3 ms·

> There is no evidence in the fork that he is the copyright holder of the original code and it looks like Microsoft is. Part of that is Microsoft’s fault, but p

> There is no evidence in the fork that he is the copyright holder of the original code and it looks like Microsoft is. Part of that is Microsoft’s fault, but part of that is his fault for not including per file copyright notices, such that Microsoft could add theirs and be the sole one listed in every file. Absolutely not! This is completely and only M$'s fault, whichever way you look at it. Copying a file and slapping your own license on it, without consideration of the original one, is never acceptable. Don't blaim the victim please. As for incompetence - well maybe they (M$) need to get better at managing licenses? Accusing others of stealing when the reverse is true only makes everything worse. Let's not try to change the standard way of licensing because some developers can't be bothered to check the license (and even fix typos in comments, apparently). As an aside, there is no need to add copyright / license to every file. I would even consider it an anti-pattern, because it pollutes the code with noise.

ryao 1y ago
He made it extremely easy for a fork to make this mistake by not putting headers in every file stating the license and copyright. If you look at any major project, you are likely to see license and copyright notices at the top. You even have the Linux foundation pushing to have standardized license notices at the top of every source file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Package_Data_Exchange#For_licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Package_Data_Exchange... That said, the engineer who did this is fairly young (7 years out of college) and does not appear to have any experience working on a fork previously: https://github.com/avtakkar https://github.com/avtakkar https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviraltakkar/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviraltakkar/ He probably did not realize he had goofed. It does not take much imagination to guess the sequence of events: * He copies the source files into Visual Studio Code * Someone internal tells him he needs a license, so he grabs whatever Microsoft suggests while following internal guidance, without realizing that is only for Microsoft originated code. * Someone internal tells him to put it on GitHub, so it goes up with the wrong license. * He realizes that the files already had a license and tries to fix it. Presumably someone told him. * He misses the copyright notice that he failed to copy in the first place when fixing his earlier mistake. * People here hear about it. Many inexperienced software engineers would do the same thing. This is not a licensed profession where you are expected to know all of the legal aspects before you may do anything.

ryao 1y ago

He made it extremely easy for a fork to make this mistake by not putting headers in every file stating the license and copyright. If you look at any major project, you are likely to see license and copyright notices at the top. You even have the Linux foundation pushing to have standardized license notices at the top of every source file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Package_Data_Exchange#For_licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Package_Data_Exchange... That said, the engineer who did this is fairly young (7 years out of college) and does not appear to have any experience working on a fork previously: https://github.com/avtakkar https://github.com/avtakkar https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviraltakkar/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviraltakkar/ He probably did not realize he had goofed. It does not take much imagination to guess the sequence of events: * He copies the source files into Visual Studio Code * Someone internal tells him he needs a license, so he grabs whatever Microsoft suggests while following internal guidance, without realizing that is only for Microsoft originated code. * Someone internal tells him to put it on GitHub, so it goes up with the wrong license. * He realizes that the files already had a license and tries to fix it. Presumably someone told him. * He misses the copyright notice that he failed to copy in the first place when fixing his earlier mistake. * People here hear about it. Many inexperienced software engineers would do the same thing. This is not a licensed profession where you are expected to know all of the legal aspects before you may do anything.