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I don't think that's true, for a couple reasons, and even if it were, it's not enough to get the MS license thrown out of the OSI-approved arena.

Point 1: MS claiming infringement based upon use of the software would be self contradictorary. If it's possible to infringe one of MS's patents by using their software, then that patent is covered by 2(B) and there's no infringement. The only thing that would make this possible would be if you added 3rd party functionality that infringes on the patent that MS originally thought was covered by 2(B) but then decided that the software they were distributing didn't use that patent and thus rights were not granted.

Point 2: It's not MS's decision to make as to which patents are being infringed; it's the courts'.

Point 3: You wouldn't have to sue them immediately when they start demanding royalties; just don't pay them. When and if they sue you, you can make your claim that the original software uses the functionality covered by the patent they are demanding royalties for. If you word it right, I think you bypass the invalidation claim.

Point 4: Even throwing all this out, the existance of this clause I think is *still* not enough to disqualify this license. Many other approved licenses have very similar clauses to the one in question. (Okay, looking back through the last three might be almost the same, but on the other hand, I only went through about 1/5 of the licenses.) The main difference is that they limit the revocation clause to MS. I don't think that this would be enough to get it disqualified though. It's objectively in between other licenses; it's less powerful than the ones linked above (which revoke rights if you sue any contributor for patent stuff) but more powerful than other licenses that are patent neutral (BSD, GPL, etc.). The situation is subjectively unfair though, and I think it would hurt the license's chances. (But again, not enough to get it disqualified.)

Because OSI complied to microsoft's demand and didn't evaluate the license, we won't know their stance about it.
On the other hand the FSF has shown what they're thinking about it.

Although both institutions (read: ESR and RMS) are known to have divergent point of view, this hints about how much this license can be free, and what one should think before starting his own project using this kind of licensing (something for which knowing OSI, FSF and DFSG's stance can be genuinly useful, as some other /. signaled).

I know that most /.ers think that it's best to stick to known licenses that are widely used, documented and proven (including tested in court), and most of the time the debate is only about the duality BSD vs. GPL (Should we allow the code to be forked into a proprietary branch or not), and that's maybe what most home-brewed projects do.

But there are a lot of place (I've whitnessed some), particulary those big places that are new to the open-source concept, that don't automatically trust GPL and consider it proven (they've usually never heard of Groklaw, or the numerous cases of GPL-violation that were successfuly resolved). They don't start with a small subset of preferences (BSD/GPL), but do extensive - but, alas, sometime un-educated - researchs about everything they can encounter, they often start considering obscure licenses that the average OSS user has never heard of, often on the account of some higher hierarchy member or some beancounter that are affraid to 'lose control', and may end up using a solution that will turn up to be not as useful as expected.

It is in such case that organisations like OSI can come handy to help choose and discern among the huge diversity of licensing scheme.

You seem sure.

Here's the definition of open source per the OSI.
Here's the MS "Community License".

What is in conflict?

MS requires the license to USE the software.

Not by my reading. Where does it say that redistributions of it must require users to agree to the licenses to use the software?

Even if MS puts a click-through license at the beginning of the installations or whatever of the software doesn't mean that you have to comply.

(Note that the grant of priviledge to use patents is different.)

except Microsoft always keeps it's mits in your work and all the work that follows.

How so? There's the patent clause, but that's all I see. We'll get to that in a minute.

Microsoft removes your license if you think you need to sue them.. or even counter/cross sue in defense of them sueing you!

Only as it relates to the software that's covered by this license.

Regardless of how you feel about this clause, I see nothing that conflicts with the OSI definition of open source.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Many would say that the OpenSource Initiative (OSI) sets the definition. At least that's what OSI says. And they list the OpenSolaris license, called CDDL, as an "OSI Approved" license: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cddl1.php

I'm really curious at how they are going to do so and still remain compatible with the GPLv3draft2 as it currently reads.

Is this "open source" as in Sun's Solaris "open sourcing", where it's open source in all technical senses, but it's under an unbelievably elaborate license which exists for no reason except to engender GPL incompatibility and keep Linux from benefiting from the source release, which effectively scares everyone away from the project?

Care to explain this a bit?

Sun Public License is an official open-source license. What is "unbelievably elaborate" about it?

And what did they do to 'purposely' endanger GPL compatibility?

Should the Berkeley people complain about GPL 'purposely endangering' BSD compatibility?

It's non-free and non-free and not open source and not GPL compatible.

