The details are less important. The code that is copied needs to be attributed, either with comments, or a license file that states which files came from the project, or something else, but the specific code does need to be recognizable by a reader as coming from that other source. Comments and copyright headers are the easiest way to do this.
Still, to me it's not even clear if "substantial parts of the code" were copied. What the article shows is really small snippets of pretty generic code. Ok, it keeps the original comment and the overall form. But if it's 15 lines, it may even count as "fair use", couldn't it? Remembering how LLMs use the concept of "fair-use" by stealing everything everywhere...
My point is that Peerd seems like it's loosely based on Spegel. Maybe a fork that was heavily modified. Not sure if they should track all the code that looks like it was not modified enough and attribute it everywhere.
Probably they should keep a copy of the original LICENSE file somewhere, sure. And if one asks politely, maybe they will do it.
Again: they did credit the original project. So it feels a bit aggressive to say that they "stole it without giving any credit".
> Still, to me it's not even clear if "substantial parts of the code" were copied. What the article shows is really small snippets of pretty generic code. Ok, it keeps the original comment and the overall form. But if it's 15 lines, it may even count as "fair use", couldn't it? Remembering how LLMs use the concept of "fair-use" by stealing everything everywhere...
Fair use allows for commentary, news reporting, criticism, teaching, research, and scholarship and there are guidelines. Most cases where fair use is sought as a defense requires litigation to clear it up. The other alternative when forking an extremely permissive MIT license is to just follow the license.
> Probably they should keep a copy of the original LICENSE file somewhere, sure. And if one asks politely, maybe they will do it.
They are required to do so by the original license of Spegel. Does Microsoft ask politely when people violate MS licensing by say, pirating their software, or do they work with 3 letter agencies and a massive enforcement team to ensure their licenses are followed?
> My point is that Peerd seems like it's loosely based on Spegel. Maybe a fork that was heavily modified. Not sure if they should track all the code that looks like it was not modified enough and attribute it everywhere.
Yes. Every other tech company I have worked at, including Mozilla, a company that publishes almost everything they do as open source, has had folks dedicated to ensuring license compliance.
> Again: they did credit the original project. So it feels a bit aggressive to say that they "stole it without giving any credit".
They didn't provide credit in the way that the license requires. This isn't a case where a new community member forked or copied code into their first open source project. This is one of the biggest companies in the world with a well-known history of taking and using OSS without proper attribution. I like and use many MS products, but they absolutely do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
> This isn't a case where a new community member forked or copied code into their first open source project. This is one of the biggest companies in the world with a well-known history of taking and using OSS without proper attribution.
Next time you work in a big company and you feel that the legal department is a PITA and slows you down, remember how people react when they are not, like here :-).
I don't know why you are trying so hard to carry water for a team of engineers at a company that has the history to know better.
The team that built peerd had the good sense to consult with the author of Spegel before moving forward with their project. A simple note to their business line lawyer (or whatever they call them at Microsoft) at work to say "hey, we are going to use some of this code from this open source project, what do we need to do?" would have taken less time and effort than setting up the meeting with the Spegel person/folks. That is assuming there isn't an easy to find page on how to consume open source software on Microsoft intranet. Every major company I have worked for (HSBC, Mozilla, Amazon, Fastly, Cisco, to name some) has had this going back to 2005. This isn't rocket science.
You also don't need to be a legal expert to comply with most open source licenses, and the MIT license in particular is really easy to comply with. Just copy the code, and whatever file you copy the code into gets an attribution comment at the top.
I'm all for going against leadership when they purposely abuse people (like Zuckerberg telling his engineers to torrent copyrighted data for their LLM).
I would be in favour of checking what small companies do with licences. In my experience, the vast majority of startups blatantly abuse open source all the time.
But here it seems like it's all about an engineer who did some kind of attribution, but didn't do it correctly. And people are happy to say that it's all part of a big evil plan by Microsoft to take over the world.
