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Microsoft Statement Regarding MSN China Joint Venture’s Juku Feature
- malkia 17y agoMicrosoft just made my day. That's such an honest direct reply. No obscurity whatsover.
- angelbob 17y agoThat's a remarkably simple, upfront and honest apology. I'm not normally a big Microsoft fan, but it sounds like they're handling this one well. Go them!
- icey 17y agoAgreed, it was surprisingly PR-speak free. I'm glad to see that they mentioned who it was that was copied as well (Plurk).
- marcus 17y agoIt was significantly easier for them because the transgression was done by an external contractor. I doubt they would have been this quick or this forthright had it been an internal job.
- endtime 17y agoI highly doubt this would ever happen internally.
- kprobst 17y agoHeysoos, the day they cure cancer someone will find a way to criticize them for it.
- rbanffy 17y agoThe day they cure cancer, it will probably be with an addictive drug ;-) They can't help it. It's their corporate DNA. I have a great deal of respect for many of their technical folks, but it's been ages since the MBAs and marketroids took control of the company. (sadly I miss the Tolkien quote I was trying to put in here about evil races... It's too early in the morning)
- awa 17y agoWell, yes! But it would have been harder for an employee to do this since he would have been violating MS policies, hence risking his job. Also, The whole thing would have gone through a whole design process involving a PM and a Test, I doubt the 3 would have come to the same design decision (visual + architectural) as Plurk. Also, if the three decided to steal the code than it would have been three people risking their jobs instead of a vendor who was hoping "nobody would notice" esp since Plurk wasn't available from China.
- rbanffy 17y ago"Also, The whole thing would have gone through a whole design process involving a PM and a Test" They would copy Plurk, but they would copy 2009's Plurk with a product that would enter beta in 2012...
- pkulak 17y agoAnd if Ballmer murdered someone, that would have been harder to apologize for as well.
- netcan 17y agoThere is a point to the above comment. If it is easier to apologise & easier to be forgiven for vendor shoddiness, it creates an incentive to outsource dirty work.
- jonny_noog 17y agoSure does. See the use of mercenaries in Iraq and other places.
- netcan 17y agoWhy all the downvotes? It's true. It is easier having to apologise for a bad vendor then for a bad department. "The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied. This was in clear violation of the vendor’s contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft’s policies respecting intellectual property." That would have been a lot harder if it had been a Microsoft team.
- ilamont 17y agoCool that they acted on it so quickly, but it makes me wonder what sort of controls are in place in China, and who is overseeing these sorts of projects. It's hard to believe someone who was familiar with the competition would green-light an obvious rip-off ... unless they weren't aware of Plurk or didn't care.
- mechanical_fish 17y agoOn odd-numbered days people accuse companies the size of Microsoft of being stodgy, plodding, and bureaucratic, unable to ship anything in less than five years because of all the meetings and safeguards and red tape. On even-numbered days people accuse companies like Microsoft of not having enough meetings and safeguards. How could they green-light some contractor's code without triple-checking it against all the potential competitors on the web? Maybe consulting an IP lawyer. Maybe hold up the release of the code for three or four months, just to be sure. Get the CEO to sign off on it. The moral is: Microsoft is sometimes good, and Microsoft is sometimes bad, but Microsoft will always be criticized. In this case it looks to me like they did the right thing. They hired a contractor. They gave the contractor the power to get things done without constant handholding. In return, they made the contractor pledge in writing to uphold certain standards. Now the contract has been violated, and Microsoft took immediate action, and this press release is part of the result. It looks so innocent, but what it says is this: These contractors have failed us for the last time. Now witness the awesome destructive power of our legal team. You can't go through life constantly triple-checking everything. That's what contracts and insurance are for.
