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Microsoft Reduces Shared Source Licenses
UltimaGuy writes to tell us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft will be reducing the number of licenses that it will use for its Shared Source Initiative. Instead of more than 10 different licenses they are aiming for just three core licenses. The first license format, Ms-PL (Microsoft Permissive License), is similar to the BSD license while the second, Ms-CL (Microsoft Community License), is based on the Mozilla Public License. The third format, Ms-RL (Microsoft Reference License), "has no open-source alternative and is a reference-only license that allows licensees to view source code in order to gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of Microsoft technology."
From TFW:
"Microsoft has created a limited version, the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL), of this license to be used for restricting usage to the Windows platform only. The platform restriction is a measure that Microsoft, as a commercial software provider, may choose for a particular source code release in order to enable positive interaction with Windows-based developers. This version of the license will be employed on a case-by-case basis based upon commercial considerations."
Limited but Permissive. Insert 1984 newspeak reference here.
And they add this limitation as a benefit! Whee.
I'm so jaded I'm not even going to read the terms--I'm just going to stay far far away from them. Not even interested.
Okay, actually there are 5. There's a Limited Community License too: "Microsoft has created a limited version, the Microsoft Limited Community License (Ms-LCL), of this license to be used for restricting usage to the Windows platform only. The platform restriction is a measure that Microsoft, as a commercial software provider, may choose for a particular source code release in order to enable positive interaction with Windows-based developers. This version of the license will be employed on a case-by-case basis based upon commercial considerations." Which is the same boilerplate platform-restrictive non-free legal mire as the Ms. LPL in the parent post.
Notice of any changes or modifications to the Original Work, including the date the changes were made.
Any modifications of the Original Work must be distributed in such a manner as to avoid any confusion with the Original Work of the copyright holders.
A software licensed under the GPL does not have to provide notice of any changes made from the original work. SO this makes it non-compatable.
As for the second clause, it i so vague I don't even know how it could be enforced.
Free Software Foundation Europe has already released an early comment on the issue, cautiously welcomming some of the new licenses:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-releaseWe would, but they have Akamai distribute their load across thousands of linux servers to avoid DDOS attacks. Ironic...
Developers: We can use your help.
Secondly they need to go through a massive code review for two reasons primarily because the legal team knows Microsoft is everyone's favorite (easiest??) target for a lawsuit (this doesn't mean a victory... just to initiate). They need to know where every single line of code came from and what are their rights to that code before they can open the code up. Because you know the first thing the lawyers will do is try to find someway to sue them for stealing source code. They need to guard themselves against "SCO vs IBM" type lawsuits.
The other reason they need to complete this code review is because they need to track down and fix as many of the security holes in their software that they can do in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise this code will be used to ferret out security holes and we will see a new wave of security issues like no one has seen before, because admit it, Microsft products do run on the majority of machines today. The media will portray this as Microsoft handed the hackers the tools and Microsoft will see a lot of their business dry up because companies won't know if they are safe if they go with Microsoft. Once they release this cleaned up code, they will be able to smuggly throw it in everyone's face saying "See we're not so bad after all."
The limited version of the licenses (Ms-LPL, and Ms-LCL) are definitely not free software as the limit their use to a single operating system, and of course the Ms-RL isn't even close to being free software, so it won't be on there.
As for GPL compatibility, that is a more difficult question, and is more dependent on legal details than differences in philosophy. IANAL, but I'd guess that they are not GPL compatible because of the Patent Litigation Clause:
This is a restriction that is not in the GPL, and the GPL has a clause that you cannot place any restrictions on the user beyond what is listed in the GPL. It should be noted that the Free Software Foundation is not opposed to a clause like this, and are in fact considering adding one to the next version of the GPL.
So, by my interpretation, they have technical incompatibilities with the GPL which may go away with the next version of the GPL.
They may use such licenses to release code to thier client and partner companies but that remains to be seen.
They have been doing so for years.
Microsoft has only released licenses, not any code under any of these licenses.
Incorrect, they do so and have done so for years.
I could be wrong... but no part of 'release' means 'to the world at large'... Microsoft has been making the Windows source code available to various colleges and companies for years under rather tight control because they don't want (for obvious reasons) the world at large to have access to it.
Don't believe me? Just take a look at a list of current licensees.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
GPL is not about "Open Source", whatever that means today.
The GPL is the license used by the Free Software Foundation, as a tool in their idea that software should be free (not just open source, actually free, as in "freedom", freedom to use, to share, to improve, and to share improvements), and it is actually purposely restrictive achieving the goal of being incompatible with proprietary software licenses, which it's supposed to "fight".
The GPL is just a license, not a political statement, so it just states what it does, and not what it does it for.
The GP was right in that the GPL reason for existing is "freeing" software, by making it easier to develop free software than proprietary software. That is the "political" essence of the GPL.
Unless those licenses include the right to sublicense, they're not compatible with Free (libre) software licenses like the GPL. Then again, let's take a look at each of them in turn and see if that's really still the case--the answer may surprise you:
First up, the Microsoft Limited Permissive License grants these rights:
However, these nasty little restrictions stand out in section 3, which limit the rights granted above:
So no, that doesn't look GPL compatible to me. The platform limitation is a deal-breaker. Perhaps the software developed on it would only be of use on Windows [TM], anyhow, but the restriction certainly isn't GPL-compatible by my reading. There are other restrictions, too, of course, but they're fairly normal things like terminating your license if you sue Microsoft [TM] and not granting you the use of Microsoft [TM] trademarks.
Next, we have the Microsoft Limited Community License.
It seems to have the same grant of rights as in the first one, so that's good. But there are limitations. More limitations than the last one, apparently. Not so good.
"As far as my knowledege of copyright goes, it seems that the alleged need only have a similar product and access to the original, whether they copied it or not, to prove infringement"
Your knowledge of copyright does not go far enough. While the typical slashdot understanding seems to be that if you ever saw someone elses code, anything you ever write belongs to them, this is not actually the case.
You are right that infringement does not have to be line for line copying; but it does have to be copying. If I read some code that does something, then tommorow I go write something from scratch that does the same thing, it is not copyright infringement, even if I remember the general outlines of how to do it from their code. If I sit there typing in their code from a printed listing in my lap, changing variable names as I go, that's infringement. The "cleanroom" techniques used to re-implement things (like, famously, BIOS chip code) are useful for proving you could not possibly have infringed. Proving you did infringe takes a lot more than showing you saw the original code, and is actually quite difficult (in the absense of source that matches).
The reference license is used for stuff like libraries that are part of Windows. You can't modify them, but you wouldn't want to anyway, because your users are going to have the standard version; and there would be no point in writing you own. But it's awfully nice to be able to step into them in the debugger and see what's going on.