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0 pointsburan771y ago0 comments

Because they're hoping not to antagonize the megacorp (too quickly). If a megacorp has you in their sights, especially in a country like the US where court battles are prohibitively expensive, pushing the envelope will just draw ire and aggression from that megacorp. A normal person has no negotiating leverage in front of MS especially when it comes to open source.

It's like negotiating with the mafia, you might get something out of it but if you cross the line you'll end up face down in a ditch and authorities will look the other way. Megacorps have stolen, copied, reverse engineered, replicated, etc. things since forever and it always worked out for them.

In this case MS didn't need any help. They could very well take everything and face no real repercussions (this is the reality when the majority is uneducated, and their elected representatives are greedy and spineless). So playing along gives some chance to get something positive out of it.

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latexr1y ago

> especially in a country like the US where ending up in court is prohibitively expensive

What’s the scenario here where they could take you to court for refusing to (in GP’s words) doing charity for them?

Scenario 1: Microsoft contacts you and says they want to talk about your open-source project. You never reply.

Scenario 2: Microsoft contacts you (…). You reply “thank you, but I’m not interested. You are of course free to contribute or fork within the constraints of the license.”

Scenario 3: Microsoft contacts (…). You reply “sure! I charge $X/hour or I could do a flat rate of $Y for the meeting. Is that acceptable to you?”

What basis would they have for taking you to court in any situation? As soon as you got a legal letter for any of them, your first step should be to send it to as many news outlets you could think of.

hinkley1y ago

Patent infringement. Microsoft has one of the largest patent portfolios in the world.

MOARDONGZPLZ1y ago

“Ending up in court” vs “Microsoft suing you.” I think the implication is that if MS simply decided to unilaterally fork the project and change the license, the OS maintainer’s only real recourse is the court system (and the court of public opinion), and that would be expensive.

debugnik1y ago

Except MS did it anyway: the author cooperated and MS still forked and removed the original copyright notice.

Since this isn't the first time MS does this to a FOSS maintainer, it's clear this tactic doesn't help us.

buran77OP1y ago

> I felt there was going to be a path forward ripe with cooperation and hopefully a place where I could onboard new maintainers

He was hoping for a fruitful collaboration and offered the help towards this goal. MS taking whatever they wanted anyway just proves that they had no intention to cooperate, let alone to pay handsomely for something that was already free.

Ending up in court means you need to sue the megacorp to enforce the license. This makes it a free lunch for a megacorp.

With every single scenario MS takes whatever they need. They don't have to pay, don't need the help to read code, and you can't afford to force them to respect the license.

P.S.

> As soon as you got a legal letter for any of them, your first step should be to send it to as many news outlets you could think of.

There's a guy rotting away in a El Salvadorian prison with a lot of press to keep him comfort. Not sure your letter will capture the world's attention like you think it will.

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