Microsoft, OSI Discuss Shared Source Licenses

linumax writes "While Microsoft Corp. has publicly said it has no immediate plans to submit its newest Shared Source licenses to the Open Source Initiative for approval, the company met with the OSI board this week to discuss the matter. Ronald Mann, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said two of the new licenses, the Microsoft Permissive License, which is modeled on the existing BSD license, and the Microsoft Community License, based on the Mozilla Public License, appeared to satisfy the Open Source Definition administered by the OSI."

Comments

Re:Has Microsoft learned something?

[lokedhs]

They could support any license they want. Let's just wait until we see anything significant released under that license.

Re:still incompatible with the GPL

[Nimrangul]

Who cares if it's compatible with the GPL? The GPL isn't the only open source licence. And who cares if the OSI supports these new licences? The OSI doesn't actually hold any power or significance. All the OSI does is state their opinion, just like the FSF, they tell people that something agrees with them, hardly a big deal. They don't actually have any authority over what is or isn't open source.

Have you ever heard of the story about

[zappepcs]

The frog and the scorpion?
With much pleading and swearing of oaths of non-agression, a scorpion convinces a frog to take him across a river on the frogs back. As they reach the shore, the scorpion thanks the frog, then promptly stings the frog. As the frog lays dying and twitching, he asks the scorpion why he stung him.

The scorpion simply replies: I'm a scorpion, what did you expect me to do?

I really am weary of anything that Microsoft does now. They just got caught with a bad license arrangement for music players!! WTF, I wouldn't trust that scorpion for any amount of money or good will.

I don't even care if there is no viable business alternative, I'd just like to see Microsoft die and wither! We've seen and suffered their monopolistic business practices long enough. In the words of a fairly well liked First Lady: JUST SAY NO! to Microsoft !!!!

Re:Has Microsoft learned something?

[Russ Nelson]

They already use the GPL. Yes, they're starting to learn. IBM used to be pretty evil, in their time. I noticed that I had forgiven when I looked around my office and saw four IBM PCs of one stripe or another. Now, IBM is one of the biggest promoters of open source. Yeay for them, and maybe yeay for Microsoft in the future.
-russ

Re:still incompatible with the GPL

[Russ Nelson]

They don't actually have any authority over what is or isn't open source.

We only have the authority that people grant us. A few nutcases think that open source shouldn't mean anything, or that it should mean everything, or only the things THEY say it means. Enough people trust us to do the right thing that they're willing to rely on our definition of open source. You're welcome to try to convince them that they're wrong, but in my book, you're one of the aforementioned nutcases. Anybody wanna peanut?
-russ
p.s. any reply must have an obligatory Princess Bride reference to be considered authoritative.

Re:still incompatible with the GPL

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You're just trying to redefine something that is much broader, your nonsense about being able to make derivatives is just as bad as the Free Software Foundation trying to redefine the meaning of Freedom.

Open source, in it's purest meaning, is something that allows you to see the source, nothing more. If I make a licence that doesn't allow anything, not even the compilation of binaries, but release the source under it, it's still open source.

Now you're the one trying to redefine things to suit your own purposes; pretty much everyone understands "open source" to mean that you can not only see the code, but also (perhaps subject to some restrictions) use the code in your own work. I mean, you can claim otherwise if you want, but you're igoring the way the phrase is actually used.