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."

Comments

Re:This is microsoft trying to help kill open sour

[Bruce Perens]

There was no "open source", capitals or not, regarding software until the Open Source Definition. If you look through past material, you can only find a few uses of the words together regarding software at all, with no consistent meaning.

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

Re:This is microsoft trying to help kill open sour

[mysidia]

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).

Re:This is people trying to play with words.

[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 :-)