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?

[someone1234]

The MPL is incompatible with the MPL (Mozilla Public License) too.
And, wonder what happens if it is used as a dual license option with BSD :P

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.

Re:Double standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Double standard?

[iamacat]

GPLv2 itself is incompatible with all licenses existing before it was introduced - typical commercial license, BSD, public domain. Personally I would prefer return to founder's copyright and obligation for the author to release the work in a form conductive to creating derivatives (which would be source code for software, digital negative for photos...) after those 7 years or 14 after getting a renewal for a nominal fee.

But other than that, I don't see why Microsoft should be held to higher standard than FSF.

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.

Re:Double standard?

[nschubach]

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

Re:Double standard?

[ozmanjusri]

I don't see why Microsoft should be held to higher standard than FSF.

They're not being held to a higher standard.

Microsoft's licenses govern the USE of software. FSF (and other FOSS licenses) govern the DISTRIBUTION of software. That detail is what creates the incompatibility and confusion.

Same question as always.

[khasim]

Why isn't there a chart of the various licenses ranging from least restrictive to most restrictive?

That way it would be easy to show where a new license fit in and whether it was actually needed or whether it duplicated an existing one.

It would also show gaps where licenses do not exist right now.

And best of all, it would allow you to draw a line and say "anything below this line is compatible with the GPLv2 (or v3)".

As the various laws change, the chart would have to be updated. But it would solve this issue with Microsoft once and for all.

Re:Same question as always.

[mmcuh]

Because you can't say that a given license is either more or less permissive than any other. It's not a total order. 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. But you can't since the GPLv3 prohibits you from using patents to close off the code, and GPLv2 prohibits you from adding any new probihitions. Or take the XFree86 license and GPLv[2-3]. The XFree86 license requires attribution to a greater extent than the GPL, while GPL requires other things that the XFree86 license does not. Neither can be said to be "more permissive", because they require and allow different things.

Re:Same question as always.

[davidsyes]

But, a chart CAN be built. Not a spreadsheet chart, per se, but a view that is maybe hexagonal or octagonal in shape with colors (or for the color-perception-impaired, dotted/dashed/hatched lines) showing the increasing and decreasing danger zones are relative to the permissiveness intended by the license drafter, or show compatible licenses for those wanting boilerplate.

Heck, it could even be build in software, say in some CRM type of tool, where the user picks the language as it suits them, then the software uses an algorithm to display dubiousness, hostility, friendliness, and overlapping/"underlapping" or "conformal" lines of compatibility.

A scoring system could be built where the permissiveness ranks higher in bar and in some pleasing color and hostility ranks lower in bar and in some mean, rage or nausea-inducing color (red?).

Sample licenses and unctuous or uncouth or hostile licenses would be copied, verbatim, and snippets or whole paragraphs presented on screen to help TEACH software developers and license writers HOW TO THINK about not just their own coding or legalese-brandishing prowess, but to THINK about their target audience and community-building abilities.

If people can build "How to patent it yourself" and "Will Kits" in software, then some enterprising GEEK had better get on the ball and keep my idea from being patented by some profiteer who is unlikely to donate profits back to the community.

GOOGLE, are you listening? You wanna write one yourself, or donate money to a team that will do it? Your search engine alone could shortcut a lot of the work just by your inputting known, issued licenses and "agreements", matched with legal case history, pending cases, and settled cases, as well as whatever became cross-licensing deals when big companies clashed with each other, as well as whatever became of little guys run over by roughshod, steamrolling big companies.

Companies such as microsoft automatically can be initially regarded as hostile until their licenses are TRULY permissive. Not permissive in microsoft-speak, but in preponderance of licenses issued by OSI and the reception/perception of such licenses BY the end-users who actually read them and live happily with them, not live with them as a cost of doing businesses and a fear of avoiding courts or jail time.

Re:Same question as always.

[MrCopilot]

Why isn't there a chart of the various licenses ranging from least restrictive to most restrictive?

You mean like this

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/533.cfm

or http://pgl.yoyo.org/lqr/

or http://www.croftsoft.com/library/tutorials/opensource/

or http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000833.html

All found with a very cursory Search on Google. If these are not enough you could always open a little program called OpenOffice and create one. Given how many of the above are crosslinked, You could find any number of people to host it.

I think though the proper place for your chart is probably at OSI itself

I'm shocked

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Something from Microsoft is "uniquely incompatible"?

what's incompatible?

[bcrowell]

Reading the license, it looks like a pretty ordinary, simple, GPL-ish license. IANAL, and I'm sure the OSI knows what they're talking about when it says it's incompatible with lots of other OSI-approved licenses, but after reading the article and the license, I'm still completely in the dark about why it's so incompatible.

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:what's incompatible?

[MrCopilot]

I'm still completely in the dark about why it's so incompatible.

