Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft 'Shared Source' Attempts to Hijack FOSS
aacc1313 writes "An article that details how Open Source is being hijacked by Microsoft and the sort via 'Shared Source' licenses and how Open Source licenses have become so much more confusing. From the article, "The confusion stems from the fact that Microsoft's 'shared source' program includes three proprietary licenses as well, whose names are similar in some ways to the open-source licenses. Thus, while the Microsoft Reciprocal License has been approved by OSI, the Microsoft Limited Reciprocal License (Ms-LRL) is not, because it allows users to modify and redistribute the software only on the Windows platform" and "The 'shared source' program was and is Microsoft's way of fighting the open source world, allowing customers to inspect Microsoft source code without giving those customers the right to modify or redistribute the code. In other words, "shared source" is not open source, and shouldn't be confused with it.""
Read-but-not-reuse source really should be called auditable source or, if you are allowed to change and recompile it for your own use, a traditional commercial source-code license except it's free-as-in-beer.
Both have value and are better than closed-source software. Neither is free-as-in-freedom.
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You wouldn't take a fox's vegetarian food recipes without a barrel of salt either, would you.
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To be honest they were pretty confusing already, with license proliferation leading to a large number of very similar free software licenses with minute, but potentially decisive differences. It didn't need Microsoft for that. Even the general overview at Wikipedia lists 54 different Open Source licenses, not counting superseded or volunarily retired ones.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Am I the only one seeing it like this? Am I wrong?
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
So, two companies, neither of which is Microsoft, released supposedly "open source" software that is, in fact, completely open source? I'm missing where the "hijack" and "confusion" come in.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
How is this any different than what GPL did to BSD? Show up, act like you invented the term "free software", impose a bunch of draconian restrictions that didn't used to exist and loudly tell everyone that your choice of strictures does good for the community?
Preparing for inappropriate troll and flamebait mods. It's still a legitimate question.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Er, well you might, but anyone with a functioning brain equates "Open Source" with, well, Open Source, and "Free Software" (look, both words are different with that one!) with the GPL and other Free Software licenses.
Unless of course you personally pronounce "Shared" in a way that makes it sounds like "Open". Then I guess you really could claim that "Shared Source" sounds like "Open Source" I guess, and not be trolling.
Microsoft and Open Source are antithetical. Nobody with an ounce of common sense can have anything to do with them and not understand that there are going to be strings attached.
Tune out what they say. Focus on what they are and what they do. Structure your involvement with them accordingly. End of story.
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The PHB signing your paycheck.
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No, the problem is that people started using the term Open Source because Free Software was 'confusing.' Open Source is supposed to mean the same thing as Free Software, but it doesn't sound like it does. Free Software is ambiguous because free has two meanings in English. Open Source is ambiguous because open has a huge number of meanings in computing (visible, editable, redistributable, conforming to standards, and so on). An unambiguous term like Software Libre would be better, but unfortunately Open Source seems to be the buzzword de jour.
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By what definition? How about The Open Source definition? They did kind of coin the term, after all. In which case you're wrong.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
It's very easy to see why the GPL is the very best license to choose for a FOSS project. Quite simply, it is the license that Microsoft abhors the most. The very mention of its name sends Microsoft people into foaming fits of anger.
From this, we may safely draw the conclusion that Microsoft has done a lot of research, with a lot of lawyers, and they've determined that the GPL represents the biggest threat to their revenue model. And what's bad for Microsoft is generally good for everyone else. So if you're going to develop FOSS, the GPL is the obvious safe choice.
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Uh, no, you're wrong. You're not really at fault for not knowing this though; Bruce Perens' and the OSI's revisionistic attempts to rewrite computing history to make themselves more important than they really are are the source of the bad information which you have swallowed.
Open Source means that you see the code, that's all. It doesn't even mean that everyone can see the code; Unix vendors were using the term "Open" to mean documented and thus interoperable before the OSI or even the FSG were thought of. And as you can see from the above link, Caldera used the term "Open Source" prior to the foundation (or even the first beginnings of) the OSI.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No really, they were very clever in both creating and naming these licenses. You see most people who have heard of open source software don't understand why it is beneficial. They have, at this point, some vague idea that it is beneficial, but do not understand the mechanism. If you sit down with someone and explain the benefits of open source code the normal topics to discuss are: security and cost. The most easily explained reasons for why open source is cheaper is that people can look at the code and donate improvements, lowering the cost. The most easily explained reason why it is more secure is that people can look at the code and find security holes themselves, thus providing a more extensive security audit. You'll note I said those were the most easily explained mechanisms, that by no means makes them the most potent mechanisms.
