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."

Comments

If these are really BSD and MPL style

[Anonymous Coward]

then I look forward to seeing entries for them on GNU's list of "GPL-Compatible, Free Software Licenses".

Re:If these are really BSD and MPL style

[murphyslawyer]

I doubt it. GPL or GPL-compatible philosophy is basically "you can do whatever you want with the source"

That's not really true - Do What You Want with the source code is a BSD philosophy. GPL is more of an All Software Should Be Open Source philosophy and it trys to enforce that.

Re:If these are really BSD and MPL style

[s20451]

you can do whatever you want with the source

Except relicense it with anything other than the GPL, and except keeping your modifications closed source. Ironically quite restrictive, compared MS-PL.

Re:If these are really BSD and MPL style

[2short]

No, that's the BSD license. With BSD licensed code, you can do whatever you want with it. One of the things you can do with it is include it in a project you then release under the GPL (or any licence you like); therefore the BSD license is GPL compatible, and so will the MS one be if it is really BSD like. The GPL quite clearly does not let you do whatever you want with the code: you cannot release it under a different license.

Re:If these are really BSD and MPL style

[OrangeTide]

GPL is restrictive, with the purpose of preserving Open Source. GPL philosophy is basically "You may do what you wish with this, as long as anything linked to it is under the same/compatible license".

MS-PL does not seem too restrictive, if you only wish to use Microsoft's propritary OS.

"(F) Platform Limitation- The licenses granted in sections 2(A) & 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system product."

I would probably say MS-PL's philosophy is: "You can do anything you want with this, as long as it does not dilute our empire"

Re:If these are really BSD and MPL style

[cbreaker]

"GPL is more of an All Software Should Be Open Source philosophy"

How so?

I think it's more like a "Here's my work, do whatever. But don't try to sell it closed source, bitch."

The GPL doesn't say anything about -all- software, or philosophy. Perhaps that's the goal of the people that WROTE the GPL, but the GPL itself is no such thing.

If you don't want to use it, you simply can't stand on the shoulders of someone else's work that is. It's that simple.

Mixed feelings

[Bogtha]

On the one hand, these licenses are a good thing. For example, Internet Explorer has a mysterious "hasLayout" feature that screws with CSS development. For years it went undocumented apart from a couple of obscure references in MSDN documentation. If Internet Explorer had been released under one of these "look but don't touch" licenses, we would at least have been able to figure it out for ourselves.

On the other hand, this type of license reduces the pressure for real openness and shared code. This type of license will undoubtedly be seen as an alternative to a real open-source license, and offers an easy way out to organisations that might otherwise have opened up their source.

In any case, the BSD-style license sounds decent enough, it's just the "look but don't touch" licenses I'm wary of.

Uh.. yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our new 'look but don't touch' license has no open source equivalent!" Yeah. That's because if any equivalent to this license existed, it wouldn't be open source. Idiot.

Please Don't

[temojen]

It looks like they're trying to be able to say that (any FLOSS project) contains unauthorized MS code. Don't contaminate your brain. Litigation ensues.

I forgot to add.

[pavon]

One thing in particular that I was glad to see was the absence of any unbalanced vendor rights that exist in many open source licenses created for commercial use. For example, the Netscape Public License requires you to give any changes that you make back to Netscape, regardless of whether you redistribute the changes. Furthermore, it requires that you give Netscape permission to use the changes in proprietary, binary-only products for which they don't release the source.

However the Ms-PL and Ms-CL do not grant Microsoft any special priveledges.

Danger

[Brutal_One]

The danger with the reference license is it then let's Microsoft say that an alleged copyright infringer had the access to see their code and copy it. 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. Infringement does not have to be line for line copying either, even if you change lines here and there, copyright ownership assigns the copyright on the original as well as any derivatives. Where I a code monkey on an OSS project, I would definitely stay away from any code that Microsoft might throw out there to avoid any issue.

Re:Ms-RL wtf?

[X-rated Ouroboros]

The've been having the users beta test their software for years. It's the next logical step to have the users do the actual bug hunt as well.

But will they be USED?

[starseeker]

These are just three more text files unless they are used to release source code. Obviously the last one isn't of interest - will they ever use the other two for anything non-trivial?