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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."
Captain James T. Kirk: They're animals.
Captain Spock: Jim, there is an historic opportunity here.
Captain James T. Kirk: Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
Captain Spock: They're dying.
Captain James T. Kirk: Let them die!
"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?"
Extend, embrace.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can't see how a license that governs use rather than distribution can be considered open source.
I'm dissapointed in the OSI.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This is going to be quite interesting to see. One can hope that good things will come of this, but I honestly don't see it. Luckily, I'm not in a position whereby my mistrust will affect the outcome negatively.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.
They have more than one bit in their brains to make decisions. Hence "open source" is not a knee jerk reaction to them, in a way that "Microsoft" is a knee jerk reaction to certain people in the community.
Open Source is a model, it's a tool, to achieve a purpose. A serious company doesn't shy to use the tools at its disposal, even if some simpler folk might find this contradictory upon first sight.
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.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
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.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Microsoft is a marketing company. They would much rather have Microsft Reciprocal Licensed Linux VistaXP Edition than GNU-Linux. They can always sell their branded products to clueless managers while scaring them with patent threats against the other guys.
Microsoft is also a follower. They typically are behind the bleeding edge of technology but always attempt to buy up as much as possible and claim they "innovated" it. Microsoft research is a big exception, and I wouldn't doubt that it's people from Microsoft Research driving the new licenses as well.
Microsoft is also not entirely stupid; they intend to attract developers with their licenses not to release any Microsoft products under them, but to bring open source development onto Microsoft platforms. That, ultimately, is a war that open source can only win by having a fundamentally better product. If Microsoft opens its documentation and internals to developers, most of them will see fewer advantages in pure open source/free software systems. All Microsoft has to do to keep making money is keep Windows shipping on every PC shipped in the world. Even if they're forced by the market to open source all of Windows, they will still own the trademarks (and patents) and probably still ship Windows on a significant number of PCs. Most home users don't give a shit what they run and will happily buy Microsoft, especially if their formerly Linux-enthusiast friends now see Microsoft as an open source company.
In the end, cooperation really is the goal of free software/open source anyway. Destroying Microsoft would be a net loss for everyone. Microsoft slowly converting to an open/free development model is a scenario in which everyone wins. Who will care if they run Linux or Windows if both support Posix and Win32 environments using the best elements from each kernel? To be honest I don't think this is very likely; it's much more likely that the Next Big Thing will push the operating system question into the realm of questions like which general purpose sorting algorithm is the best.
If many of the old guard senior execs feel one way - and a newer junior VP who has his senior VP's protection feels another - then it's entirely possible for two parts of a large organization to act in two apparently conflicting ways.
That's simply the nature of large organizations. Once you clear a certain size, you can't have every decision cross your CEO's desk or they'll get nothing done.
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...
does anyone have any guesses as to what software/code they will be willing to release under these terms?
Ms-PL: BSD-like
Ms-RL: GPL(2?)-like
It'll be interesting to see what the FSF has to say on these.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
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.
M$ licenses are simple because they are a lie. They don't have any intention to do anything but what they've always done: suck up your work and and screw you in court, the market place and public opinion.
The GPL is like good science, no more complicated than it must be for it's purpose. The goal of science is to understand truth. The goal of the GPL it to protect user freedom. If M$'s license is simpler than the GPL it's because they have other purposes for their licenses.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is a way for MS to get some amunition against patent litigition. Just release the next Windows SDK with some core code licensed under the new MS-PL, make a huge "MS now Open Source" new splash, and wait until the first company that has a Windows product tries to sue them for patent infringement and welcome them with a big fat grin.
From the license:
(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.
isn not exactly the paragon of Freedom as in Free Speech either. As much as Debian may be a dysfunctional democracy, they are better at consistantly addressing this issue than the FSF.
Ever wonder why the GFDL has the invariant sections clause? According to Stallman himself (in a post to debian-legal), it was because he wanted to *force* the distribution of the GNU Manifesto with the Emacs manual. This essentially turns the ideal of free speech on its head by creating a situation where forced advocacy is accepted. When the then-main-architect of HURD criticized the decision, Stallman asked him to resign. If this is the sort of Stallmanist "Free Speech" we are to associate with Free Software, I want nothing to do with it.
Debian did the right thing and to this day considers any GFDL work containing invariant sections to be non-Free.
