There is a legal document that talks about IP rights is there not (a license)?
Yet you don't seem to want any lawyer to look at it to determine if there could be any problem (that is rather suspicious in my mind). Instead you'd rather just go ahead and sign the agreement because you read some non-lawyer on IRC say "it'll be fine".
Microsoft are not a charity so why do you think they are doing this?
If you worked for Netscape then I think you'd have a very different opinion about Microsoft (and for that shit alone I would never, ever co-operate with such a despicable company).
Decentralisation is not helped at all by such cloud services as they can be shut down (every single node) with a single phone call.
This is about control and keeping it out of the hands of greedy corporations.
I posted the document that the submitter has to sign (
http://windowsazure.github.io/docs/Contribution%20License%20Agreement.pdf ). It's only two pages. Here are some relevant excerpts:
1. Definitions.
“Code” means the computer software code, whether in human-readable or machine-executable form, that is delivered by You to Microsoft under this Agreement.
...
4. Licenses.
a. Copyright License. You grant Microsoft, and those who receive the Code directly or indirectly from Microsoft, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license in the Submission to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute the Submission and such derivative works, and to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties.
b. Patent License. You grant Microsoft, and those who receive the Code directly or indirectly from Microsoft, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license under your patent claims that directly read on the Code to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell and import or otherwise dispose of the Code.
That sounds scary, I guess, but as I also wrote several times (after speaking with people who have gone through this process), you don't submit any code to them that is in the actual github repo (even though there is nothing they could do to change the MIT license, but this is beside the point); all you submit is an install script that calls wget or git clone. That is the the code "that is delivered by You to Microsoft under this Agreement", you don't submit the entire repo, just an install script, so the only code Microsoft is saying they have copyright and patent licensing over is the install script. Please feel free to continue with your insane ramblings at this time...
You are very lucky...
Happy voting, everyone!