I'm about as likely to use this shared-source "GPU" as I am to use XFree86 4.4.

I'm even less likely to contribute to it.

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Russ Nelson isn't even the president of the OSI. Here's the OSI press release. He was forced to step down ever since he posted a blog article that was considered racist. For more about the controversy, check out Russ Nelson's Wikipedia entry.

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "People who feel strongly about war will sometimes take actions which they realize are ineffectual, but make it clear that they are not willing to take action which directly supports war."

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

"[Open Source] does not necessarily mean that you also have the rights to modify and redistribute it."

Open Source means exactly that. Read the Open Source Definition (it's the first required right).

"Microsoft's "shared source" license is an example of this."

That's why Microsoft didn't call it Open Source -- because it's not.

No.

And if you fail to pay, you lose your right to use the software, no?

No.

See OSD #1, right here http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php:

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Neither.

Apple didn't "get" Open Source (that's fine, many of us Free Software enthusiasts don't "get" Open Source either) and began deprecating it when it started to interfere with their other plans in general. The first to be deprecated was the open-sourciness, with Apple releasing code but generally not in a "community friendly" way and rarely making it easy for the community to contribute directly back.

There's no evil in that, if you're strongly opinionated about the direction code should take, and you have the resources to write it yourself, you don't necessarily want to spend time trying to integrate everyone else's changes with your own.

Some people noticed. In particular, the KHTML people got a little fed up with people pointing out that WebKit supported some feature or other that hadn't made it into KHTML yet. They explained that the changes to WebKit weren't easy to track and back-port. This was interpreted by the meeja, including Slashdot, as KHTML slapping down Apple, rather than slapping down the people who assume that simply because X is based on Y, Y can easily incorporate changes to X, and who keep flaming the developers of Y for not doing this.

Then Apple closed XNU-Intel. Yes, they did. There are several releases of XNU-Intel for which source code apparently will never be released (though who would want them?) Some people noticed. They pointed this out and were immediately hounded by a bunch of, for the most part, obnoxious Mac zealots who claimed this wasn't true because at some point in the future, Apple might change their mind, and any way, who said their mind had been made up, I mean, Apple hasn't made an official announcement, right? To make matters worse, Apple's one comment on this was so inane it simply fueled the fire. One developer at Apple, posting on an Apple mailing list, said that the talk of XNU-Intel being "closed" was "speculation" and people shouldn't assume anything.

This was meaningless and largely wrong. Those saying it was closed were right: it was. You couldn't download the source to XNU-Intel. When you're stating a fact, you're not engaging in speculation.

There was much anger at this point because many people felt lied to. Apple had been advertising the openness of Darwin for a long time, and "Team Apple*" had been loud in repeating this supposed advantage, and now, without any explanation, the core of Darwin was now closed. Team Apple responded by claiming the Apple developer who said "speculation" had actually used the word "yet", and the "yet" word was used in pretty much every response to anyone critical of Apple or simply pointing out the fact that XNU-Intel was closed. Team Apple changed tact on the "Open Source is an advantage of Mac OS X" thing too, claiming it was never Apple's intention to release a useful operating system as open source, and that nobody cares about operating system kernels anyway. Needless to say, this intensified the anger.

What do we have today?

Apple has taken considerable steps to undo the damage. There's still no real explanation as to why XNU-Intel was closed. No technologies were announced yesterday whose existance could be discerned by looking at the kernel - which has supported the Intel architecture since its original release, which has supported the Xeon CPU range even back in the Panther days, and probably long before. It was not necessary to withhold the XNU source before the release of the PowerMac G5, or, indeed, any of the recent radical changes in architecture. Meanwhile, the software-related announcements this week don't appear to have anything to do with the Tiger kernel.

So, anyway, leaving aside the nonsense that it's "been confirmed" that the withholding of the source "was due to Apple's policy of not commenting upon unreleased products", we don't have an explanatio

Last I checked, neither Atlas nor GWT were open source in any sense of the word,

I actually believe that's one of the tenets of the Open Source Definition.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

Foobar2000 is not GPL'd, and is probably not considered Open Source either. Have you even read the license page?

One problem is that there are some liars who claim their code is open source just because you can see it, while still violating nearly every point of the definition (points 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, and some of the rest are made ineffective by these violations. it used to also violate 5 by discriminating against the US government, military, and all employees thereof - that's been changed without noting it.) This is a source of some confusion.

