Microsoft Looking to Buy GitHub?

The irony of so many open source projects using closed source for hosting is quite funny.

Not that it’s a bad thing, per se. It’s just funny.

As does Microsoft

I don’t think that means what you think it means.

GitHub says the exact same thing. Microsoft will publish your code, so if you have a clause that says “Everytime this is executed pay me $15” you wave that in order to allow Microsoft and GitHub to get your code working on infrastructure. This is at every hosting, SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS ever.

1 Like

Please share. I’ve already pointed out microsoft claims royalties and cited the source.

@anon79053375 could you provide some clarification. My code is not open to commercial use. And as I understood github the company, has no authority to use it.

I want to make sure we are all on the same page here and not chasing each others tails with what we are talking about. To me ownership is most important, and maybe I need to stop using github.

I can see this as being a good thing.

Only thing is right now, I’m thoroughly enjoying hosting my own GitLab server. Works amazingly!

… No they don’t, you never pointed this out at all. Microsoft claim a royalty-free license to be able to store, copy, move, publish, etc. your content on the services you use. GitHub require the same.

  1. Your Content. Many of our Services allow you to store or share Your Content or receive material from others. We don’t claim ownership of Your Content. Your Content remains Your Content and you are responsible for it.

Its the very first sentence of the Your Content section of the TOS you gladly skipped over.

This is incorrect, you have given GitHub the same rights you’d give Microsoft.

Part of githubs TOS. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service

You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies as necessary to render the Website and provide the Service

This is GitHub in a roundabout way asking the same thing, you grant them a world wide royalty-free intellectual property license on your content.

You’re either deliberately leaving things out here or you severely misunderstand the terms of services you’ve been reading.

1 Like

something about not keeping all your eggs in one basket

Keep reading. Part 2b. Its right there plain as day. I’m not trying to lay claim that Microsoft is evil. I’m pointing there are valid concerns. If you don’t want to acknowledge that I can’t force you to. I can only provide the evidence.

b. To the extent necessary to provide the Services to you and others, to protect you and the Services, and to improve Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content, for example, to make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat, display, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the Services.

Edit: when you grant royalty free license to Microsoft, means you no longer have the power to charge Microsoft for your work.

And edit again: the meat is " to use your content" examples are irrelevant.

And one more edit: “Your Content remains Your Content and you are responsible for it.” They can’t take your copyright, and they will not hold responsibility for you storing illegal content. I thought this was self explanatory.

These two aren’t the same. You don’t grant Microsoft rights to royalties, you grant them a royalty free license to put data on their services, without that you cant use their service. GitHub have the exact same requirement in their TOS as well.

1 Like

As does Heroku

@SudoSaibot

Dude, that’s EVERYWHERE. That exists for protection, not for theft. If your code demands payment per execution, and Azure spins up 5 containers in 10ms to figure out how to properly stand it up, they don’t owe you money.

Digital Ocean:

OpenShift:

On and on it goes, because the world is full of terrible people and hungry lawyers.

4 Likes

I more than completely understand why MS wants to buy GitHub.

I would rather it stay it’s own platform and MS build their own.

But why try to build a user base when you can buy one?

Most of my objections are with centralization and that Git hub is almost too interwoven into the OSS dev scene as is.

MS made peace with the fact that “Linux/OSS isn’t going away”. Hell it has made them a pretty penny too.

Watch and see and maybe don’t put all your eggs in one GitHub basket.

2 Likes

It reads as if they can take any code and use it in their own software, sell and distribute it without compensating the original author.

My reasoning @Eden for example is when I’m looking for music to use in a commercial project I need royalty free content so I don’t have to pay the author to redistribute it in my project.

I’ll need to research more.
Thanks guys

2 Likes

Just as an aside, Wendell was just complaining about this again on the L1 news. And anecdotally I have been hearing about it still. So it would seem they have not fixed it at all. Unless fix means its a feature the at it reinstalls what ever it.like when ever it wants.

1 Like

@anon79053375 wow that redhat one is pretty disgusting haha.

Githubs current tos does not claim a royalty free license by the way. They further note exactly what rights they require which is for publishing and displaying the code which is what the website or service is for.

  1. License Grant to Us
    We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies as necessary to render the Website and provide the Service. This includes the right to do things like copy it to our database and make backups; show it to you and other users; parse it into a search index or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users; and perform it, in case Your Content is something like music or video.

This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content or otherwise distribute or use it outside of our provision of the Service.

This I’m OK with.

This is the same thing. I think its just a misunderstanding of what royalty-free means. If you read the github TOS you grant them a royalty free license as per section 3

You understand that you will not receive any payment for any of the rights granted in Sections D.4 — D.7.

Royalty-free means to grant them a license to use your work without them paying a royalty to you. GitHubs TOS grants them a royalty free license.

GitHubs TOS also grants them a worldwide license as per section 4

You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies as necessary to render the Website and provide the Service.

GitHub dont disclose there server locations as far as im aware, and for their service to work you must allow them to place your content on multiple servers around the world where required.

Finally, your content is intellectual property by its nature. So, you grant github a royalty-free world wide intellectual property license to use your content. They just word it differently, the fact that your happy with that but not Microsofts wording of the same thing, well that’s for you to think about.

1 Like

Exactly! What I have been going on about this entire time.

You posted section 3 which references d4 which I posted earlier. D4 outlines what rights are granted to github. Which are publishing, copying, storing, playing or displaying. I still retain royalties if used outside of these terms, including selling or redistribution in commercial projects.

This will almost certainly be lost if microsoft acquires github. I’m beginning to think nobody gives a shit about control or ownership over what they create or store online.

If thats the point your making why have you been saying Microsoft want royalties from your stuff?

As you do with the Microsoft TOS.

Aside from language semantics, how is “royalty free” and “You understand that you will not receive any payment for any of the rights granted in Sections D.4 — D.7.” any different?

I honestly feel this is incredibly pedantic. As above, there are several providers that have similar or same language parameters within their terms of service.

I can’t find where Google, Microsoft, GitHub, Heroku, Red Hat, Digital Ocean, or anyone else stolen someone’s code and made it their own from a hosting service.

1 Like

My content becoming royalty free means they can use it commercially in their own products. I’m wrong in saying they are granted royalties which would mean they could charge ME to use my own content.

@anon79053375 Losing all of your rights compared to loosing some rights is how they differ.
Sure its pedantic. And its not like I would ever decompile their software and compare its execution to mine. Furthermore I would never be able to defend myself against a brigade of lawyers. My only defense is to not use the service.

But because it may not affect me doesn’t mean its not important.

You content is royalty free on github as well.