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License Details Hint MS Undecided On Suing Users of Its Open Source Net Runtime

Posted by timothy on from the full-of-shift dept.

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.

5 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. What about Facebook? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Open Source Software by Facebook like React also includes some pretty weird PATENTS clauses.

  2. Re:Same question as I had more than a decade ago by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why do people want to take proprietary languages and libraries and use them on open source projects?

    For two reasons. One is to run the proprietary software on the free platform, much as Steam games run on Valve's Debian-based Steam OS or other Windows desktop applications run in Wine. The other is to run free applications on an incumbent proprietary platform. With .NET in particular, there have been a couple widely used platforms that use the CLR as their only runtime environment, such as XNA on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. The same is true of the Java platform, which all third-party applications for a J2ME phone were required to use.

  3. It is open source, it isn't free by bulled · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Same question as I had more than a decade ago by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Informative

    As somebody who uses .Net for web development, I am actually very disappointed in the fully open source alternatives. Lack of Unicode support (very important on the web), lack of consistency in the language, The fact that they are interpreted languages (compiling the code catches huge classes of bugs that you don't even have to think about leaving your mind free to worry about other things). All of these are huge problem with all or most of the open source alternatives.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  5. Re:Same question as I had more than a decade ago by jez9999 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why do people want to take proprietary languages and libraries and use them on open source projects?

    Speaking for myself - because C# w/ .NET wipes the floor with the competition, including Java. New, useful features being introduced regularly. Properties, lambdas, LINQ, web frameworks like OWIN that aren't massively over-complicated, etc.

    --
    == Jez ==
    Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.