- ilamont 17y ago"On odd-numbered days people accuse companies the size of Microsoft of being stodgy, plodding, and bureaucratic, unable to ship anything in less than five years because of all the meetings and safeguards and red tape." There's a Chinese idiom for organizations like Microsoft: "The Big Tree Catches The Wind." Because of their size and history, the company gets called on things that smaller companies never do. And yes, kudos to them for farming out the job to someone else, and giving the contractor to do work without constant handholding. But shame on them for not catching this blatant ripoff of a well-known competitor before launching this to the PRC market. The Plurk clone is not something the legal team should have triple-checked. It's something the China microblog product manager should have spotted on when mockups and specs were passed around.
- brown9-2 17y agoI agree, but perhaps I'm missing something - are they actually saying anywhere in that statement that they are cutting ties with the vendor that copied the code? It seems as if they are only saying they will be suspending the beta of this application and re-evaluating their practices towards application code supplied by third-party vendors.
- s3graham 17y agoWAG: It's pretty much a given, and they'll be throwing down some hurt for violation of contract terms too.
- anigbrowl 17y agoThat was the impression I got, although we have to consider the possibility that it was one overworked or lazy programmer at a company that does multiple other projects. Anyway, props for the straight-up mea culpa.
- rbanffy 17y agoActually, it was more like an eius culpa...
- caffeine 17y agoThey are handling this one well ... but try not to give them too much credit. After all, they did just manage to release a literal ripoff of a competitor's site under the MS brand name. Judging by the gushing applause for their apology, we were all half-expecting them to sue Plurk for libel, possibly having the devs shipped to Guantanamo for questioning. It feels a bit like the nervous, giggling thanks the schoolyard bully gets when he abstains, today, from stepping on the scrawny kid's glasses.
- est 17y agoWhy don't Microsoft do some PR with the Chinese government to make Plurk accessible in China again.
- rms 17y agoBecause Microsoft doesn't have that power.
- mrtron 17y agoThey have that kind of bankroll though.
- luchak 17y agoWhat? The Chinese government has issues with sites containing user-generated content. Neither Microsoft nor anyone else can resolve these issues just by throwing money at the problem. Getting Plurk back into China would likely involve making substantial changes to how the site is run: for example, demonstrating that they can and will take down or block posts at the request of the Chinese government within a specific amount of time after the request is made.
- pavs 17y agoI don't like microsoft and I like this. Also kudos goes to "jf" for acting fast: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994647
- jf 17y agoThanks! I'm glad that Microsoft's response is being received well.
- unohoo 17y agoSometimes, admitting that 'we fucked up' is simply the best apology / remedy.
- mrjbq7 17y agoMicrosoft has essentially admitted that the independent contractor was guilty of intellectual property theft. I would assume that any revenue the contractor earned would be at jeopardy if Plurk were to pursue legal action. If Microsoft made any money through the Juku service, the same should be true of there as well.
- socratees 17y agoThat's just fantastic. Well done Microsoft.
- credo 17y agoOne of the biggest changes I had seen at Microsoft (in my last few years at Microsoft) was the excessive reliance on outsourcing. Groups that relied excessively on vendors had a different culture from other groups. The blatant copying (in the Plurk case) is a particularly egregious example of what can happen with too much outsourcing, but the impact of policies (that treat product development as an outsourcable commodity) over the past several years extends beyound this example and hurts overall quality.
- aaronbrethorst 17y agoThat's not necessarily fair. When I was there, it was a hell of a lot easier to get some cash to hire an external vendor than to get more headcount. Perhaps a penny-wise but pound-foolish situation, but it is what it is. Also, there are times when a group without development resources (e.g. a content group or an evangelism group) wants to build a tool or a website. They don't really have an option but to outsource its creation.
- credo 17y agoWhen you're talking about groups without dev-resources, you're not talking about product-development groups. By "product development", I specifically meant product development and core teams at Microsoft. On your other point, I think we can agree that penny-wise pound foolish isn't a good policy for companies like Microsoft <g> Btw to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that all outsourcing is bad. I managed one small outsourced project in the 90s and was very happy with the results. However, imo, today's Microsoft does too much outsourcing.
- aero142 17y agoIn this case I am willing to extend a little slack. The site design of plurk seems very strange to me, but may be normal in China. Perhaps a Chinese company is better suited to develop a site to be used the Chinese market.
