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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.
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
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
If you read it you'll find out that it's basically the BSD license. Why jump to conclusions just because it's Microsoft?
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
April Fools was yesterday. You're a day late.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I don't get it, the license says you can make derivative works, and redistribute those works. Seems pretty free to me.
I'm not trying to argue the point with you. I just don't get it. Its legal speak, which I'm always doubtful that I understand the implications. But, this seems like free software.
Where am I getting it wrong?
I really don't /want/ to like the MS-PL or anything Microsoft, but I read it, and re-read it, and I can't see anything wrong with it. In fact, at the risk of being modded to oblivion, I gotta' say it's a far cry easier to understand than the GPL license, seems straightforward, and truly "open." It seems roughly as open as the BSD license. It doesn't even require you to open your own code under the same license. What am I missing? Is this a late April Fools' joke?
That Microsoft Shared Source License is open source, but not free software.
This isn't the Shared Source License. It's the Microsoft Public License which is accepted as a free software license by both the OSI and the FSF. You seem to be ranting about something completely unrelated to this article.
Hardly open source
How so? It's accepted as a free software license not only by the OSI but by the FSF as well.
This is an improvement, but it's hardly a compatible license with most other licenses.
The GPL is incompatible with a ton of other free software licenses. Does that make it "hardly open source" as well?
I'm not generally a fan of Microsoft, but I am actually quite impressed with the ASP.NET MVC framework. I certainly wouldn't say "very few people want it".
-William Brendel
Microsoft, realizing that they are losing their developers to other software platforms, attempts to close the crack in the dam by shoveling sand into it. We go live to Lance Thruster on the scene.
...began their labors. Unfortunately, it seems that this effort may be too little too late...
...I do have an unconfirmed report that Microsoft chairman Steve Ballmer himself is on the way to the dam break with several truck-loads of chairs he will use in an attempt to help.
Yes, Jim, 5 years after the dam began to crack, someone at Microsoft realized that the whole construction could be swept downstream at any moment. That's when this repair crew...
panning shot of Microsoft Open Source Evangelists at work shovelling sand
shot of developers spilling out of the Microsoft dam and into the PHP, Perl, Python, Java and Ruby streams
For Action Eyewitness OnTheSpot First News, I'm Lance Thruster reporting from the Microsoft dam.
It's impossible to be compatible with the BSD license and not be compatible with the GPL, because BSD is compatible with the GPL.
Unless you have some strange backwards definition of compatible, under which you would say "the GPL is compatible with the BSD license" because you can take BSD code and relicense it as GPL. However I think most people consider that statement false, while "the BSD is compatible with the GPL" is the true statement.
The fact is that BSD is compatible with the MS-PL and BSD is compatible with GPL. The BSD is compatible with a *lot* of licenses, including closed-source with a NDA.
Thank god someone said it. Ya know, HALF of the posts on here so far are "I wont trust MS" or some other closed-mind bullshit from Linux fanbois who MUST have it compatible with the GPL otherwise they piss their pants.
If you take a step back and look at it, it is an amazing licence coming from Microsoft to use on something like this. The only issue the GPL has with it is its slight copyleft policies...go read the copyleft wiki to see if that's really a bad thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
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.
I think that clause is fairly reasonable if I use that license for my code. If somebody is gonna bring a patent claim against my stuff, screw them, they loose the license to use my work.
How is this different than similar patent clauses in other licenses?
(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.
Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one. -- Benjamin Franklin
Either I'm missing your point, or you are only telling a partial truth.
It is one-way compatible. Almost all open-source licenses are one-way compatible with GPL. BSD code goes in, nothing comes out. MS-PL code goes in, nothing comes out. GPL is the blackhole of open source licenses. Stuff goes in, nothing comes out. Why? The license prohibits it.
You are funny. Did you read that page? Pretty much every damn license in existance is incompatible with the GPL. But the "fun" one is this:
Yeah, right. Reminds me of this gem buried in the old man pages for the GNU implementation of su :
Yeah, screw security! Who needs passwords! Down with sysadmins!!
I might as well quote the rest of it because it is so juice and nobody will bother to follow the link above:
PS: Just realized that the FreeBSD man-page thingy offers way more man pages than just for FreeBSD. Check it out!