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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."
it says, "any equivalents" as well. i might argue that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are not "equivalent" but IANAL and that interpretation clearly leads a lot of wiggle room for MS lawyers.
Microsoft, like any other company are free to choose their own policies of course.
This puts the onus on the open source communities to actually show innovation and for users to speak up and expect specific apps and features.
In many environments around Open Source, companies often use the term "differentiation" to clearly mark their closed source products as superior and reason to hide away.
Is it possible for Open Source to actually differentiate?
What apps or must have features are created and exist in the Open Source world that users of Microsoft phones will need?
As a long time slashdot reader and wise community member, I hear everyday how Open Source gives us freedom, however that is not really a must-have app as most regular people would not know or care where the source came from as long as it were actively maintained and had people at the other end supporting it.
(disclaimer, I am an OSS developer working for Collabora, contracted to Nokia around MeeGo)
liqbase
When Microsoft partners with somebody to make something (the baby) like a Nokia phone, a sendo phone, or IBM OS/2, and then deliberately kills the product to achieve some other strategic goal, that's a knife the baby strategy. This is something else.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
which is most likely due to the assertion that those developing apps probably don't even look at the license their using and would therefore potentially cause problems, just like the VLC issue was a problem for Apple.
Rather than have to scrutinize each app that would contain Open Source code to determine which License is being used or rely on notoriously unreliable developers to follow rules on which OS licenses were acceptable, and thus open themselves to lawsuits/etc, they took the step of saying "not in our store" to prevent future legal problems.
seems harsh, but also seem rather smart.
Limiting your liability is one of the biggest issues most modern coporations face on a day to day basis.
Microsoft use open source code, but they only use code with licences that do not have a viral clause. They use some of my open source code in IE. Microsoft also publish open source code, but not under viral licenses. RMS is very definite about his intention to contaminate proprietary code with his own.
Now before folk go off into a slashweenie froth over this. I know RMS, i have argued this point with him. And he is very very clear about his intent that the gpl be viral. He makes no secret at all about this. Go and talk to him if you do not believe me. But dont assume that because the description of his idea sounds nutty that it must be false. Again, you need to talk to him and know him.
We expressly rejected the gpl for licensing the CERN web code because we did not want the ideological baggage. The code was merely a tool to spread the web. Well ok not for Tim, he hadvcode attachment, but not to owning it. We did make a big mistake in making the code public domain, but there was not the selection of licenses we have today. BSD would have been a better choice.
So dont blame Mr softy for taking RMS seriously. There probably isnt a legal risk there. But Gates is merely taking RMS seriously.
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