Note that I am not a Debina Developer, and I think that at the end we should think for ourselves and not be groupies of RMS or anyone else.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
If they sold the modified software, or gave it to a different company, then they would be breaking the GPL, and would get a call from the FSF just like anybody else. That's actually -worse-. At least if you have a copy of Word or Windows, you can, when the DMCA lawyers aren't looking, go and tinker with both and sorta figure out how things work. You can control the installation of the software, and, above all, you can at least get some kind of clue to see if they violated the GPL. So in other words, you can only find out if they are breaking the GPL by breaking a different license first. How is that worse than a company using GPL software as intended. The software is never at any point closed. Even if you found something, it would be inadmissible. You don't get any of that when someone uses a GPL behind the shield of a web service, or behind the shield of a corporate veil. In the grand scheme of things, if you are using a piece of software to enable a business - even in the back office, you are sorta distributing it... because you are copying the benefits that it provides. And, you give the users of that software no rights at all. No. You are using the software. It is specifically licensed so that you can do anything you want to do with it, so long as you do not distribute the software without making the source available. Using it within a company is the same concept of one person using the software. Honestly, I got nuked down to zero, but the intent of OSS is that software is a globally collaborate thing. Hiding behind web services and corporate barriers is not open and not collaborative, and therefor, I stand by my statement, even if not the letter, ALL OF YOU who are using this software at work without making the derived application publicly available are violating the spirit of the GPL. Perhaps you get nuked because the points you are making are wrong. Read the GPL again. You can use, inspect and modify the code to your heart's content. But you must allow access to the source IF you distribute. Distribution is something that occurs OUTSIDE the influence of a company or an individual user.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
The FSF and other organization writing open source licenses don't deliberately complicate licenses. The reason their licenses are long is because the legal environment is complex and there are a lot of cases they need to cover.
You may prefer a "refreshingly short and clean" library, but only until you have a disturbingly lengthy and messy debate with a lawyer or a court about what the intent and meaning of that license is and the court decides that people could reasonably interpret the license differently from the way you intended. The appearance of simplicity and actual simplicity are two different things, in licenses as much as in software.
I think it's unlikely that Microsoft's licenses contain a deliberate legal backdoor. And OSI approval is a good first step. But those licenses are unproven in practice, have no history behind them, and haven't been analyzed carefully by a lot of people. Maybe they'll eventually turn out to be reasonable and sound, but for now, I'd stick with one of the proven open source licenses.
I think the Microsoft licences are really impressive. Short, easy to read, and it seems obvious to me why they were approved. These Microsoft licences would be a good first read for someone trying to understand more sophisticated licences, like GPL v2 or v3. In fact memo to myself to carry out that exercise, to see what the value-add of the GPL v2 is.
Perhaps the challenge should be to find an even short and simpler OSI compliant licence.
The licence is there, anyone can use it. I wonder how much barrier there will be to using a licence with Microsoft in the name, just because of that.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Most of us would at least check SourceForge before making silly accusations.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=200665
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The license reads "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." ... use, sell, offer for sale, ...contribution in the software or derivative works of the contribution in the software.
....
3. 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."
This limits non-copyright rights by tying usage to acceptance of the copyright and patent right parts of the license. I wouldn't use it for that reason alone.
Here's an example: Ms-PL Product A is a flower shop management tool. OL (Other License) Product B is my solely-developed tool that controls plastic forming robots in my flowerpot factory. There's no code commonality between them, including no shared patent technology.
I don't add ANYTHING AT ALL to product A, but I use it and sell it to my customers. MS finds a way to apply product B's patented tech to product A. So MS steals product B's patented tech, and adds it to product A. I sue MS for infringing Product B's patents. MS automatically has the right to countersue me for ALL of MS's patents in product A and any A-derived product, including legal MS patents I'm otherwise in compliance with. I can't just stick to the pre-infringement version of product A; I must use a version of product A that has NO MS technology in it either, or not use product A at all.
This allows MS to shut down competitors whose only "violation" against MS's legal patents is a dispute over the competitor's patents in other products. This multiplies the patent snarl that's already threatening the industry.
Furthermore,"2. Grant of Rights (B) Patent Grant-... each contributor grants you a...license..to
It also seems to mean that anywhere a patent goes, this license applies.
If MS takes its legally patented tech from product A and adds it to product C, then the patent snarl described above will also deprive you of product C. A few carefully crafted patents, spread around like paint, and MS destroys all competitors once and for all.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Back when GCC was managed by RMS, he liked adding "convenient" extensions to the language. One of the reasons was to "tie" the programs to GCC as you describe.
:-)
The current maintainers have quite a different view on them, they only add extensions for things that can't be expressed in the language (mostly stuff close to hardware, or sometimes optimization hints), and they give them __unwieldy_names__. And they are slowly removing the convenience features.
If you don't get a warning from an extension (rather than a "quality of implementation" issue) with -ansi -pedantic it is a bug.
There probably are such bugs (GCC is big and complex, and there are stuff in the language that can't really be tested) but I guess you can't actually mention any, since you are most likely just a troll making stuff up as you go. So I challenge you to mention one such issue that can not be found in the bug database to prove you are not a troll. And if you can mention two such issues, I'm willing to believe that you are not a kook either. In either case, please submit a bug report when done