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.

Comments

Re:Same question as I had more than a decade ago

[Marginal Coward]

at one point

There's your answer right there. Maybe things have changed. If you see this as a war (e.g. "ammunition"), you're absolutely right: why give aid and comfort to the enemy? But if you see .net as having some sort of technological benefit, and you see the war as having been fought and lost by the enemy who has capitulated by releasing .net as open source (I know, I know, with strings attached...) then there's no longer any need to keep fighting the war.

In that vein, I see no need to boycott clothing produced in Viet Nam. That war was over long ago. If the clothing has benefits and can be used under acceptable terms, then why not? Alternatively, if you find the terms unacceptable, don't buy the clothing. But the war of the past doesn't much enter into it at this point. Enjoy the benefits of peace. (That said, I know that's easier said than done for those who still suffer from PTSD. ;-)

Shitty Deal?

[Njorthbiatr]

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.

Re:Same question as I had more than a decade ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the idea of using a web browser (which is a document viewer) to run applications is shitty in the first place.

Oh yes, we read the annotations

[ciaran2014]

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.