[jdsully]

The key take away is that apologizing and admitting fault doesn't absolve one of liability. There are a number of "amnesty" laws on the books where admitting fault can server to limit or reduce your sentence - especially with tax issues. I'm not sure how desirable such a thing would be in civil law among private parties. Especially in cases where a tort is minor to one party but a big deal to the other because of disparate wealth.

E.g. if Microsoft burned your house down would an apology and explanation be enough to settle the matter? How could we encode this principle into law for minor things but not large things?

[_zzaw]

I don’t think accidentally removing credits from a software license is exactly on the level of burning someone’s house down.

In general, I wouldn’t say that causing someone harm should be dismissible with an apology, but in a situation where the harm seems pretty limited, easily reversible, and unintentional—and the apology seems genuine and even informative—I don’t see a particular benefit to causing hardship to someone who made a mistake. The communal reaction as it is should give Microsoft/Google/etc an idea of what the blowback would be if this sort of thing was a deliberate corporate practice.

[jdsully]

The harm is depriving the author of their moral rights, and the name recognition from their work. Depending on how popular the library becomes this could deprive the author of substantial business opportunities.

[_zzaw]

And if this was a deliberate decision that Microsoft refused to undo, I’d be as outraged as everyone else here would be.

But it wasn’t, and they did undo it, and I found their response impressively civilized and professional. So I’m not really understanding why everyone seems to want to hold this guy accountable for all the shitty stuff Microsoft could have done, didn’t do, and apparently did in the past.