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

This is microsoft trying to help kill open source?

[MindlessAutomata]

This is most likely a tactic to try to get people to associate "open source" with Microsoft and not Linux.

Re:This is microsoft trying to help kill open sour

[lastchance_000]

Or Linux-only, or Mac-only, or Plan9-only. The point is that if someone wants to modify the code so it runs on an Atari 800, they're legally free to do so. Publishing the code, and saying, "You may do this, only, and no more", is certainly within their rights, but it ain't open.

Re:Nothing new here.

[Fancia]

"must"? As in, it's illegal if it doesn't?

(honest question)

OSI tried to register "open source" as a trademark, but didn't receive it. I don't think companies are legally bound to follow OSI's principles when describing something as "open source."

If they're using the OSI trademark or something along those lines, which Microsoft doesn't seem to be, it's a different situation.

Re:This is people trying to play with words.

[Bruce Perens]

Number 6, about fields of endeavor, covers restrictions on distribution with fur coats.

The OSD is related to what people had tried to do with licenses at the time. For example, there was Alladin Ghostscript, which prohibited its distribution on the same medium with software that wasn't freely distributable. And there was the Berkeley Spice License, for their electrical engineering software, which prohibited the use of the software by the Police of South Africa, and still did a decade after apartheid was over.

I was trying to define what was Free Software for Debian's social contract. FSF didn't promote a definition of Free Software at the time, although they'd published one in their newsletter a long time before. RMS even said in a personal email that he liked my definition.

Then 7 or 8 months after this was all written and in use by Debian, Eric Raymond brought me the news of the meeting where a bunch of people had decided to promote Free Software as Open Source, and asked me to work on that. So, I filed off the Debian references and it became the Open Source Definition, and I announced Open Source to the world, including here on Slashdot (and that announcement still survives online today). That announcement was the first real use of "Open Source" to the public.

Bruce

Re:This is microsoft trying to help kill open sour

[Macthorpe]

My point was really that "open source" already conveys something far more simple than what you want people to read into it, and it's the simple definition that Microsoft are very obviously meeting.

Even with your more complex definition for the purposes of the OSI, the MS-LPL only fails on one count of 10, which is regarding being technology-neutral. We could further argue on how important to the issue that is but I think we'd be digressing even further from what I'm trying to say.