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

Double standard?

[Macthorpe]

the OSI is worried about the way the MS-PL is incompatible with so many other OSI-approved licenses Like the GPLv3, then?

(I have karma to burn, apparently)

Re:Double standard?

[Crispy Critters]

Bruce had to work really hard to try to describe Open Source in a way that included both the GPL and the BSDL. The spirit of collaboration that surrounds projects like GNU, Linux, X, and the BSDs owes as much to history as to the license, so it is clear why he had so much trouble trying to include it in the Open Source Definition and why the OSI has even more problems using a subset of the OSD to define an Open Source License.

Re:Double standard?

[mrsteveman1]

Because Microsoft has some hits in the face coming to it.

Its like when you steal the teachers chalk......

Microsoft is getting spanked in public.

Yes you can.

[khasim]

Because you can't say that a given license is either more or less permissive than any other.

Yes you can. Public Domain is less restrictive than just about anything else.

Take GPLv2 and GPLv3 for example. If either of them were strictly more permissive, you would be able to relicense from one to the other.

Yes, IF "either of them were strictly more permissive".

But they're not. Nor did I say they were. In a chart, they would be lateral to each other. The same licenses (such as Public Domain) that were acceptable to the GPLv2 would be acceptable to the GPLv3. But that does not mean that the GPLv2 is acceptable to the GPLv3.

Neither can be said to be "more permissive", because they require and allow different things.

Again, I did not say they were. In a chart they would be side by side. They have restrictions, but they have different restrictions. Anything BELOW them would have to have the SAME restrictions but FEWER of them.

Re:Yes you can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have a rather flat list with little or no licenses above any other.

Also some restrictions are going to be significant depending on large company vs small company. Layer that.

Your base idea doesn't work at all.

Re:what's incompatible?

[squiggleslash]

Normally I'd say the parent AC is engaging in flamebait:

OSI is looking for any excuse to reject this license.

especially with the usual digs at the GPL (funny how the second oldest free software in common use is the one everyone blames for incompatibility with the new licenses that came out in the last five to ten years.)

However, in this case, the "any excuse to reject this license" claim may well be right. Eric S. Raymond, on the OSI Board's blog, has somewhat unhelpfully suggested that he's leaning towards wanting the licenses rejected for reasons other than their compliance with the open source definition, namely Microsoft's entirely unrelated OOXML activities.

I'm not sure the OSI is being smart in associating itself with that view.

Re:OSI run by anti-Mircosoft wankers

[MrCopilot]

The first complaint is a joke.

Permissive is a definitive term.

1. Granting or inclined to grant permission; tolerant or lenient.
2. Permitting discretion; optional.
3. Archaic Not forbidden; permitted
Granted in terms of Normal MS licenses it is more permissive. But its not called the Microsoft more permissive than usual license.

It is not, it covers usage, not just distribution or modification. You are not permitted to USE this software if you do not accept this license. Mozilla and apache have similar wording which makes them incompatible with GPL as well. That is why MPL software is TriLicensed usually

The second is an even bigger joke. Open source licenses need to be compatible with other licenses to get approved now?

Yes it is recent, after a few years of trying to sort out what can be used with what, it behooves OSI to try to get as much compatibility as possible in the License before approval. Meaning if it is MS' goal to make it incompatible, OK, but if it isn't then they should make minor changes to fix it.

OSI run by anti-Mircosoft wankers

Um, no kidding the entire open source movement is anti proprietary, that is there mandate, No? Calling them wankers is a subjective opinion based on this decision and no actual contact with them and, I think, a little bit prickish. We all welcome Microsoft into the FLOSS community but under our terms not theirs. They've had it their way for many years and many lawsuits. If we are tougher on them then say SUN or IBM (which I don't think we are.) there is ample reason.

Having said All of that, I believe and have said in another thread, this is very close to a good license, Its short, It has Patent protections, A couple of very small changes and I would not be weary of using code under this license. I would probably never release anything new under it but I wouldn't be afraid to modify existing MS-PL code.

Re:what's incompatible?

[chromatic]

Great First Draft.

The patent clause is almost toothless. Apache 2's patent clause terminates all patent rights under the license to anyone who files a patent infringement claim against the licensed project. The MS-PL protects Microsoft and other big contributors who have patents but does nothing to establish a patent commons around the work to protect smaller contributors.

Re:what's incompatible?

[MrCopilot]

The MS-PL protects Microsoft and other big contributors who have patents but does nothing to establish a patent commons around the work to protect smaller contributors.

Wow, never, ever, ever, in a million years, thought I would be on Slashdot actually defending a MS license,

(B) Patent Grant- Subject to the terms of this license, including the license conditions and limitations in section 3, each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under its licensed patents to make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, import, and/or otherwise dispose of its contribution in the software or derivative works of the contribution in the software.

.....

(B) If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically. (C) If you distribute any portion of the software, you must retain all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices that are present in the software. I don't see a distinction between small and large contributors in here. Maybe I am misunderstanding your point.

Re:what's incompatible?

[chromatic]

The purpose of the clause in Apache 2 is to create a patent pool. We all hang together, or we shall all hang separately. If the best reason to collect a batch of patents is as a deterrent (or to make cross-licensing more appealing), and a lot of companies believe that it is, A2 does the same thing in a F/OSS fashion by making it painful to file a patent suit related to patents licensed for use in the product.

My complaint with Microsoft's license is that if I were to contribute code to a project licensed under the MS-PL and someone were to file suit against me for patent infringement, I'd have no contributory protection from any other patents that actual patent holders had licensed by way of their contribution to the project. I appreciate that the MS-PL contains a patent grant, but it doesn't do much to build a wall around contributors related to patents other than that. The playing field is lopsided in favor of large patent collections, where they already have plenty of patent-related deterrents.

Get the facts!

[miquels]

From the article:

Bill Hilf, general manager of platform strategy for Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash. :

"Look at it from my perspective. If I told customers we were working with open source and the OSI and they went to opensource.org and saw all the anti-Microsoft messages, what would they think? It just didn't make any sense".

Yeah. I think this guy should get the facts. http://www.microsoft.com/canada/getthefacts/default.mspx

Re:what's incompatible?

[MrCopilot]

In other words, it's a EULA ?

Pay attention please. End User License Agreement MS is a EULA period. It covers usage how you use it.

GPL is a License. General Public License It covers copyright licensing. Copyright is for distribution, you know, like copy...rights.

The distinction is purposeful. I'm not drawing it, they are. It says so as the first sentence of the MS-PL, you think its unimportant?