4 ms·

The "notice" is the literal license file. It is illegal to strip someone else's license from their work. It doesn't matter that they replaced MIT with MIT, beca

by tedivm 1y ago

The "notice" is the literal license file. It is illegal to strip someone else's license from their work. It doesn't matter that they replaced MIT with MIT, because they stripped the author and attribution from it. https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/Azure/peerd/blob/main/LICENSE If you read that file you'd think that Microsoft was the copyright holder, but they very clearly aren't.

palata 1y ago
> but they very clearly aren't. Peerd seems very different from Spegel, so Microsoft does hold quite a bit of copyright over Peerd. Now I genuinely wonder if the main LICENSE should say "copyright Spegel and Microsoft", or if somewhere in the repo Microsoft should just have a copy of the Spegel LICENSE file?
- robmccoll 1y ago
  Generally, you would want to do one of: a) Keep any code that you've pulled in from another project in its own directory structure with a license file indicating where it came from and its licensing terms. b) If you intend to modify the code or integrate it more tightly with your own, copy the notice into each source file that was taken and perhaps put a pre-amble along the lines of "Portions of this file were copied from XXX under the MIT license as follows:". Ideally you would make a commit with the file in its initial state as copied, and then if you ever need to determine what came from where and how it was licensed, it shouldn't be too difficult.
  - palata 1y ago
    Generally, what I take from this discussion is that what you want to do is get as much inspiration as you want from the code, but absolutely rewrite it from scratch such that it is yours and yours only.
    - saagarjha 1y ago
      That would still be infringement.
      - palata 1y ago
        Absolutely not. How would it be infringement to write your own code from scratch?
        saagarjha 1y ago
        If you read someone else's code and copy it down, then you are infringing on it. There's a reason why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design exists.
        palata 1y ago
        Where did I say that you copy it? I used the words "you rewrite it from scratch", not "you copy it".
        saagarjha 1y ago
        That's a copy. Read the Wikipedia article I linked and it explains what people do to demonstrate they're not infringing.
        palata 1y ago
        Because people spend a lot of time making sure that they can prove that they did not infringe copyright does not prove anything here. It just says that some people put a lot of effort into making sure that they could easily prove that they didn't infringe copyright.
- tedivm 1y ago
  What you're proposing, updating the license file to list the authors, is a pretty common way to do this. It does mean that the code is mixed a bit, so it would be hard to split who owns what, but this is only relevant if one of the copyright owners wants to change the license (as they can legally only do that to the code they own).
- int_19h 1y ago
  From my own past experience working with F/OSS at Microsoft, they should at the minimum have "third party notices" file somewhere in the repo. Something like this: https://github.com/microsoft/debugpy/blob/main/src/debugpy/ThirdPartyNotices.txt https://github.com/microsoft/debugpy/blob/main/src/debugpy/T...
w0m 1y ago
It looks like they relatively recently migrated the entire codebase from Apache to MIT. I wonder if that was in relation to pulling in code from Spegel. They updated ~every header.

by tedivm 1y ago

palata 1y ago

> but they very clearly aren't. Peerd seems very different from Spegel, so Microsoft does hold quite a bit of copyright over Peerd. Now I genuinely wonder if the main LICENSE should say "copyright Spegel and Microsoft", or if somewhere in the repo Microsoft should just have a copy of the Spegel LICENSE file?

robmccoll 1y ago
Generally, you would want to do one of: a) Keep any code that you've pulled in from another project in its own directory structure with a license file indicating where it came from and its licensing terms. b) If you intend to modify the code or integrate it more tightly with your own, copy the notice into each source file that was taken and perhaps put a pre-amble along the lines of "Portions of this file were copied from XXX under the MIT license as follows:". Ideally you would make a commit with the file in its initial state as copied, and then if you ever need to determine what came from where and how it was licensed, it shouldn't be too difficult.
- palata 1y ago
  Generally, what I take from this discussion is that what you want to do is get as much inspiration as you want from the code, but absolutely rewrite it from scratch such that it is yours and yours only.
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    That would still be infringement.
    - palata 1y ago
      Absolutely not. How would it be infringement to write your own code from scratch?
      - saagarjha 1y ago
        If you read someone else's code and copy it down, then you are infringing on it. There's a reason why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design exists.
        palata 1y ago
        Where did I say that you copy it? I used the words "you rewrite it from scratch", not "you copy it".
        saagarjha 1y ago
        That's a copy. Read the Wikipedia article I linked and it explains what people do to demonstrate they're not infringing.
        palata 1y ago
        Because people spend a lot of time making sure that they can prove that they did not infringe copyright does not prove anything here. It just says that some people put a lot of effort into making sure that they could easily prove that they didn't infringe copyright.
tedivm 1y ago
What you're proposing, updating the license file to list the authors, is a pretty common way to do this. It does mean that the code is mixed a bit, so it would be hard to split who owns what, but this is only relevant if one of the copyright owners wants to change the license (as they can legally only do that to the code they own).
int_19h 1y ago
From my own past experience working with F/OSS at Microsoft, they should at the minimum have "third party notices" file somewhere in the repo. Something like this: https://github.com/microsoft/debugpy/blob/main/src/debugpy/ThirdPartyNotices.txt https://github.com/microsoft/debugpy/blob/main/src/debugpy/T...

w0m 1y ago

It looks like they relatively recently migrated the entire codebase from Apache to MIT. I wonder if that was in relation to pulling in code from Spegel. They updated ~every header.