Restore original licenses

[cjwl]

Many many headers and implementation in Frameworks/Foundation are from my Cocotron project and have had the original license completely removed and replaced.

The ONE SINGLE requirement of the Cocotron MIT license is that the license text, including copyright holders, remains in the source. THAT'S IT, can you please manage to do that.

Please restore all original licensing w/ copyright holders in all derivative works.

Thanks!

[atomicbird]

I second this. The license on Cocotron allows use of the code. Removing the attribution is the only thing one could do that violates the license.

[s5msft]

Hi Christopher, many (most?) of the headers in Foundation have the original cocotron copyright header. If we missed/removed any then it was certainly inadvertent and that wasn't our intent.

Can you point us to specific files we missed?

[migueldeicaza]

As pointed out on twitter, the implementation files dropped it.

I do not think it is realistic to ask open source contributors "come and find your code in our re-released codebase and points out the errors".

Someone at Microsoft needs to go back to the first commit and track down every bit of code that was taken, and investigate the origin of the code, and properly restore the copyright notices.

[cjwl]

As Miguel said, this is not my responsibility.

With respect to Cocotron, I will point you to the Framework/Foundation/*.mm and *.h files.

[s5msft]

Christopher Lloyd (@cjwl) Let's just talk about the headers for a second.

There are two sets of headers. One external facing, which retain your copyright:
https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/include/Foundation/NSDate.h

And a second set, internal, and which were generated programmatically. These do not have your copyright header:
https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/Frameworks/Foundation/NSDate.h

[istx25]

ಠ_ಠ

[cjwl]

Focus on the implementation files.

[atomicbird]

Salmaan Ahmed (@s5msft) Here's a simple example. Compare

• https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/Frameworks/Foundation/NSPropertyListReader.mm
• https://github.com/cjwl/cocotron/blob/master/Foundation/NSPropertyList/NSPropertyListReader_binary1.m

The version in this repository is clearly derived from the Cocotron version. The file contents are not identical but a few "highlights" include:

• NSPropertyListReader only exists in Cocotron. It's not an Apple Foundation class.
• Code and especially comments on ExtractUID
• Code and comments in _readInlineObjectAtOffset
• Code for _readObjectAtOffset

This is not a complete list, even for code in this single file. Your version clearly originates with Cocotron, yet the original copyright notices have been removed and replaced with one crediting Microsoft.

[s5msft]

Christopher Lloyd (@cjwl) We're on it and definitely want to make this right. As a bit of background, (some of) our source code was originally C++ based (marked up to act like Objective-C). We then ran that source through a tool to generate "real" Objective-C code.

In any case, we're going through Foundation right now and will absolutely make this right.

[landonf]

The providence of the code across the entire code base is questionable; for example, the CFDictionary implementation appears to be derived from the MIT/X11-licensed Klib, but all copyrights have been stripped:

• CFDictionary.mm
• KLib's khash.h

Reiterating what Miguel already stated, someone at MS will need to verify the source and licensing of code across the code base.

[bmastenbrook]

It doesn't look good, folks. Just idly browsing across the code finds stuff like:

https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/Frameworks/Starboard/Quaternion.mm

Which clearly comes from elsewhere, though I can't narrow down an upstream source based on the distinctive comments (https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&btnG=Search&q=%22This+function+is+the+milk+and+honey+of+our+quaternion+code%22#q=%22This+function+is+the+milk+and+honey+of+our+quaternion+code%22&tbs=li:1&filter=0).

Parts of https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/Frameworks/limbo/FormatPrintf.mm come from the Amsterdam Compiler Kit: https://github.com/davidgiven/ack/blob/ff774212beacd5da20bf2c1092bd2a6b30f4730c/lang/cem/libcc.ansi/stdlib/ext_comp.c

There are odd comments across the code that seem to have been copied and pasted out of a HTML menu: /* [<][>][^][v][top][bottom][index][help] */

This file is a copy-and-paste of code from Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SDK, which is not open source:

https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/master/Frameworks/OpenGLES/TexDecompressor.mm

The originating upstream file is named PVRTDecompress.cpp. It seems to be widely copied, but here is the original license in a mirror of the upstream code: https://github.com/SiliconStudio/paradox-deps/blob/master/PVRTT/license.txt

If I can find these in a few minutes of browsing the code, then I'm sure there are more examples.

Additionally, the licensing of the project seems to be a mismash even amongst the components that do have proper headers. I see MIT, Apache, and QPL/GPL at least. The QPL/GPL code is in the core runtime, and neither license allows the distribution of proprietary derivative works.

[JensAyton]

The aforementioned NSPropertyListReader.mm has been updated to mention Christopher Lloyd (@cjwl), but the original is credited to Mike Ash (@mikeash) and myself.

[s5msft]

Brian Mastenbrook (@bmastenbrook) In some of these cases, we have explicit permission from the authors to relicense sections of relevant code.

We'll remediate any others that our tooling may have missed. I definitely appreciate the passion and we’re very sorry for any omissions.

Jens Ayton (@JensAyton) We were referencing the copyright header from:
https://github.com/cjwl/cocotron/blob/master/Foundation/NSPropertyList/NSPropertyListReader.m

Is that incorrect/incomplete?

[landonf]

Salmaan Ahmed (@s5msft)

Jens Ayton (@JensAyton) We were referencing the copyright header from:
https://github.com/cjwl/cocotron/blob/master/Foundation/NSPropertyList/NSPropertyListReader.m
Is that incorrect/incomplete?

The code in WinObjC's NSPropertyListReader.mm is derived from https://github.com/cjwl/cocotron/blob/master/Foundation/NSPropertyList/NSPropertyListReader_binary1.m, rather than NSPropertyListReader.m

This is really where Miguel's recommendation still stands; this needs to be fixed through a complete historic audit, not on an ad-hoc basis depending on outside reporters.

Brian Mastenbrook (@bmastenbrook) In some of these cases, we have explicit permission from the authors to relicense sections of relevant code.

Has the QPL/GPL-tagged code been relicensed under a permissive license, or does it still apply to anyone integrating/distributing this code?