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

License madness

[Johann]

Why is it necessary for every podunk company to create their own freakin' 'open source' license. There are already many to choose from, just use an existing one? Why reinvent the wheel and make it even more confusing for people to use your lame-ass software.

People are worried about Linux 'forking' into multiple incompatible systems (like UNIX supposedly did). I'm more worried about the assinine growth in 'OSL-compliant' licenses.

Can't we all just use the GPL or LGPL?

Re:Oh?

[NutscrapeSucks]

"Defend" is the wrong term here. OSI has no trademark on the term "Open Source" (and you've admitted that), so what you are really trying to do is claim the term so that you are able to trademark it in the future. In order to take possession of the term, you need to be universally accepted as the arbiter of Open Source certification, and that means treating MS & Sun on an equal basis as the FSF.

Regardless, Open Source was intended to be an ideological program, so I'm unclear on why the market implications of too many licences is even a consideration.