- beilabs 17y agoGood job Microsoft. I worked for vendors in China before and I'm well aware of their practices... So now Microsoft have no "plurk" service, why not buy the startup and integrate them into their offering? Wins all around.
- potatolicious 17y ago> why not buy the startup and integrate them into their offering? Isn't Plurk banned from China? I would imagine there may be some legal wrangling with the Chinese government to get a now-purchased Plurk back onto that market.
- beilabs 17y agoPlurk is banned by domain, however if it came under the Microsoft domain it may be a different story. Has anyone heard of any Microsoft products through Microsoft China being banned?
- Elepsis 17y agoChina has blocked access to products by Microsoft, Google and others in the past, though in most cases they eventually got unblocked.
- padmanabhan01 17y agoThis episode, I guess is the best thing that could have happened to plurk. For all the publicity I mean.
- yosho 17y agoSo does Plurk actually get anything out of this? (Besides the free publicity)
- pavs 17y agoThey get to stop Microsoft from copying their stuff.
- adw 17y agoI doubt anyone'll be discussing financial settlements in public, but...
- kprobst 17y agoPerhaps they should sue Microsoft for irreparable financial damages... like the RIAA does to file sharers? After all, no one was deprived of any physical property as far as I can tell.
- pavs 17y agoI disagree. I don't like Microsoft, but they found out their mistake and fixed it. Its not like Microsoft higher management consciously decided to this, it was done by a third party contractor who was hired to work on the project - who was specifically advised NOT to do this in the contract they signed. They still did it. If anyone should sue anyone, it should be Microsoft suing the contractor.
- kprobst 17y agoI was being sarcastic :)
- nzmsv 17y agoThis is the second recent problem MS had with a contractor stealing source code (the other was the Windows 7 image tool violating the GPL). I'm sure Microsoft handles lots of outsourced projects, and they can't review every last bit of code. Why not put in a system where violations like these can be reported to someone at MS?
- _pius 17y agoThis apology is not some amazing achievement; this is simply what they were supposed to do. I'm not ready to heap a ton of praise on a major company just for following basic ethics and PR in the wake of a scandal they caused. Just how low of a bar are we trying to set here?
- city41 17y agoMicrosoft didn't cause any scandal, the contractor they hired did. Yes, of course, MS is responsible; but MS was also a victim here.
- caffeine 17y agoNope. MS is responsible, period. People seem to be amputating MS China from MS as a whole, as if somehow MS were screwed by the Chinese or something. It doesn't work that way. It's like if I murdered someone and then got away by saying "I apologize for the misbehavior of my murderous personality - I will not be doing business with it in the future." Doesn't work that way.
- city41 17y agoNo, people are amputating MS from the contractor they hired, because MS was screwed by that contractor. It does work that way.
- _pius 17y agoYou should keep this in context; Plurk is (one of) their prime competitor(s). Microsoft was almost certainly negligent in allowing this to come to market. The fault doesn't fall solely on the contractor. In any case, my point is that Microsoft didn't do anything especially noble by apologizing and taking the site down in the face of blatant plagiarism. If it were noble, you'd be able to name some less noble but at least as self-interested actions Microsoft could have taken. I can't think of one. Microsoft doing practically anything besides what this would have only hurt them more.
- apinstein 17y agoIn my experience this type of thing is unfortunately very common in China. One of my earliest commercial software applications (for Palm OS) was decompiled and re-packaged as a competitor to our product by a Chinese company. When you looked at the binary of their product, it had most of our function names in it. Also, it had most of our bugs. These were weird bugs that no one implementing it on their own would've ever replicated. We contact the company and they said that they honored our work and loved our product and didn't copy it and "yada yada happy-go-lucky" which was total BS. Sadly since they were in China and our only real option (according to lawyers) was to sue the company in the US that sold it, which unfortunately was an online software retailer that was 30%+ of our revenues. Scratch that. Thus we just had to deal with it. I am not sure if it's cultural or what, but I largely avoid China as much as possible now. Fool me once, shame on me. Don't get fooled again.