Free Software is about sharing. Open Source is about curiosity. I can do what I want with a truly Free piece of software, including repackaging and selling it. With Open Source, all I usually get to do is look at the code (curiosity), and if I see anything I want to fix, I usually have to give my fix back to the original owner.

There are something like 60 OSI-certified Open Source licenses, so discussing all of them as if they were the same only leads to confusion. In fact, the GPL is an OSI-certified Open Source license.

Also, Stallman's arguments about the GPL providing more freedom than other licenses aren't shared by everyone. The BSD license and other academic licenses have no reciprocality requirement. In that sense they are more free than the GPL, which has a strong reciprocity requirement. One interpretation I've heard is that the GPL reinforces community freedom, while the BSD license reinforces individual freedom.

• Free Redistribution
• Access to Source Code
• Maked Derivitive Works
• Protect the Integrity of the Author's Work (i.e. you cant take my name off it, and you can't say I made something I didn't. Unless, I give you permission to do so.)
• Be Non-Discrimitory to Person, Groups, or Fields of Endevor
• All Rights Must Be Transferable
• The License Must Not Be Product Specific
• The License Must Not Restrict Other Software
• The License Must be Technology Neutral

I haven't seen anyone else mention this so far, but wasn't that debate ended some time ago? I thought Bruce Perens' Open Source Definitition was the final word on the matter.

If it conforms to the definition, it's open source. By definition.

If it doesn't, it's something else.

This is not complicated.

Have you ever read the Open-Source Definition ? This is basically a rebranding of the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

This stupid Open-Source vs. Free Software rethoric get us nowhere. Please get over it already.

With Open Source, all I usually get to do is look at the code

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. -- From the Open-Source definition.

The difference between Free Software and Open Source is a matter of philosophy and intended goals. The difference between Free Software and Open Source is not what you are permitted to do with the software. Open Source Software is just as redistributable and forkable as Free Software.

The de-facto definition of Open Source is defined by the open source initiative (OSI): http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

"Open source means you can read the source, much like an "open book exam" means you can read the book... By my definition, even Windows is Open Source."

Actually, the term Open Source has a clear technical definition, which is available on the OSI website:

http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

In my opinion it is not as successful a definition as the 'four freedoms' used by the FSF, but Open Source is a less misleading term than Free Software for most people.

For one, it has the advantage of actually sounding like a technical term.

The term "open source" has an official definition right here: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

Whether some software is open source is equivalent to whether it conforms to all points in this definition. There you have it, debate settled.

It is an entirely different issue if this definition can be legally enforced; it cannot, as far as I know. So there is no mechanism preventing companies from making noise by falsely using the term. That is why one shuold always take an "open source" or "free software" claim with a grain of salt, and verify the claim carefully.

If only there had been some sort of definition of open source then maybe we wouldn't have to have to start this debate now.

It's really easy to know whether "releasing some code" qualifies: read the definition

It matters to the ideologues to set forth the definitions of Open Source. It matters to the people to called their OS Debian GNU/Linux rather than just Linux. It matters to the people who continue to call their OS Debian GNU/Linux.

Ideology may not be practical, but practicality without ideology has no direction.

Where would OpenBSD be without the likes of Theo de Raadt?
Where would open source be without the FSF?

In addition, the definitions of "open source" and "free software" have nothing to do with anonymous bugzilla access, but rather with the availability of source code and the rights one has with regards to use and modification of said code. If you don't believe me, read the definitions yourself.

Maybe this post is flamebait itself, but the page linked in the PP definitely is, so I guess this is response to a flamebait...

<rant>

That guy is just another BSD evangelist. The short summary of his long story is "BSD is from a better breed created by superior software designers". I quote, he says Linux is "beat up, punched around, tweaked, poked, prodded, manged, digested, spit out, stomped on, chewed up, tossed out, brought in, and otherwise manipulated", and in the description of what BSD is, it comes down to "BSD is pedigree". Baseless Elitist Crap(tm), that's what it is. It's the 'we are better because we are' in long format as is commonly seen in BSD evangelists. Total 11 Pages of Blah Blah Blah

I'll touch on a couple of things from his first page here:

He says SCO owns the Unix code, which is wrong. The Open Group's website says SCO bought it from Novell and this guy is happy to repeat that, but Novell itself says it didn't transfer nor sell the copyright of its Unix code to SCO. Novell sold the UnixWare business to SCO, not the copyrights (==ownership) of the code. From http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html : "On 28 May 2003 Novell stated[40] that SCO owns neither the patents nor the copyrights to the Unix source code." See also http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110904,0 0.asp

He repeats a mantra that says "BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC.". Note the consistent 'PC' as the target for the OS... With Linux supporting many more non-PC platforms than the BSD's, that statement is too wrong in its core to even begin talk about the details.

