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0 pointsMyOutfitIsVague11mo ago0 comments

Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I refuse to believe that Microsoft doesn't understand how attribution, copyright, or open source licenses work, though. I believe this is a mistake, but it's a very egregious one that showcases a lack of respect for the communities that Microsoft is exploiting. This mistake should not be possible from an entity like Microsoft.

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palata11mo ago

Maybe the engineers did not go through a 12 months process with their legal department and did it wrong.

And with the bad publicity coming back to Microsoft, maybe those engineers will now understand that they should just avoid re-using open source projects when possible. And the next HN post will be about "BigTech reinvents the wheel in order to have control".

We're all nitpicking here: they mentioned the original project in the README. Peerd is quite different from Spegel, it's not just a copy with a small patch.

Sure, they should do it right. But really, a polite, small PR fixing that would probably be a good first step.

MyOutfitIsVagueOP11mo ago

You don't need a 12 month process with a legal department to not take code without giving credit. This is not untrodden ground.

> they mentioned the original project in the README

They thank them for their "generous insights". That's not the same thing. If I take chapters unmodified from Harry Potter and thank Rowling for her "generous insight", that's still not okay.

> Peerd is quite different from Spegel, it's not just a copy with a small patch.

Nobody said it was. It does, however, copy functions and other entire blocks of code with comments directly from Spegel without giving attribution. That is wrong. That is plagiarism.

palata11mo ago

> You don't need a 12 month process with a legal department to not take code without giving credit. This is not untrodden ground.

Well, I have been in big companies where it takes a lot of time for the legal department to check those things. Not because it's fundamentally hard, but because the queue of things they have to do is pretty big.

> They thank them for their "generous insights". That's not the same thing.

Sure, it's wrong. But it's not "purposely stealing without giving any credit at all" either. It feels like an engineer did that, tried to give credit and did it wrong. And now we go on and on saying how this engineer is evil.

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palata11mo ago

Maybe the engineers did not go through a 12 months process with their legal department and did it wrong.

We're all nitpicking here: they mentioned the original project in the README. Peerd is quite different from Spegel, it's not just a copy with a small patch.

Sure, they should do it right. But really, a polite, small PR fixing that would probably be a good first step.

MyOutfitIsVagueOP11mo ago

You don't need a 12 month process with a legal department to not take code without giving credit. This is not untrodden ground.

> they mentioned the original project in the README

They thank them for their "generous insights". That's not the same thing. If I take chapters unmodified from Harry Potter and thank Rowling for her "generous insight", that's still not okay.

> Peerd is quite different from Spegel, it's not just a copy with a small patch.

Nobody said it was. It does, however, copy functions and other entire blocks of code with comments directly from Spegel without giving attribution. That is wrong. That is plagiarism.

palata11mo ago

> You don't need a 12 month process with a legal department to not take code without giving credit. This is not untrodden ground.

> They thank them for their "generous insights". That's not the same thing.

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