OSI Approves Microsoft Ms-PL and Ms-RL

Russ Nelson writes "In a board meeting held October 10th and announced today, the Open Source Initiative approved two of Microsoft's software licenses: the Microsoft Reciprocal License and the Microsoft Public License. These licenses are refreshingly short and clean, compared to, say, the GPLv3 and the Sun CDDL. They share a patent peace clause, a no-trademark-license clause, and they differ only in the essential clause of reciprocation. Of course, Microsoft is not widely trusted in the Open Source world, and their motives have been called into question during the approval discussions. How can they be attacking Open Source projects on one hand, and seeking not only to use open source methods, but even to use the OSI Approved Open Source trademark? Nobody knows for sure except Microsoft. But if you are confident that Open Source is the best way to develop software (as we at the Open Source Initiative are), then you can see why Microsoft would both attack Open Source and seek to use it. It is both their enemy and their salvation."

Comments

Damn, they actually look reasonable

[Jay Maynard]

The Ms-PL looks basically like the same terms as the BSD/MIT license with a patent peace clause, and the Ms-RL looks like the same thing with a Mozilla PL-like reciprocal clause. Neither one looks like the GPL. That's an unalloyed good thing.

Re:How could this get approved?

[ianare]

This is contrary to any Open Source license I know of. There are at least 2 that explicitly say that .. Common Public License, Eclipse Public License

Re:How could this get approved?

[OmegaBlac]

This is contrary to any Open Source license I know of. The whole point of Open Source is that you can use the software in any way you want. You have to agree to the license only when you distribute. Microsoft is attempting to subvert OSI, just like it has already subverted ISO.

You may be confusing Open Source with Free Software. Free Software guarantees the freedom for the user to use the software in any way they feel--Open Source does not. At least Open Source in the sense that I know it, does not guarantee that particular freedom and is the reason Microsoft can push supposed open source licensees that restrict user freedom.

Attribution clause

[blackorzar]

It's interesting the attribution clause included on these licenses. We have many discussions about how manage attribution on open source projects. CPAL (https://www.socialtext.net/open/index.cgi?cpal) license gave us some points to consider when talking about attribution. This license allows you to put a limited attribution on the software "copyright notice, short phrase (10 words), graphic image and URL." GPL 3 has it's own clause on attribution resources (see clause 7) The way Ms-RL Ms-PL describes how attribution will be managed has another aproach from the previous licenses: They require you to respect any attribution notices that the original work has. So here we have an OSI approved license which can be used to preserve all your attribution notices...

Re:Not OSL.

[DMUTPeregrine]

Bull. Google runs a customized version of Linux and only uses it internally, they aren't required to give the source to people who visit their website. Plenty of people/companies go to the expense of building internal-only software.

You mean like the apache license?

[pavon]

From the Apache License

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION
1. Definitions.
"License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction, and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document. Not only is this license approved by the OSI as open source, it is also considered to be a Free Software License by the FSF and is even compatible with GPLv3.

I am not sure what gave you that impression.

[einhverfr]

Interestingly the OSI's Open Source Definition is derived from an attempt to define the FSF's 4 freedoms.

The lineage goes from the FSF to Debian (and the Debian Free Software Guidelines) to the OSI's Open Source Definition (which were mostly copied from the DFSG).

If you read the MS-Reciprical License and the MS-PL, you will see that they don't provide any restrictions on use, so this distinction doesn't really matter anyway.

Yeah, one tiny little difference

[SmallFurryCreature]

GCC and Bash are opensource, you can get them to run on ANYTHING you bloody well want too. So if you want to use code that only compiles under gcc then all you need to do is get gcc to work on your system. Have you checked how many systems gcc works on? Go ahead, I will wait. Wow, long list eh?

Now compare this with closed source, lets say C#, how many systems does MS compiler run on? Oh, only windows. Wow that was quick.

Same with their IE, it ain't the problem that IE does things differently, it is that nobody really knows and can't copy that behaviour. THe problem ain't that IE does things differently as such, it is that they don't publish how to do it, so everybody else is left with browsers that run their "enhancements" slightly differently and end up with messed up pages.

All your post has done is to show WHY opensource is so essential. Frankly if this is the best attack you can muster against GNU, then we can sit back and relax, we won.