What I don't get is how the BSD people keep feeling so superior when there is so much that Linux has and can do that BSD doesn't have or can't do. All the while they often claim to know Linux better than Linux people know BSD. I guess they simply enjoy bathing in their ignorance.

</rant>

So you're point is about foreign and national companies.

Let's clear the terminology up. I understand "national" companies to be companies that are partly controlled by the state. Given that we are talking about trade between countries, I used the word "local" to talk about companies owned by citizens of the country in question. I am not differentiating between different areas of the same country.

I'm saying that, all other things being equal, open-source software allows governments to get software work done in such a way that the profit is earned by people residing in that particular country. Proprietary software, on the other hand, forces at least some part of that profit to go to the shareholders of the company that holds the copyright to the software, which - for most governments of the world - means that the government is giving money away to other countries.

You see, if a government spends money in such a way that the money goes to the people in that country, the country doesn't get any poorer. But if it spends money in such a way that the money goes to the people in another country, it does get poorer. Buying proprietary software services makes a country poorer if that software is imported. Buying open-source software services does not make a country poorer because there's no need to use foreign companies.

for products from foreign companies "control" of the code is an issue and should be considered above and beyond money.

Well yes, I should hope that software required for a country's infrastructure should come with buildable source code, but that's not at all what I was saying, and it's unrelated to open-source. Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code..

Are you worried about your state or city govenment "giving control" of some vital infrastructure software to Redmond or Silicon Valley?

Certainly. Why wouldn't I? Are you assuming I'm from the USA?

PS: To make yourself appear more intelligent.

The CDDL under which the code in question was released is a slightly modified version of the Mozilla Public License. So if you used Mozilla or firefox or whatever to post that screed, then you've clearly sinned against the church of RMS.

Oh, and the CDDL IS an OSI approved license, so that means DTrace IS (by the definition most programmers who don't wear Birkenstocks agree on) Open Source.

As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code, as it means no-one can take your work, close the source, and sell it as their own.

CDDL Section 3.1:

Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License. You must include a copy of this License with every copy of the Source Code form of the Covered Software You distribute or otherwise make available. You must inform recipients of any such Covered Software in Executable form as to how they can obtain such Covered Software in Source Code form in a reasonable manner on or through a medium customarily used for software exchange.

There is something else about Microsoft's let's-pretend-to-be-like-them-and-divert-public-op inion strategy that worries me.

We have "Open Source", and then Microsoft comes out with "Shared Source". "Hey, let's fool people into thinking that we're just like the good guys!" says Microsoft. The average Joe is not going to know the technical definition of "open".

But what if Microsoft decided to abuse the term "Open"? Just as in the past companies have marketed their Things as "Thing-o-matic", and then "Thingtronic", then "Microcomputer Thing", then "Laser Thing", then "Internet Thing", then "Thing.com" and most recently "eThing" and "iThing", what if Microsoft came up with new products called ... "OpenWord"? Or "OpenExcel"?

We can't stop them from using the term "open" since it's not something that can be trademarked. (Nor can the term "windows", but we never got to see a US court come to that conclusion.) No one can sue Microsoft for calling it "OpenExplorer". Heck, knowing Microsoft, they could probably even come up with "OpenWindows", and then when someone tried to sue them for using a previously used trademark, Microsoft might say, "But Your Honor, we must have the right to this trademark or else it would waste our 16 man-hours invested in this product, causing ruinous collapse for American economy!"

We could always say, "Well, you don't have the Official Approval of the Open Source Initiative", but when it comes to marketing, I don't think PHB's will care to figure out who OSI is.

Right now, I think the only thing stopping Microsoft is their pride, since using the word "Open" in a product name would be like admitting defeat. But I wouldn't put it past them.

Am I just getting worried over nothing?

Your contributor faq doesn't indicate commit access, only that patches must be submitted via email. Not quite "true open source".

Just like that big phony "the linux kernel"!

The fact is that not having direct committer access is (a) about to be fixed, and (b) an infrastructure detail that doesn't detract from the fact that we have healthy participation from the community -- our new 3.3 release contains many community-contributed bug fixes and new features.

Also, we in fact have direct committers on the project now, working in svn branches. The docs on the web are out of date.


I am not trying to imply that Flex is more "open" than Laszlo, rather that Laszlo isn't "true open source".

