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Microsoft Treating "Windows-Only" As Open Source
mjasay writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft is hosting Windows-only projects on its 'open source project hosting site,' CodePlex. Miguel de Icaza caught and criticized Microsoft for doing this with its Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF), licensing it under the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL), which restricts use of the code to Windows. Microsoft has changed the license for MEF to an OSI-approved license, the Microsoft Public License, but it continues to host a range of other projects under the Ms-LPL. If CodePlex wasn't an 'open source project hosting site,' this wouldn't be a problem. But when Microsoft invokes the 'open source' label, it has a duty to live up to associated expectations and ensure that the code it releases on CodePlex is actually open source. If it doesn't want to do this — if it doesn't want to abide by this most basic principle of open source — then call CodePlex something else and we'll all move on."
OSI?
I hear there are no versions of the Linux kernel that run under windows.
From http://www.colinux.org/ Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP...
Open source does not mean open platform, case closed.
Please mod the parent down. Open Source must conform to the Open Source Definition, which lists ten points. Free Software must respect the Four Freedoms that the FSF enumerated. These are roughly equivalent. The FSF prefers the GPL, but they accept other licenses are Free Software.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
About CodePlex CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. Start a new project, join an existing one, or download software created by the community. More About CodePlex... Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site. Microsoft is hosting the CodePlex site solely as a web storage site as a service to the developer community.
In other words, developers can -gasp- choose the license they want. And they do, including MS. Also, it has nothing to do with the OSI since MS explicitly mentions it's 'open source' and not 'Open Source'(which seems to be hijacked by the OSI as a trademark?). open source != free(as in freedom) software.
This space for rent.
That's the whole point, you're not allowed to do that.
Point understood, you have an example of a ruby-only site.
However, do projects on that site have a license explicitly forbidding you from re-implementing them in python or perl or C? I suspect no, that they would allow that even if they choose not to explicitly aid it.
In this case, MS's site is hosting code that not only is Windows specific, but forbids potential developers from even porting it to other operating systems. The former is hard to argue, the latter bit I understand raising some ire amongst Free software advocates.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
But (if I am understanding the comments correctly), the license forbids you from porting to code to another platform. A real open source license wouldn't do that.
Open Source is what is defined by the Open Source Definition.
A number of microsoft dweebs and/or campaigners would like to have it otherwise. But then Microsoft would like to have a lot of things. It's called corporate totalitarianism.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
They weren't bastardizing the concept. They were working with the community to provide a definition big companies like IBM, Sun, or Microsoft, and lawyers could understand.
And in the past they even registered "open source" as a service mark for protection of the thriving community against dilution by people who wanted to twist the concept of open source.
To protect against companies who want to just make the source visible without actually opening it for others to use or change without undue restrictions protective corporate lawyers would normally demand upon (things like written approval).
Code with source-code available but without the particular set of rights defined in the OSD is called "Disclosed Source Code". It is possible to have disclosed source code with "All Rights Reserved", such that nobody would ever have rights to compile the code. Thus, it makes sense to have a name that is specific to the rights attached, not just the fact that there is source code. That's what "open source" and "Open Source" mean. The capital letters are not significant, if it says it's open source it has to have the rights specified by the OSD.
Bruce Perens.
From http://www.opensource.org
Emphasis mine.
That's not even the point. When someone says "open source", what do YOU think of? Let me tell you, it's not anything Microsoft related.
The big difference in this case is that it affects how you *use* the software.
Many OSI approved licenses affect how you may redistribute the software, but none of them AFAIK limit how you may use or alter it.
Well, yes - it would be nice if this were the case. Unfortunately I don't believe that the terms "Open Source" or "Free Software" can be protected in any legal sense - for the same reason MS can't stop the word "Windows" (or "Word" for that matter) from being used by other entities.
These are common terms, and could mean any number of different things in different contexts. MS could argue that IE is "free software" for example - its not like they charge anyone for it.
Go here and search for "wet". It's already trademarked :-) . There are also a very large number of trademarks containing or related to "wet".
Bruce Perens.
If I were to rewrite it today, it would say what you can do, rather than what you can't. But it's held up really well. There is a tremendous amount of software conveyed as having that particular set of rights, and it touches everybody's lives daily. I can't complain :-)
Bruce Perens.
where I worked on making movies they were compiled.
Bruce Perens.
Licenses by definition aren't open and they most certainly serve an end. All the OSI approved licenses restrict what I can do in one way or the other. Otherwise everything would be public domain which is as free as this world can offer.
They only restrict your ability to *close* the software (and some don't even do that).
So, no, you're absolutely wrong. Open Source Licenses don't limit rights by their nature of being a license. Those that do, do so only to promote openness. The rest (like the BSD license) exist not to create restrictions (even positive ones), but are required because the way copyright works, it's pretty much required.
Public Domain doesn't mean "free to do with as you please". It's mildly ironic, but in order for something to be fully, legally, free, it takes a license.
As if that one count of 10 wasn't important.
At one point or another, my main coding platform was an Apple II, Commodore Vic-20, Commodore 64, PDP-11, VAX, Sun, SGI, PC Clone, and I've had a number of secondary coding platforms, including CHAP (something Pixar made), 6809, PIC, AVR, and so on. And all of the various operating systems for those things.
Any code that I have been given with platform restrictions, during that entire time, for various employers, is dead code today. No users, probably can't even be built if someone could find it, and I can't use it either.
In contrast, essentially all of the work I've done under an Open Source license is still living and has a vibrant user community.
You really need to think about this rights thing more.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Certainly the UK gives legal backing to the word "organic".
But it's important to note that the word "organic" does not mean "not produced in factory farming conditions". There's no reason in principle why you couldn't keep chickens in the same cramped, dark houses they're normally kept, change their food so it didn't contain growth hormones, antibiotics or any of that crap and call it "organic".
(Your chickens probably wouldn't last long enough to make it to the supermarket because in those kind of conditions, the antibiotics are the only thing keeping disease from spreading like fire, but the sickly half-dead chickens handed over to Tesco's would still be organic!)