, and you'd need to set up a contract etc. Not insurmountable, just onerous and time consuming. So I'd insist on a much larger minimum, and would be willing to trade that for a lower price.
- cogman10 2y ago
  > you'd be surprised what people are willing to pay. At least in my company, it very much depends on who's initiating the meeting. If one of our VPs did, then easy, any amount could be approved. However, if it's a team lead, we'd be told to pound sand. I assumed other companies would be pretty similar.
  - ein0p 2y ago
    But realize, that from the standpoint of the OP someone who can't swing a couple of K also can't swing a couple hundred thousand K _per year_ to hire more contributors or provide other funding to the project. They are, therefore, completely pointless to talk to - the decision makers won't be in the room.
jandrewrogers 2y ago
Microsoft has mechanisms to enable exactly this kind of arrangement to happen.