To remove the original copyright notice, they'd need a copyright assignment (possibly implicit, as when the work is made for hire). They've already got a licence and they've infringed it by doing this.
Well they could technically have proper attribution without the literal string "Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors" if they included an older copyright notice that was more appropriate. I think that was the point they were making.
This is correct and is roughly what I meant. My only nitpick is that I was thinking that if they forked at the time of the older notice, they would be fine to have used it, rather than a vague notion of appropriateness that probably was intended to mean the same thing, but is less precise.
The hacker news post reached someone high enough up at Microsoft to have things changed. They ended placing a combined copyright notice that is a mixture of both versions into the repository to play it safe.
A more complicated way to do it is to add a folder that contains the original LICENSE file or files. Sometimes there is more than one license, or the license texts differ. In that case, you must preserve all the different variants, even if they all call themselves MIT.
Then, you can optionally add your additional own LICENSE file * only iff* it is compatible with all existing LICENSES. In the case of the MIT license, you may relicense, sublicense, or use a different license in addition, provided it is MIT-compatible. With e.g. GPL you can't. Note that you still have to preserve all the original LICENSE files in the repo.
Once you change the copyright line, you no longer include "the above copyright notice". At that point you're violating the license.
You are also not allowed to change the copyright notice or license text in any way (you may however add to the license, which is a loophole other licenses such as GPL fix.)
Substantial is subject to (legal) debate as the Oracle vs. MS case has shown. Whole functions or large parts of files however should always be considered substantial, as the software would otherwise not work.
I'm seriously flabbergasted at how bad reading comprehension seems to be among coders.
> I'm seriously flabbergasted at how bad reading comprehension seems to be among coders.
Sorry to deflate your amazement, but I made the remark because I have never seen a permissively licensed repository which changed hands and had multiple copyright lines in the last 20 years or so.
Maybe it's not my reading comprehension (and English is not my native language to begin with), but the behaviors of other coders to begin with.
Maybe we shouldn't point fingers to others and not forget that three are pointing towards ourselves. Eh?
I've seen plenty of both. I've added one good example in my other comment. But it certainly depends on the community and programming language as to how serious licensing is treated.
But yes, many people are not complying with the license literally, and it's frustrating to see. I know it basically doesn't matter unless you go to court over it, but still it irks me and screams a sort of carelessness about the rules and social contract.
Sorry for criticising your reading comprehension, I did not mean it as a personal insult.
It's just that I see these types of responses so often, basically every time any licensing question comes up. Twice in this thread. And all that's required is to just read the very short and basic MIT license text itself, no lawyering required.
I can understand the native speaker part, but just know that I myself am not a native speaker either. But I understand that's a huge barrier.
But even native speakers on HN with serious software engineering jobs and skill don't understand it, or don't want to understand. I think it's a bit like when people see math proofs, they mentally just skip over it.
Source: the MIT license.
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/mit/