So when someone is making a purchasing decision, MS an trot out shared source (which the purchaser does not understand) in comparison to open source (which the purchaser does not understand). They can explain how both those two, most common talking points from the OSS crowd are taken care of, and thus get a sale. They don't explain the more important aspects of OSS or how those benefits are not the same, but not even all OSS advocates understand them either and they certainly aren't going to try to explain them to a PHB. So when you tell the boss OSS will save them money; they ask how. You tell them there is no up front license fee and a lot of the code is donated for free. MS tells them the same thing about shared source (which sounds oh so similar). You probably don't bother explaining to them how the GPL works to insure contributions from everyone are available to all nor how it allows you to take avoid vendor lock-in and take competitive bids on improvements, resulting in lower ongoing costs... because those things take significant understanding and most people don't want to put that much effort in.
Basically, "Shared source" is just MS's way of providing something that looks like OSS enough to fool people who don't really understand how OSS works and they have named it in such a way that is does, sort of, describe what it is and what most people think OSS is. It is just MS removing the most beneficial features for the actual user (but which would cost MS money) and trying to pass it of as the genuine article to anyone gullible enough. And there are a lot of people gullible enough.
Linux is Open Source, but Open Source isn't Linux.
Rising to the bait, GPL's restrictions act to restrict the current user in order to the benefit the community.
Ahem. Just a little nit to pick: the GPL does not restrict users in any way. It "restricts" (if that's the term) distributors and developers, in that it requires them to make the source code available to anyone they distribute to, upon request. Like a constitution, it enshrines the rights of users, coders, and everyone else by defining their rights and prohibiting actions taken to infringe on those rights.
Microsoft's restrictions benefit, well, Microsoft. That is, the original developer. Not the community, not the current user. Nobody else.
This seems like a pretty important distinction.
You're right, it's an extremely important distinction, not unlike the distinction between your run-of-the-mill business contract and the US Constitution or the British Magna Carta.
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I don't think Microsoft is providing access to source code as a way to combat FOSS, but as a way to attempt to comply with an EU antitrust ruling.
Truly "Open Source" licenses may be part of the plan, but the real reason they are exposing source is so that developers of products that compete with MS products like Word or Excel aren't at a competitive disadvantage that could result in expensive lawsuits.
I don't think MS is trying to be confusing (this time). I think the confusion is a side effect of a large, complex corporate entity based on closed source proprietary software trying to expose the minimum required to pass legal muster. It's not FOSS and it's not pretending to be. Do you expect something simple and concise when they mix EU law with a giant US corporation?
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I've always heard the FOSS debate having something to do with the technical merits of being able to modify and view your source code for security or customization purposes. Even if it's platform-locked, this still applies to that general principle.
But there are shades of madness in the open source community- once Microsoft fulfills the realistic argument for why you need the source code, suddenly it's not about actually having the source code. No- it's about porting it to linux and refusing to maintain it for windows, nay- FREEDOM. It's about some sort of weird ideal defined by Stallman, whose primary argument seems to remain that he doesn't like that things cost money or that there's a software industry hustling and bustling out there that he's not qualified to participate in.
Suddenly it's no longer "you need the source code to make use of the product" but it's evolved into "I deleted the wifi firmware on my laptop because it wasn't free. Now I use a wire."
Since the slashdot zealot crowd has so many shades of open source mania, it doesn't matter what microsoft will do. Here is my slashdot zeitgeist by MS license-use prediction:
MS LRL: It's bad because it forces you to use code written FOR windows on windows.
Ms-RL: It's bad because it's not abstractly free in Stallman's imagination.
GPL: It's bad because it's Microsoft, and they're planning something.
BSD: They're just going to make us so we're dependent on it then they're going to sue everybody and everything will far apart. I was abused as a child and have trust issues.
MIT: The world is going to end and we need to resort to cannibalism immediately.
My personal thought about this is that the Shared Source license is a way for Microsoft to make use of open source in some applicable categories without having their code licensed under something that is controlled by an organization of wingnuts, like the FSF. Thus, they could release their code under the GPL, but then Stallman will just draft a GPLv4 that says whoever uses the license needs to release the source code to Windows if they are called "Microsoft", which is basically like what the GPLv3 did to Novell. Stallman and his nimrods will cook licenses that include bitter little addendums to address contemporary issues that put his panties in a knot, because suddenly Stallman has the say in how people use Linux.
