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License Details Hint MS Undecided On Suing Users of Its Open Source Net Runtime
ciaran2014 writes With Microsoft proudly declaring its .NET runtime open source, a colleague and I decided to look at the licensing aspects. One part, the MIT licence, is straightforward, but there's also a patent promise. The first two-thirds of the first sentence seems to announce good news about Microsoft not suing people. Then the conditions begin. It seems Microsoft can't yet bring itself to release something as free software without retaining a patent threat to limit how those freedoms can be exercised. Overall, we found 4 Shifty Details About Microsoft's "Open Source" .NET.
So just like Mono, then?
Why do people want to take proprietary languages and libraries and use them on open source projects?
.net and mono and other Microsoft-derived stuff in Linux a long time ago. Why is there this interest in commingling the Microsoft way with the POSIX way when there are so many POSIX tools already available? I don't understand this choice. It's literally giving ammunition to the party that at one point had a declared interest in trying to replace all UNIX and UNIX-like OSes with its own commercial platforms. Why make it easier for that to happen by developing with their technologies?
I remember some interest in
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
None of this is an issue if you just use Python. You also get a lot more portability, too.
Anyone else read that "4 Shitty Details About"?
Open Source Software by Facebook like React also includes some pretty weird PATENTS clauses.
Besides the threat to steal YOUR code for their use...
They can sue you for for USING your code.
Some devices require all third-party applications to be verifiably type-safe CIL compatible with the .NET Compact Framework. This means you won't be able to use IronPython because it and other DLR languages rely on Reflection.Emit, which was omitted from the Compact Framework. Nor will you be able to use CPython because standard C is not verifiably type-safe. Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 XNA come to mind as examples of such platforms.
I don't mean to start a religious war, but this one of the key reasons that not all open source software is free(libre) software. Sure you can see the code, you can even run the code, but MS isn't promising you a license to use their patents.
Oh, wait - it's about .NET. Sorry, false alarm. Nothing to see here.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Despite the fact that every other big software company is doing the same or worse. If you take a whizbang feature from Java and use it in Python, you're more likely to be sued by Oracle than doing the equivalent getting you sued by Microsoft. Seriously people, the level of chickenshit that formed the foundation of the Oracle-Google lawsuit would make a chicken house unusable for 5 generations and you don't see the level of "ZOMG TEH JAVA IZ RADIOACTIVE" from the people criticizing Microsoft.
The Gates/Ballmer era is over. Get over it. The petty bullshit about Microsoft makes you sound like someone who is still fighting the PPC/x86 fight.
Specially when there is no shortage of high quality languages and run-times to chose from that do not come with a loaded gun pointing at your forehead.
On some platforms there is in fact such a "shortage of high quality languages and run-times". Which other languages that you mention worked on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 back when those were current? A few years ago, before Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Xbox One came out, people were demanding ports of phone apps to Windows Phone 7 and ports of games to Xbox 360. All XNA games for Xbox 360 and all third-party apps for Windows Phone 7 were required to use .NET.
Yeah, MS spent a copious amount of dollars developing a clean, efficient, and practical framework. They're being generous by not only continuing to develop it with all sorts of modules and internal testing, but expand it to other platforms.
And here you are whining that they won't let you butcher the code they wrote and reuse it for your own purposes like it was your own stuff?
You need to get your head out of your ass. Seriously, I've never heard anything so self-entitled in my life.
In the beginning of my IT career in the 90s, I became a staunch advocate of the GPL. I went about my business, telling everyone about GPL software, Linux, you name it. Then came stuff like this story. The blending of licenses. LGPL and other frankly "confusing" rules, regulations, conditions. I came across the BSD license by way of a talk by Theo de Raadt on OpenBSD and BSD license in general. I now prefer and endorse the BSD license because it is maximally free. Freedom is maximally free and does not come with many mandates. BSD is best for developers who want maximally free code. It removes most possibilities for lawsuits and other legal entanglements. It's a simple license, easily understood by anyone with a modicum of common sense.
Not to digress, but of late (last ten years), I have noticed the quality of Linux is not near the BSDs. Not knocking any programmers out there, but in general BSD tends to be better developed than Linux. Linux seems to be chaotic and many things seem like afterthoughts or ill-conceived notions and some are broken, yet ship anyway. I've not noticed this in the BSDs. The Free and OpenBSD boxes I've worked on and with have, short of HW failures, been almost perfect.
All Open Source licenses come with an implicit patent grant, it's an exhaustion doctrine in equitable law.
The problem is not patent holders who contribute to the code, you're protected from them. It's trolls who make no contribution and then sue.
Of course these same trolls sue regarding proprietary code as well.
Bruce Perens.
We all know it's a trap.
I think you'll see the browser based languages such as Javascript finally crack this nut [of a cross-platform application environment].
Not from what I hear from some Slashdot users, who are opposed to the concept of JavaScript in general. They believe that HTML should be static and anything with "behavior" should be native. See previous anti-JavaScript sentiments by CastrTroy, epyT-R, and Anonymous Coward.
Microsoft is the antonym of open source.
Development with a proprietary language is ultimately harmful to your own interests, whether you make proprietary software for a profit or Free software.
