Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 22nd Sep 2007 18:42 UTC, submitted by Rahul
The Microsoft Permissive License, one of two licenses the software maker submitted to the Open Source Initiative for approval as open-source licenses in August, is unlikely to be approved in its current form. There have been two principle objections to the license from the open-source community, Michael Tiemann, the president of OSI, told eWEEK in an interview here at the annual Gartner Open Source Summit on Sept. 20. The first objection is that the use of the word 'permissive' in the license title implies an expectation that the license does not meet. The second complaint is that the MS-PL is incompatible with a large number of other open-source licenses, he said.
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Member since:
2005-07-24
Thom,
I really do see some merit in the first argument. Where as GPL and MIT are not really descriptive, those names are not trying to be. The use of the adjective "permissive" in the name of Microsoft's license is likely *intended* to cause confusion. In the same way that OOXML (Office Open XML) was intended to be confused with Open Office's XML format.
It may be too late for the OSI to fight license proliferation without being hypocritical. But I believe it is right for them to refuse to participate in a plot to interject further confusion into the OSS license landscape intentionally.
That said, their second argument is indeed a big, flying, turd.