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0 pointsryao1y ago0 comments

> If they forked from before the author had a license, it’s worse. MS had no right to use it.

You are right, provided he did not have a notice saying it was MIT licensed elsewhere.

> I’ve contributed to plenty of project that don’t have the per-file copyrights. It’s a choice not a mistake.

I would consider it to be both a choice and a mistake. The two are not mutually exclusive. 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 the original author’s fault for not including per file copyright notices, such that Microsoft could add theirs and be the sole one listed in every file.

I would not be surprised if Microsoft’s legal department doing a scan of public repositories for stolen code mistook him for infringing on “their code” given that they have no information that he authored it rather than their employee. It sounds absurd, but it has happened. I know for a fact the sg3 utils author added copyright notices to his code examples because he was getting contacted by companies, whose engineers incorporated his code into their projects without attribution, that thought he had stolen their code:

https://github.com/doug-gilbert/sg3_utils

I know that because he told me by email in 2013.

0 comments

scosman1y ago

> There is no evidence in the fork that he is the copyright holder of the original code and it looks like Microsoft is.

Only because they removed the license and copyright. If they were willing to do that in 1 file, they are willing to do it in many. It's not the authors mistake in any way shape or form.

ryaoOP1y ago

It seems that only portions are from the original, so it is possible that they made the fork by copying files as they were needed. In that case, there was no removal of the notice. It just never was copied since they were using the project as an organ donor. That is a problem when using a single LICENSE file. It would have been handled had the original files had headers stating the license and copyright.

andrewaylett1y ago

> but part of that is the original author’s fault

No: the original author could have made it easier to comply, and you could argue that he acted foolishly in not doing so, but that doesn't make it his fault.

ryaoOP1y ago

Then who is responsible for his failure to add proper notices to the files? Microsoft?

If someone wanted to transplant only a subset of files from one project to another, there would have been no copyright notices to retain.

andrewaylett1y ago

The copyright notice in the LICENSE file was still there. Bring it along for the ride -- either by putting all the files in one subdirectory, or by referencing it from each file, or by adding a note letting people know which files were under which copyright. They could even have also added copyright headers to each of the files in question.

There's more than one way for Microsoft to have retained the required attribution. The problem is that they didn't pick any of them. The author offered them valuable code, and the requirements of the license weren't onerous -- if they're unwilling to follow them, they should just not use the code.

bornfreddy1y ago

> 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.

ryaoOP1y 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...

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://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.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

scosman1y ago

> There is no evidence in the fork that he is the copyright holder of the original code and it looks like Microsoft is.

Only because they removed the license and copyright. If they were willing to do that in 1 file, they are willing to do it in many. It's not the authors mistake in any way shape or form.

ryaoOP1y ago

andrewaylett1y ago

> but part of that is the original author’s fault

No: the original author could have made it easier to comply, and you could argue that he acted foolishly in not doing so, but that doesn't make it his fault.

ryaoOP1y ago

Then who is responsible for his failure to add proper notices to the files? Microsoft?

If someone wanted to transplant only a subset of files from one project to another, there would have been no copyright notices to retain.

andrewaylett1y ago

bornfreddy1y ago

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.

ryaoOP1y 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.

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://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.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse