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Microsoft Bans Open Source From the Windows Market
Blacklaw writes "Microsoft has raised the ire of the open source community with its Windows Marketplace licence by specifically refusing to allow software covered under an open licence to be distributed. The licence, which anyone wishing to distribute Windows, Windows Phone, or Xbox applications through the company's copy of Apple's App Store is required to agree to, is the usual torrent of legalese — but hides a nasty surprise for those who support open source ideals."
Only GPL was banned because of the ToS which is forbidden under the GPL. Same thing happened with Apple's AppStore.
See the PDF.
1.l
“Excluded License” means any license requiring, as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of the software subject to the license, that the software or other software combined and/or distributed with it be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge. Excluded Licenses include, but are not limited to the GPLv3 Licenses. For the purpose of this definition, “GPLv3 Licenses” means the GNU General Public License version 3, the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, and any equivalents to the foregoing.
5.e.
The Application must not include software, documentation, or other materials that, in whole or in part, are governed by or subject to an Excluded License, or that would otherwise cause the Application to be subject to the terms of an Excluded License.
The license specifically mentioned is the GPL, which if allowed would put the onus on Microsoft, as the distributor, to fulfill the requirements of the license even tho it was chosen by a developer. Microsoft is covering their own back here, nothing more imho - they could be up for some serious issues if they cocked up GPL compliance, so they are just not going there.
Do you intentionally post wrong information so we can rush to angrily correct you in the comments?
They ban only GPL variations and licenses like it that have *enforced* right to redistribute source. Licenses like Apache, MIT, BSD are not affected.
This is the same as Apple's App Store. The line of thought that GPL is "infectious" and represents a risk for their closed source components is well known. Right or wrong, that's their motive, and they are taking precautions to protect themselves from lawsuit trolls.
Microsoft banned the GPL, not open source overall.
No, Microsoft banned all open source:
It would appear that Microsoft banned all copyleft licenses, notably all versions of the (L)GPL. It did not ban non-copyleft Free Software licenses, such as BSD or MIT/X11.
Take a look at:
http://www.fsf.org/news/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
It appears the most likely reason is that they* wish to add more terms and conditions to the download, and the GPL specifically forbids it. So rather than ease their terms for GPL, they just don't play.
*they == both Apple and Microsoft, but presumably not Android Marketplace
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Gates wrote that letter, not Balmer, and it was 1976, and it was about people pirating software, not about people voluntarily giving software away.
Since "He cited the unfairness of gaining the benefits of software authors' time, effort, and capital without paying them." is lifted directly from the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists I would have thought you could have gotten the other details right too.