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

[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"

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.

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.

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?