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I can't speak for the author, but I when I release code as open-source I think carefully about the license that I use (usually either MIT, GPL, or CC0). If I ch

I can't speak for the author, but I when I release code as open-source I think carefully about the license that I use (usually either MIT, GPL, or CC0). If I choose MIT, then it's because I'm fine with companies "taking advantage" of my code. I'd probably mainly feel glad that I created something useful to someone. What I'm not OK with is a company doing that without attribution. If XYZ company's product is built on code I wrote, I want to be credited -- both so that I can show it to potential employers, and so that users of XYZ company's product are aware that some of the code in it is something they can use for free and modify for their own purposes. If the attribution wasn't important to me, I would have chosen CC0 instead of MIT. So yeah, if I was the author, I'd probably feel a lot better about if MS re-added the correct attribution. I'd probably still feel miffed that they tried to pull one over on me in the first place -- but I wouldn't be offended by the fact that they're using my software.

danudey 1y ago
This is fundamentally my thoughts on it as well. If I write something useful and convenient for people, something that makes peoples' lives better, it's probably not going to see a lot of use realistically speaking. I'm not out there making a name for myself, I'm just doing some stuff. If Microsoft takes my code, turns it into a separate project with a separate name, distributes it as part of their own commercial offering, uses it in their marketing... great! It means that my ideas are making people's lives better. Yes, it's enriching a giant soulless megacorp who, at a high-level, does not actually care about how people feel and only cares about making money off my work, but I care about how people feel, and if it means that my work gets to make people's lives better then that's great - I wasn't going to make money off it anyway, so I lose nothing. Unless they take implicit or explicit credit for what I made. I don't need my name on the marketing or an invitation to a launch party, but at least make a note in the docs somewhere that "this project was forked from ...." so that I can point to it and say hey, look at this cool thing I helped make happen. I guess what would really irritate me, when it comes down to it, is not that the giant corporation did this, but that the individual developers did this - some dev out there found my project, decided to use my code, and made the conscious decision to strip out my attribution and claim it as their own. That's what would actually hurt.
shahzaibmushtaq 1y ago
I second that.
franga2000 1y ago
There's a difference between what the license does/doesn't allow and what is/isn't a dick move. MIT is commonly used for cases where you don't want to scare away potential corporate USERS by the "virality" of something like the GPL. This does not mean that the authors are completely fine with their work being repackaged and DISTRIBUTED as if the company wrote it themselves.

danudey 1y ago

This is fundamentally my thoughts on it as well. If I write something useful and convenient for people, something that makes peoples' lives better, it's probably not going to see a lot of use realistically speaking. I'm not out there making a name for myself, I'm just doing some stuff. If Microsoft takes my code, turns it into a separate project with a separate name, distributes it as part of their own commercial offering, uses it in their marketing... great! It means that my ideas are making people's lives better. Yes, it's enriching a giant soulless megacorp who, at a high-level, does not actually care about how people feel and only cares about making money off my work, but I care about how people feel, and if it means that my work gets to make people's lives better then that's great - I wasn't going to make money off it anyway, so I lose nothing. Unless they take implicit or explicit credit for what I made. I don't need my name on the marketing or an invitation to a launch party, but at least make a note in the docs somewhere that "this project was forked from ...." so that I can point to it and say hey, look at this cool thing I helped make happen. I guess what would really irritate me, when it comes down to it, is not that the giant corporation did this, but that the individual developers did this - some dev out there found my project, decided to use my code, and made the conscious decision to strip out my attribution and claim it as their own. That's what would actually hurt.

shahzaibmushtaq 1y ago

I second that.

franga2000 1y ago

There's a difference between what the license does/doesn't allow and what is/isn't a dick move. MIT is commonly used for cases where you don't want to scare away potential corporate USERS by the "virality" of something like the GPL. This does not mean that the authors are completely fine with their work being repackaged and DISTRIBUTED as if the company wrote it themselves.