*boggle*

OpenLaszlo is released under an OSI-approved license (CPL). "OSI approved" means "meets the OSI's definition of open source".


Why didn't you respond to my comment about ownership? In my mind, with "true open source" I still own the code I contribute.

Well, in your mind you can define "true open source" however you want. But in actuality, open source does not ncessarily mean the contributor owns the code. Many, many projects require that contributors assign copyright to the project, because otherwise the licensing issues quickly become unmanagable. (here's a good article.) Here's a short list of other projects that have similar requirements: the FSF (you may have heard of them), Gentoo, Novell (SuSE), Zimbra. There are lots more.

OpenLaszlo contributors assign copyright to the project, but in turn they license back their code. The license is very broad and allows the contributor to pretty much do whatever he/she wants with their code.

This "well you're not open source enough!" is a silly red herring anyway. My beef is not with your posting opinions about OpenLaszlo. Everyone has an opinion and you're entitled to post yours. But astroturfing without disclosing your motivations (in this case, who signs your paycheck and which projects you contribute to) is anti-community and just uncool. You've acknowledged your allegiences, move on.

OSI does in fact have trademarks. I don't know whether that means you need their permission to use the phrase to describe a software license, or just to use their logo as well.

Get a fucking clue, you American cuntbag!

Where are you from, coward? Obviously your nation has taught you tolerance and tact.

open source != free software

No shit. I call Debian open source, because by RMS's definition, it includes things that are not Free Software. In fact, Debian's (slightly) more pragmatic approach is the prime origin of the term "open source".

You can open up your sources to everyone on the planet and forbid that they are compiled at all.

Actually, that wouldn't meet the open source definition. The very first sentence says "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code." Looks like it's you who could use a clue.

What have you contributed to the community?

No, "open source" means "the source code is available for you to see".

You win the prize for the most clueless comment in this entire discussion! Well done!

Please read The Open Source Definition, it will help you not to look so completely ignorant in future.

What you were talking about is "viewable source".

I think it's APSL, which is another license: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apsl.php

I haven't read it, but it's a rather long legalese text (unlike BSD). It may or may not be relicensable.

Microsoft have open sources a lot of their work,

Making the source code available does not make it Open Source.

Congratulations - you have successfully shown you don't know anything about the BSD license.

Read this before you post: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

The BSD license pretty much states you can do whatever you want with the code (i.e. it's FREE to be incorporated in open source projects, closed source projects, or anything else). Any restrictions added would be a result of Nokia, not the BSD license.

http://opensource.org/

Any questions?

BSD License: RTFL

GNU GPL: RTFL

Yes, you're right, it does cover a lot of licenses. In order to be allowed to use the trademarked term "Open Source" however, whatever license they choose must (a) comply with the Open Source Definition, and (b) be approved by the Open Source Initiative.

Sure, not all Open Source licenses are the ducks guts to all people, but there's pretty much an assurance of no evil in there. Even microsoft knows that!

Yes, you're right, it does cover a lot of licenses. In order to be allowed to use the trademarked term "Open Source" however, whatever license they choose must (a) comply with the Open Source Definition, and (b) be approved by the Open Source Initiative.

Sure, not all Open Source licenses are the ducks guts to all people, but there's pretty much an assurance of no evil in there. Even microsoft knows that!

Meet the open source definion: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

good luck trolling on /., you seem to need it.

cheers,
dalibor topic

The term "open source" actually has a very precise definition, which enshrines each of the "four freedoms" described in your link. Anyone using the term to describe something like the Windows Shared Source Initiative is using it wrongly.

No need to start a controversy where there is none. The Open Source/Free Software split is more about ideology than practical effects.

"the metric of whether sources are protected in the past has been if maintaining the anonynomity of the sources of the leaked information serves the great public good. This is why the leaker of the Pentagon Papers was protected."
Would the the 'Halloween Documents' be eligible ? could MS sue under trade secret for divulging them to the public ? why ? why not ?

"All OS means is that the code is published"

You are only 1/10th correct.

Wrong- Even Microsoft admitted this was wrong.

Now go read up and become an educated Slashbot.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

1) Free Distibution
2) Source code
3) Derived works
4) Integrity of The Author's Source Code
5) No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6) No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
7) Distribution of License
8) License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
9) License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10)License Must Be Technology-Neutral

Open source isn't the same as being able to read the sourcecode. They must use an OSS aproved license for it to be open source. What license is the readable source in the Nvidia driver?