This is the same reason that Monsanto doesn't use Earth First! to handle their marketing and to distribute their products to grociers. If Microsoft goes open source, they need to have the assurance that the license is under their terms otherwise their shareholders might get nervous that they're putting some maniac activist organization in control of their distribution rights. There's no reason to do that unless Windows is squarely defeated in the market by open source alternatives.
Could you imagine how many windows clones would show up overnight? It would be a disaster for their platform and company. They're currently in a state where they can sell their platform for large amounts of money. They won't give that up because it angers a fringe of developers whose religion is FOSS-- they'll only do it if there's no other way to make money.
Back in the 1980s, when Richard Stallman was the only one talking about the need for "free software," no one quite knew what he was talking about.
Back in the 1970s lots of people were talking about he need for free software, under all kinds of names. More than that, we were doing it. The movement that RMS is given credit for starting was already well under way, all across the spectrum. You had compilers (and not just on big computers, in the 8-bit worls Small-C, Tiny-Pascal and -Basic, and Forth were published in Dr Dobbs Journal), editors, shells, UNIX emulation (the Software Tools VOS on minis and mainframes, and more modest tools on micros), the free/open/whatever-you-call-it community was already huge when he published the Gnu Manifesto in 1984.
Before the late '70s commercial closed-source software was really the exception. It wasn't even clear how much of a future there was for proprietary code, because a software package that didn't include source meant you were locked in to the operating system you got it for. A friend of mine came up with he name "Tangible Software" to describe software that wasn't proprietary and locked down to a single OS by being distributed only in compiled format, and we even used that name for our company (don't bother googling for it, it lasted less than a year and never shipped any product... we were both undergrads at Berkeley and had no time for classes AND starting up a business). Of course what happened was that this turned into a benefit for the vendors of proprietary software... they could sell you the white album over and over again.
The point is that what actually happened is that RMS provided a focus for what a lot of people were already doing, and tried to redirect the energy of the community his way. He succeeded, in both, to a point... but the people who didn't want to be redirected found they needed a better name. "Free Software" already meant too many things to too many people, from freeware (mostly binary (not "tangible") and some of which was crippled, and soon became 'shareware') to things like BSD- and MIT- licensed code to purely public domain stuff, even before Stallman, but he sure didn't help things.
Now we have RMS arguing that "open source" should refer to the development model (the bazaar) rather than the license, though the OSI's definition of open source is all about the license... and Microsoft trying to hijack the mindspace with "look but don't touch" licenses (also nothing new... you used to be able to get VMS source code... on microfiche). The term's under attack from both sides, and the history of the past 30 years is being rewritten (with the best of intentions, no doubt) by all sides.
use of "open source" needs to be stopped - period - for two reasons:
1) this example license falls into the category of "open source":
"here's some source code. you can look at it. therefore it's 'open'. isn't it pretty. if you use it or anything you learn from it, we'll sue you for everything you've got. please indicate your acceptance."
"open source" licenses do not convey the right to make any use of the code. encouraging companies to get away with this by "opening" the source code is clearly not ok, and i would advocate that anyone faced with such a license simply not do business with such a company: the code should be "free software" or you walk away. this sends a clear message.
2) "open source" in military intelligence communities has a very very specific meaning: it means "a source that is open". i.e. "a source - of information - that is uncontrolled". i.e. a source - e.g. a leak - which is beyond the control of an intelligence agency to stop further information from leaking out of it.
so an "open source" is a nightmare for intelligence communities that has to be shut down at all costs.
therefore, to use the phrase "open source" in a military environment when referring to "source code of computer programs" has nasty connotations associated with it that rings massive alarm bells.
in all, the sooner that people stop using the phrase "open source" and correct people - repeatedly - to use the phrase "free software" the better.
There's no question that MS is doing this specifically to confuse - especially with their "lesser" license which does precisely the opposite of what the LGPL does relative to the GPL - it locks you down more instead of less. They absolutely should be called out on that, and it's not unreasonable to demand that they make it clear exactly what they're doing.
That being said, I really don't see the problem with that proposed scale. Public domain DOES in fact give you more freedom than open source (whether that's a good thing, and if so, when, is of course the source of a many a debate), and there are indeed levels between open and closed. Allowing your code to be viewed and audited is clearly better than purely closed source, and it means that if you claim your code is solid, you better be prepared to answer to the many coders who will confirm that.
