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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 is likely that Microsoft is asserting control over what you put up there. Sort of like when you upload your photo to site x and in the ToS they have "We reserve the right to use your picture in anyway we can possibly find to make money off of it" (probably not exact wording). I could be talking out of my ass too.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Microsoft banned the GPL, not open source overall.
It's standard operating procedure for many companies to prohibit licenses which propagate themselves. Licenses such as BSD and Creative Commons are not prohibited.
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Only GPL was banned because of the ToS which is forbidden under the GPL. Same thing happened with Apple's AppStore.
It may be nasty all right, but it's certainly not a surprise, just Microsoft business as usual.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Welcome to the world of tired mornings, I guess.
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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.
When you redistribute a program under the GPLv3, you grant the receiver a license to any patents that you own and that are used by that program.
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.
Well, now we know for sure that GPLv3 is desirable... Microsoft is against it. If only they could have taken this stance back when we were fighting over it, then we would have accepted GPLv3 without question.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If this is really the case ?
Having RTFA , It appears that they mention specifically the GPL. It does not however mention other Open Sources licenses.
If this is really true , then you can expect it to be quite some time before you find many software packages you would think ... forget it ...
might appear in a short time in the market place. Emulators for example - most of the ones we all use are covered by Open Source
license - so dont expect ports of your favorite Open Source projects to appear on Windows Mobile 7. ScummVM , MAME
You would be developing those from scratch - and these are projects that took years to come into fruition.
Microsoft would be making a huge mistake banning outright Open Source - and no matter how much they hate it - its an ecosystem they cannot afford to ignore - especially when they are trying to woo developers away from Android.
N.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
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.
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.
What does the term "not limited to" mean to your legal expert opinion?
How is the GPLv2 not covered by:
again in your expert legal opinion?
This is good for Android more than its bad for Microsoft. Their goal seems to be making all apps costing money to avoid having a store like Androids where you can find both free excellent apps and very good paid apps living side by side.
Im not sure this will work out as planned because tons of developers wont help if you dont have the userbase to support them.
HTTP/1.1 400
The justification is very obvious: Microsoft doesn't want to violate the GPL. Since it feels that it cannot redistribute software in a manner that would comply with the GPL, it will not redistribute that software. This is how the GPL is *supposed* to work.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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.
Basically what Microsoft is banning is code covered by licenses that contain terms that would subject Microsoft code to the license or that contain terms that are incompatible with the Microsoft Windows Phone DRM and lockdowns (i.e. any license where its a violation to distribute the software in a way that cant be copied or modified or whatever)
In simple terms it says that any code covered under a license that is incompatible with the marketplace rules is not allowed in the marketplace.
The same thing happened with a GPLv3 app in the Apple App Store, it was removed because the GPLv3 is not compatible with the App Store DRM.
This makes no sense to me at all. Why would the status of the source code for software distributed through the app store interest Microsoft?
It makes sense if you suppose that one of the prime directives Gates issued to Ballmer on handover was:
1. Confront and eradicate open source wherever it gains a foothold regardless of the cost or collateral damage.
A few of the innumerable examples:
* Microsoft expending credibility and undermining ISO by forcing through MOOXML
* Microsoft killing off the low cost netbook market in order to prevent Linux distribution
* Microsoft planting a mole at great legal risk to end Meego and QT development by Nokia
* This one, Microsoft not allowing distribution of open source applications through its phone market
Its nice that nearly all these efforts have backfired and just served to inspire the community to greater efforts. I expect this one will backfire in a major way by preventing any open source community from forming around Microsoft's phones. So much the better I say.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Can you host Open-sourced apps if the store adds DRM to them or doesn't bundle the code in with the app?
Open source licenses do not require that the source code be bundled with the app, merely that it be available on request. I don't know about your DRM point, however I do know that pointing to Apple and saying "they do it too" is a logical fallacy for justifying evil. So is "you made me do it", which is what arguments revolving around the possibility of being sued for violating terms of an open source license amount to.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I do know that pointing to Apple and saying "they do it too" is a logical fallacy for justifying evil.
You seem to be forgetting precisely why Apple does it too. Its because the authors of GPL software went after them. It isnt that Apple didn't want GPL software in the App Store, its that they got more grief from the copyright holders than it was worth.
This idea that Apple is "evil" because they are disallowing GPL software is disingenuous at best. It began with GPL authors being the ones that disallowed their applications on the app store, so Apple says "We want to deal with only one entity, and entity that owns all the rights to the program. That GPL license just causes us grief. If you have the right to relicense it, then we can do business, otherwise we can't."
"His name was James Damore."
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.
anything which can be explained by stupidity. Or, for that matter, planning.
I suspect it's rather simpler than "Micro$oft hates GPL!!11oneone", and has nothing to do with any particular hatred of the GPL and related licenses.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, you're building an apps store in the style of Apple. It's going to look all pretty, it's going be dead simple to download anything, people can submit apps, they go through an approval process, they go on the store. Installing is a matter of "click once", and that's about the only thing you're going to make visible to the end user.
You anticipate having thousands of apps sooner rather than later, so the complicated part isn't going to be the website. It's going to be putting together the business logic and processes that drive it.
The problem with something like the GPL is that all of a sudden, your process for accepting for approval, approval itself and distributing software suddenly becomes a hell of a lot more complicated because you now need to keep track of whether or not an application requires the source code to be made available. Remember the GPL applies to anyone distributing the software, so you can't just palm this back to the developer. You now need a separate interface to your apps store from the developer site which allows downloading source code where available, you need to keep track of which apps have which licenses - and you need to track which licenses specifically state "You must distribute source code".
Unless you took this into account when you designed the apps store and the processes behind it (which is likely if you're Google, but vanishingly unlikely if you're Microsoft), you now have a problem. Your entire process is set up on the assumption that you are under no obligation to distribute the source code for apps, this throws a spanner in the works. What is the cheapest, quickest, easiest solution?
1. Ban licenses which demand you distribute source code such as the GPL.
2. Go back and rewrite all your processes to account for licensing issues. Any software developed around those processes will also need changing.
TL;DR : More likely that Microsoft don't care enough about F/OSS to bother accounting for it in their processes for their app store.
I just had to reject some 3rd party tools because it was GPL. Because by using it would force us to make our program GPL, and oddly enough we want to get paychecks and our business model is creating new software and selling it.
You just showed us, that you did not unterstand the GPL.
Usage of a GPLed tool doesn't make the result being under GPL.
Using GPLed code, copying it and modifying it does.
So either you were looking for code you could compile into your program, or you were looking for code you could modify to be part of your program, or you were looking for a library you could link your program to.
Those are the only cases where the resulting program has to be under GPL too.