The snag is right here.

This license governs use of the accompanying software. If you use the software, you accept this license. If you do not accept the license, do not use the software.

This is where the incompatible part is. GPL and other govern only distribution not usage. Here is relevant part of GPL

This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.

Now that is what I call Permissive. MS-PL is not a license it is a EULA. It is not permissive.

Other than that, I am actually surprised at how Open this "License" is. Baby Steps to open source. I particularly like this bit, which I thought I'd never see from MS.

(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.

Under Conditions and Limitations:
(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.

Great First Draft. Tiny bit of tweaking and I would not shy away from code covered under this license.

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?

[recoiledsnake]

That is almost the only place in the license which talks about usage of the software. Apart from that, can you point out where it applies to a end user(except for the waiver of express guarantees)? The rest of the license talks about distribution. Also, GPL applies to end users. From the GPL

in no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will any copyright holder, or any other party who modifies and/or conveys the program as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the program to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Re:what's incompatible?

[trifish]

GPL and other govern only distribution not usage. Here is relevant part of GPL

This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.

As a developer, I wouldn't touch a license that doesn't cover use. The disclaimers of warranties and limitation of liablities are an essential part of Free software. The GPL fails to bind the user to agree to the disclaimers and limitations and thus makes the developers and distributors subject to liabilities (because these things are implied by default under applicable laws).

Re:what's incompatible?

[MrCopilot]

As a developer, I wouldn't touch a license that doesn't cover use. The disclaimers of warranties and limitation of liablities are an essential part of Free software. The GPL fails to bind the user to agree to the disclaimers and limitations and thus makes the developers and distributors subject to liabilities (because these things are implied by default under applicable laws).

That is a ridiculous claim. Liability would be subject to license terms. Under no circumstances would you be able to sue a GPL author based on the assumption that you did not agree to the terms of the licence under which it was distributed.

The free to use clause is there to protect you from the author saying you were using his software illegally. It was distributed to you under the terms of the license. You cannot say it wasn't just because you disagree with the license. Under those terms there is no Liability. See post above.

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.

Re:what's incompatible?

[recoiledsnake]

Sorry. I got confused between the two licenses they submitted to the OSI. The other is the Microsoft Community License.

This one does have a similar requirement to the one in the GPL that you mentioned.

(A) Reciprocal Grants- For any file you distribute that contains code from the software (in source code or binary format), you must provide recipients the source code to that file along with a copy of this license, which license will govern that file. You may license other files that are entirely your own work and do not contain code from the software under any terms you choose.

So, the MS-PL is like the BSDL and the MCL is like the GPL. The OP does not mention MS-PL. Maybe he was talking about the MCL?

Also, why is the OSI concerned about the "Permissive" in MS-PL's name when the license reads almost like the BSDL ?

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?

Re:Yes you can.

[lordtoran]

Public Domain isn't a license. It just means you release something without claiming a copyright at all.

GPLv3 is MORE compatible than v2, not less!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the main GOOD parts of the GPLv3 is that it's compatible with the Apache License now and I think some others, too.

The only new incompatibility I'm aware of is the GPLv2, and only if you hate the "or later" clause.

There's no good reason not to use it except FUD: I mean, you can word the "or later" clause to say "or any later version of the GPL approved by X" and all you have to do is have X's okay to allow for an upgrade. For Linux, it could be "or any later version of the GPL approved by Linus" and we'd still be at GPLv2, but Linus would have the option of going to GPLv3 with minimal pain if ZFS was GPLv3 and the wanted to add it to the kernel (or whatever).

And no, that doesn't retroactively pull the rug out from anyone. The licensee (NOT the licensor) gets to choose which license they want to choose out of all the available choices.

IANAL, but I got this information from people who are lawyers.

What does this mean?

[jamesl]

The MPL ... is uniquely incompatible with the maximum number of other open-source licenses.
The maximum number would be all of them.

Re:Google is your friend!

[trifish]

So, as you can see, GPLv3 is Apache-compatible, GPLv2 is NOT.

So the GPL no longer inisists that all portions of a GPL-ed program must be under the GPL?

Re:JFGI

[trifish]

If you quit being an ass and took five seconds to look for yourself

If you quit being an ass and took five minutes to read the GPL, you'd discover that the GPL is incompatible with all open source licenses.

Why you ask? Because the GPL requires that all portions of a GPL-ed program must be distributed under the GPL. Hence, if I want to incorporate code that is under the BSDL, (Apache License, or Mozilla, etc.), and distribute my code under the GPL and let others too, I can't do that (unless I own the BSDL-ed code). That's why GPL is called a viral license and that's why it's fundamentally incompatible with most open source licenses.

That negligible aspect you refer to doesn't make GPL3 anymore compatible than GPL2 was. The key aspects are still not compatible.

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