Getting Forked by Microsoft
a year ago
- #MIT License
- #Open Source
- #Kubernetes
- The author faced downtime issues in Kubernetes clusters due to failing image registries, leading to the creation of Spegel as a stateless solution.
- Microsoft showed interest in Spegel, leading to initial positive discussions, but communication eventually ceased.
- At KubeCon Paris, the author discovered Microsoft's Peerd, a project similar to Spegel, which included acknowledgments but also contained copied code and test cases from Spegel.
- Spegel was published under an MIT license, allowing forking, but Microsoft's Peerd did not properly attribute the original source, causing confusion among users.
- The author felt demotivated by Microsoft's actions but persisted with Spegel, which continues to be popular with significant community engagement.
- The experience raised questions about how individual maintainers can collaborate with large corporations without being exploited and the broader challenges facing the open-source community.
- The author enabled GitHub sponsors for Spegel and is considering a license change to protect the project's future.