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

Oh?

[Nimrangul]

And what ever happened to trimming down the number of licences that the OSI backs? I thought they were trying to trim it down to the GPL, BSD and MPL?

Re:Oh?

[Russ Nelson]

That's just not going to happen. We need to defend the trademark that we license to people whose software is using an approved license. In order to do that, we can't let people use the trademark without approval. If we were to withdraw approval (NOT a possibility!) we would end up with people innocently misusing the trademark. It wouldn't be their fault; it would be our fault. We would be diluting our own trademark. Not a happy-making situation to be in, so we're not going to withdraw approval.

Instead, the current plan is to provide advice to developers when they want to pick a license. I expect that we will have three lists: Recommended, Recommended Specialty, and Not Recommended. Typical possible ranking: Recommended: GPL, Recommended Specialty: NOSA, Not Recommended: any license of the form "Copyright (C) Foo Bar, Inc., purveyors of find liquor-vending software."

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.

MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates Speaks Out Against Next-Gen DVDs

Microsoft Becomes Wembley Stadium's Backer

Microsoft, OSI Discuss Shared Source Licenses

Has Slashdot had a tiff with Google and started seeing Microsoft instead?

That's enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, thats enough of M$ today.

Danese Cooper's blog entry

[Russ Nelson]

Danese Cooper's blog entry is our official statement on this matter.
-russ

Woah o_o;

[Hikaru79]

In other news, Hell is reporting temperatures are at a record low. Also, Pork Airlines closes the quarter with 60% revenue increase.

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.

still incompatible with the GPL

[User 956]

It is pretty obvious that this license is not GPL compatable, and I am no lawyer. All you have to do is read it. These two provisions make it impossible:

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.

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: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.

Tim O'Reilly's Thoughts on the Matter

[theGreater]

O'Reilly Radar Entry
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/new_sour ce_licenses_from_micro.html

-theGreater.

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

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?

The Next New MS License

[Prototerm]

Microsoft will shortly announce their introduction of the "Burn FLOSS To The Ground And Salt The Earth Beneath It" License, saying it will make the world safer for convicted antitrust violators everywhere!

Embrace...Extend...Extinguish

Wow..now

[jkind]

I've been to boring meetings.. But this sounds it would have been quite a boring meeting :) Discussing fine print of GPL and what it does/does not allow you to do.. Must have been a lawyer field day.

Re:Has Microsoft learned something?

[arkanes]

IBM has contribued a signifigant amount of code to the Linux kernel, thats all under the GPL. They've contributed to several other projects, that code is under the license of the project its donated to. They've open sourced several projects whole sale, although I'm not sure how many if any of those are under the GPL (but they are under OSI approved OSS licenses). IBM is one of the major contributors to Eclipse.

See http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/views/openso urce/projects.jsp for a list of some of the projects they're actively involved with. This list doesn't seem to include projects that they have released to the community, such as Cloudscape.

Re:INTELLIGENT DESIGN: THE REAL SCIENCE OPTION?

[Phil246]

(taken from http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-d ebate-on-intelligent-design-that.html )
The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject

Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!

Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.

Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!

Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.