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

They're animals...

[network23]

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!

easy answer

[geekoid]

"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.

Re:easy answer

[CastrTroy]

Same way Sony can tell people that even copying a CD for use on a personal MP3 player is pirating, while at the same time selling VAIO computers that rip CDs, and portable music players that come with software that helps you rip CDs, as well as selling CD burners, and blank disks to copy CDs onto. They are such a big company, that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. What's good for one department isn't always good for another department, and sometimes the needs of different departments within the same organization clash.

Re:easy answer

[dunng808]

Microsoft wants all FOSS to be developed for Windows. And Office. As long as it does not compete with their products. Next comes the extend piece, in which they fiddle with someone's creative effort just enough to come up with something they can protect, like how they did with kerberos and ldap. Free development for their profit.

Re:easy answer

[GPL Apostate]

The GNU project has tended to embrace and extend things. Not to the point of extinguishing them (except for classic UNIX, to a large degree.) But many people write shell scripts that traditionally run under /bin/sh but include bash extensions that make it impossible to run them under regular /bin/sh on other systems. The GCC contains extensions that don't deprecate and aren't flagged when the -pedantic switch is set. As a consequence C code is written that won't compile on other than GCC, and the developers aren't even made aware of this. The codebase slowly becomes GCC compilable only. All of this can be researched by anybody interested enough to look into it. The GNU project is an extend/embrace/extinguish operation, much like Microsoft.

Re:easy answer

[Bert64]

The difference is that GNU publishes their work, so while they extend other people's work it's usually to make improvements, and the improvements are always out in the open for other people to adopt.
If your compiler won't compile something but gcc will, you can easily work out what the gcc-specific extensions do either from documentation or source code, and implement them yourself.
By contrast, microsoft often keep as much detail about their extensions private as they can, to make it difficult for anyone else to implement.
Aside from that, gcc places far less other restrictions on you than microsoft products, you can run gcc on almost any platform, you can install it on as many systems as you want for no cost, you can modify it to suit your needs, you can redistribute it with very few restrictions.

Not OSL.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I can't see how a license that governs use rather than distribution can be considered open source.

I'm dissapointed in the OSI.

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.

How? Simple

[suv4x4]

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.

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:Damn, they actually look reasonable

[nelsonrn]

1) These licenses aren't substantially the same.

2) There's a risk in writing a succinct license in that you might not cover each and every case in detail. Yes, by being so succinct, Microsoft is taking a risk that the judge might not accept the facial meaning of each clause.

3) Among other things, they're short and readable. Specifically, they don't name a jurisdiction. This is VERY GOOD for international projects. How would you like to have to sue somebody in Santa Clara simply because you contributed to an MPL-licensed code and they infringed it?

4) Why do you think you can't trust us? If you think the licenses don't comply with the Open Source Definition, you should say exactly why, rather than attempt to raise FUD. As postmaster@opensource.org I can definitively state that your email address above is not on the license-discuss mailing list -- if you don't participate in the process, why should anybody believe your criticism of the result?

"They" is rarely a single viewpoint.

[nick_davison]

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? How can Americans be refusing to sign up to Kyoto on one hand and winning Nobel prizes on the other? Probably because Bush isn't Gore and Gore isn't Bush. When it comes to human rights abuses, the administration can be winking when telling people not to do anything bad and yet you can still have a general who comes down like a ton of bricks on any soldier who even begins to act out of line because he feels another path makes more sense in the long run.

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.

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...

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.

Re:You mean like the apache license?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Yes, but the apache license puts no conditions on use, just grants extra rights(ie to patents held by Apache developers).

The MS licenses puts conditions on use - for instance, granting MS permission to use your patents.

Because Microsoft is not a person

[pyrbrand]

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? This is because Microsoft is not a person, it is a corporation which is a legal fiction enabling a company to be treated as a single legal entity. In reality, Microsoft is ~100,000 people who have their own ideas, ambitions and goals. As an employee, I think my ideas of what I want to do vary significantly based on the number of levels I have to go up to find a common manager with someone else in the company.

Not even MS knows why...

[droopycom]

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. No, not even Microsoft itself... MSFT is a huge corporation. Nobody, not even Ballmer and Gates controls or dictates fully the company actions. Many people inside the company might have different motives to push for OSI. Maybe some push it because they (in some way) believe in open source. Maybe some push it because they just want to give MSFT a better image. Maybe some think its a way to fight open source. Probably some other though it is a bad idea...

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.