The one thing every business needs is control. When you make it possible for another company to block your business, you lose control. Your options become limited. Solving business problems potentially becomes very costly, involving a complete rewrite.
The one thing that should be abundantly clear to everyone by now is that making your business dependent on Microsoft anything is ultimately a losing proposition. They have a long history of deprecating their own products after customers have built products upon them.
Bruce Perens.
Most [non-CLR] languages have very little support for decimal data types, which is essential when making applications that deal with money.
Of course there's a money data type in Java. It's called multiplying all your dollar/euro/pound amounts by 100 and using int (or long for big B2B transactions over 10 million dollars or so) to count cents.
Lack of unicode support is rampant.
The native string type in Python 3 and Java is a UTF-16 Unicode. And PHP ships with libraries perfectly capable of UTF-8 Unicode.
Yes, there is a difference between open source and free.
Not as Debian and Open Source Initiative define the terms. The Open Source Definition published by OSI is almost word for word the same as the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Conspiracy nutters in full force with this story.
Yours is a commonly accepted opinion, although it's probably not the best way to express it.
They've been essentially OOB (out of business/band) for at least 10 years and only seem to provide a platform for virii among those that haven't got the memo.
section 10 that "No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface."
They should look at the annotated definition.
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.
Rationale: This provision is aimed specifically at licenses which require an explicit gesture of assent in order to establish a contract between licensor and licensee. Provisions mandating so-called "click-wrap" may conflict with important methods of software distribution such as FTP download, CD-ROM anthologies, and web mirroring; such provisions may also hinder code re-use. Conformant licenses must allow for the possibility that (a) redistribution of the software will take place over non-Web channels that do not support click-wrapping of the download, and that (b) the covered code (or re-used portions of covered code) may run in a non-GUI environment that cannot support popup dialogues.
Section 10 deals with how the license is signed and not the technology used in the code.
Hi, one of the authors here.
We spent _hours_ reading the OSD and its annotations. I can tell you, it's an awful document to have to work with. Lots of ambiguity, some parts are incoherent/inconsistent, and the annotations are certainly no better.
Nothing in the OSD is clearly stated. The gist of it is spread across all the sections. If we hadn't used sections 3 and 10, we would have used 1, 6, and 7, or we could have used all five of those but we decided two sections were sufficient to make the point that the OSD isn't supposed to approve of suing people who reuse your code. I think we all agree on that much.
At the end of the day, Microsoft point to the unannotated version. Those are the standards they claim to be living by, so those are the standards we judged their licensing on.
Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
Qt works fantastically well as a cross platform, write once IDE.
Sounds like the same reason G+ asks for copyright permissions. My guess is MS doesn't freely hand out the patents because they don't want Java whole-sale ripping out chunks of code and dropping it in their product. I assume if you continue to use everything as .Net, you should be fine, but don't try taking MS code and using it for non-.Net related projects.
So this is the method by which M$ proposes to attract developers to their stagnating platform? With tricks like this only the developers they want to avoid will be onboard (read as malware/virus writers). And on the consumer side: a monthly cost for the priviledge of using windows? 5 years from now I will be suprised if Microsoft has any relevance, nevermind dominance.
... if you want to do business with the likes of MS and Oracle.
If you're small, it's safer to just stay away.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Come now, surely you all realize Microsoft just wants to make sure the notorious Open Source community doesn't Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish .NET.
They promise not to sue you for using/distributing the .Net Runtime.
For example, if you write and distribute a .Net application they will not sue you for infringing their .Net patents. But you may get sued if your .Net application infringes on their other patents -- such as search engine patents, and so on.
To me it seems very simple, don't use .net. c++ have evolved into a very powerful and easy to use language since the last round of standards updates, and there are already two shipping compilers with 99% complete implementations of that standard, and the massive amount of libraries that are compatible with c/c++ make it a great choice for development. Not to mention, many of those libraries and frameworks are free and open source.
Combine that with the weakening stronghold MS has on the consumer device market, with the laughable market share in tablet and phones, and growing competition and acceptance from alternatives, Mac and Chrome among others.
Also, with the growing number of very good tools for multi-platform development that beat anything MS has for "multi-platform" development, that there isn't only no good reason to use .net, but there are a long list of reasons instead look elsewhere.
It was a good thing they were Shifty because Capsy details would have been like SHOUTING!
These terms are pretty much the same as the Imagine Cup.
https://iccms.blob.core.windows.net/content/IC15%20Official%20Rules%20and%20Regulations-11262b519900.pdf
The idea is to provide MSDN tools to students who will then build the next killer application for them. What do the winners get?
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Sounds a lot like the Java licensing terms that Microsoft were sued for violating earlier this century. Ironic on both fronts, really.
Barring that, if the choice is between the badly designed language that slows down my computer by a decade and having more static HTML pages, I'll gladly take the static pages (and thus noscript is born).
So if you're collapsing a comment thread in a 200+ comment page, would you prefer to have to spend some of your data allowance on resending all 190 comments that aren't being collapsed? And if all applications that cannot be efficiently implemented as static HTML with link and form navigation ought to be native, how do you plan to use applications developed by someone who uses an operating system other than the one you use?
You've got a problem with properly indented code?
Some people who don't like Python have a problem with having to copy and paste code through channels that apply lstrip() to every line of text, such as some forums.