Microsoft Open Sources ASP.NET MVC

Jimmy Zimms writes "Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC is an extension built on the core of ASP.NET that brings some of the popular practices and ease of development that were popularized by Ruby on Rails and Django to the .NET developers. Scott Guthrie, the inventor of ASP.NET, just announced that Microsoft is open sourcing the ASP.NET MVC stack under the MS-PL license. 'I'm excited today to announce that we are also releasing the ASP.NET MVC source code under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL). MS-PL is an OSI-approved open source license. The MS-PL contains no platform restrictions and provides broad rights to modify and redistribute the source code.' Here's the text of the MS-PL.

Comments

Re:Typical

[Chris Acheson]

The MS-PL is a Free Software license, according to the FSF. It's just not compatible with the GPL.

There are multiple "shared source" licenses, some Free, others not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source

Re:Uh, yeah....

[miguel]

I agree that Visual Studio is a very nice tool.

Luckily the code that you produce with Visual Studio will run on Mono (no recompilations necessary) including code that uses ASP.NET MVC. And with the new support for ASP.NET precompiled sites in Mono (available in Mono 2.4) you do not even need to copy the source code to your target server.

Click "Publish" in visual studio, enter the location for your shared directory, and you have a fully working ASP.NET MVC app running on Linux, without leaving Windows.

We are working on various integration points for Visual Studio that will give developers even more: debugging from Visual Studio remote applications deployed on Linux systems and producing packages ready-for-distribution on Linux.

Re:Typical

[Jaykul]

You're a quarter-right.

(3.B) If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically.

You can bring patent claims, as long you're not claiming THIS software violates your patents. If you claim the software infringes YOUR patents, and aren't willing to allow that -- then you don't get a free pass on THEIR patents either. Ie: Share and Share alike. Also, your license for the software doesn't terminate -- just your license to the patents. Which brings us to:

(2.B) Patent Grant- Subject to the terms of this license, including the license conditions and limitations in section 3, each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under its licensed patents...

So it's not a one-way non-agression pact. It's a two-way pact. As long as you don't sue them for patent infringement, you can (re)use all of their code without fear of them suing you for patent infringement... Of course, since THEY are the ones giving YOU the source code, this is really slanted heavily in your favor -- you can have a look before you use it, decide if they violate your patents, and THEN choose to use it OR sue them. They have no such recourse.