OSI Asks Microsoft to Change the MS-PL

Xenographic writes "The OSI has identified two significant flaws in the Microsoft Permissive License, and is unlikely to approve it as an OSI license in its current state. Specifically, the OSI is worried about the way the MS-PL is incompatible with so many other OSI-approved licenses and how misleading that makes the term 'permissive' in the license's name. Now the ball is in Microsoft's court and they can choose to amend or withdraw it from consideration. From the article: 'The MPL is also particularly restrictive, and is uniquely incompatible with the maximum number of other open-source licenses, [president of OSI Michael Tiemann] said, noting that in its examination of license proliferation, the OSI had encouraged experimentation with license terms to encourage new ones to be written that were better than what currently existed.'"

Comments

Permissive has degrees of meanings

[Anonymous Coward]

In the corporate world and in hippyville, they are very different.

Re:Double standard?

[Macthorpe]

And, wonder what happens if it is used as a dual license option with BSD :P Theo implodes. Or explodes. He plodes, anyway, in one direction or another.

I'm shocked

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Something from Microsoft is "uniquely incompatible"?

Re:Double standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, anybody can troll and get karma bonus by using the magic phrase "I have karma to burn".

Re:Same question as always.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, just order them from least to most evil. That way we don't have to worry about actual law and such. GPL,BSD, MIT, public domain, MPL, artistic, MS-PL Problem Solved

It's a bird... It's a plane...

[Dancindan84]

Nope, it's a chair.

Re:Double standard?

[nschubach]

Nah... nobody really understands these licenses anyway, so your in the clear.