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.""

Comments

Auditable source

[davidwr]

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.

License confusion

[rxmd]

Open Source licenses have become so much more confusing.

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 Even the general overview at Wikipedia lists 54 different Open Source licenses, not counting superseded or volunarily retired ones.

What is Open Source?

[Simon (S2)]

"shared source" is not open source, and shouldn't be confused with it." I think this is not true. Open Source means nothing more that the source is "open", that you can see it. I never interpreted the term "open source" whit the meaning that you are free to modify it and distribute it. That is GPLed code for me. A piece of code is Open Source when you can see the code. So, shared source *is* open source, because the code is there for you to see. What you can do with the code, is part of the licence agreement attached with the code. There is no "open source" license, but there is a GPL, BSD, Apache, MIT and so on license.
Am I the only one seeing it like this? Am I wrong?

Re:A legitimate question

[adpsimpson]

...impose a bunch of draconian restrictions that didn't used to exist...

Rising to the bait, GPL's restrictions act to restrict the current user in order to the benefit the community. They arguably don't necessarily benefit the original code developer, although the developer is free to the same benefits as the community receives.

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.