[hungerstrike]

Lerna was released with an MIT license as was Rush.

So, nothing was stolen and if the story is true, the only infraction here would be that the Lerna copyright line was not included in the Rush license.

[detaro]

This sounds dangerously like "oh, it was open-source code, so it's not so bad they violated it's license". I strongly disagree with that.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

So you have just one single thing to do, and you don't do it - how can you be trusted then?

[hungerstrike]

Do you disagree about what the actual infraction was here if the story is true?

My comment isn't about trust, it's about what the actual infraction was. Microsoft is made up of 35,000 people. There's no way I trust all of them. Of what company do you actually have trust in every employee?

[bjoli]

Which is one of the very few things they are required to do. Following the clauses in the MIT license is not really rocket surgery.

[hungerstrike]

That's exactly what I said - that was the only infraction.

What part of my comment are you disagreeing with??

Copyright infringement is not theft.

[eeks]

Simple. Distributing MIT-licensed code without the original license disclosure is theft.

[Digital-Citizen]

The X11 license (MIT has used multiple licenses so there is no single "MIT license") does say "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." but not doing so is not theft.

The grandparent poster is correct -- copyright infringement is not theft and the two ought not be conflated. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft explains why: "Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vo...). The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says.".

The GNU Project also recommends pointing people who misuse the word "theft" in this way to https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/04/harper-lee-kil... -- "which shows what can properly be described as 'copyright theft.'".

Please don't join people in getting this wrong. Even some of the most hostile abusers of that conflation have recanted (the MPAA was denied use of that conflation per https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t... and the MPAA's Chris Dodd admitted that conflation was wrong according to https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-piracy-is-not-theft-after-all-...).

The copyright holder in this case has options including suing, but calling what happened as "theft" is not an option and is unlikely to get anywhere with a judge.

[hungerstrike]

Incorrect.

“Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the United States Supreme Court held in Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. ” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#"Theft"

[leoh]

But both included the MIT license

[jen20]

The copyright notice is what must be included. The license states this very clearly.

[Nomentatus]

The "above copyright notice" must be included; i.e. the general MIT license itself, without credit to any author. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License

The original BSD license did have a credit clause which led to considerable trouble and controversy, so they don't do that any more. IANAL, and this is extremely bad manners on someone's part, but no laws were broken.

[ggg9990]

And downloading a scientific paper is theft too.

[bigtunacan]

To be clear Copyright infringement is a crime

[hungerstrike]

Also to be clear it’s not theft. Its also not spitting.