I'm not claiming auditable (but not modifiable) code is a substitute for open source - it most definitely is not, but it does have its place, and it's clearly an improvement from running a binary with no idea of how the codebase was done.
No. This is obvious fraud and deceptive marketing.
Anyone that's not a total sheep should be up in arms about
it even if they are Microsoft groupies. Ultimately this is
about the fact that Microsoft has a long history of using
misleading trademarks and trying to hijack well established
terms of art.
This is by no means the first time Microsoft's done this.
They tend to do it constantly.
This is business as usual for Microsoft.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Or, its just an attempt to satisfy some IT checklist item promoting the use of 'Open Source' within an enterprise that the PHBs will buy.
Have gnu, will travel.
Proper Nouns are not pronouns
....
... from the corporatism profiteers' drive-by sales of SOSS (Same Old Shit Software) in the USA and EU pseudo-capitalism economy.
... like ... source is freely editable, shareable, and available ..., just read about GPL and BSD licenses, then by consensus define how/when/... the trademark "Open" can be used. "Open" defines many varied source purposes, concepts, applying to software code, personal creative content, standards, patents, community structures, collaborations .... If this is not done, I am sure that the corporatist/plutocrats of pseudo-capitalism will bury the L/FOSS community and any other "Open" markets/sectors (Standards, Content, Music ...) in this anti-competitive corporate-welfare economy.
Open is not open.
Bath is not bath.
China is not china.
Apple is not apple.
Mobile is not mobile.
Windows is not windows.
US ain't us, but is should be US not U$/M$/eU....
"Open" should be an internationally protected market/economic trademark like Champaign, Cognac
"Open" provides significant international market/product value that is being fraudulently used by companies (like microsoft) to damage the market value of "Open". L/FOSS companies need "Open" to be competitive and differentiate L/FOSS services, methods, standards, products
"Open" needs to be legally protected in the global market just like Sun_sun_SUN, Java_java_Java, Windows_windows....
IOW: To use the market trademark "Open" specific standards must be meet
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
If you think the term 'shared source' is confusing, then wouldnt also 'closed source' be confusing?
Isnt it relevant that MS has plastered all over their documentation that their licenses are NOT traditional open source licenses, and that they scrupulously avoid the term 'open source' for licenses that arent OSI approved?
Heck, lets look at their FAQ on the subject:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/initiative/faq.mspx Q. Is the Shared Source Initiative "Open Sourcing" Microsoft code?
No. The term open source software (OSS) is broadly applied to any (or a combination) of four interrelated concepts: the OSS development model, OSS philosophies, OSS licensing regimes, and OSS business models. However, first and foremost, OSS is a development model built around the idea of community creation and sharing of source code. The other three concepts, and the debates surrounding them, lend further definition to the OSS movement or "culture."
Microsoft has been learning from the OSS community regarding the benefits of deeper collaboration and increased transparency leading to better communication with customers. We believe the most effective pathway for a commercial software company is to strike a balance between investing in research and development and the release of intellectual property assets in the form of source code for both reference and collaborative purposes.
For more information on Microsoft and open source, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/opensource. And lets look at the common acronyms of the things used:
MS-PL, MS-RL
Compare that to:
GPL
LGPL
Apache
BSD
etc
Where exactly do you see the confusion? I cant imagine any better way for MS to make them clear and unambiguous than by sticking MS- in front of them, and making sure they dont look anything like GPL or LGPL.
It sounds to me that you're so blinded by your zealotry that any MS use of the word 'source' in any form would be perceived by you as some great evil coming to get us.
Even if you use FOSS instead, microsoft hasn't hijacked anything.
Show me where Microsoft refers to anything under similar terms as free software licenses. They don't even use the word open, nor free.
This is a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GNU GPL.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Traditionally, since only lawyers are allowed to practice law and give legal advice, Internet Lawyers say "IANAL". In your case, however, I would add "AIAC" (And I Am Clueless), cuz, well, cuz you are. Trademarks are established (in the US) by use, not by registration. I can sue you for trademark infringement if you start selling software under the name Crynwr even though I've never registered the name.
Any doubt as to whether the OSI owns Open Source? I thought not.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I got a trademark on "Technocrat", which is descriptive.
Now, defending some of these marks might have taken more money than they had back then. Had they gone through with the registration, they might well have been able to defend the marks now.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It's a trademark too. Just not a registered one, because that got botched.
Can't you do something more constructive and work on hacker? The abuse of that to mean computer criminal is much more bothersome.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.