"In his keynote at OSCON, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy Bill Hilf announced that Microsoft is submitting its shared source licenses to the Open Source Initiative. This is a huge, long-awaited move. It will be earthshaking for both Microsoft and for the open source community if the licenses are in fact certified as open source licenses. Microsoft has been releasing a lot of software as shared source (nearly 650 projects, according to Bill). If this is suddenly certified as true open source software, it will be a lot harder to draw a bright line between Microsoft and the open source community." In addition, Microsoft has launched a new website where it details its relationship with open source.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-02-16
OSI has 5 freedoms.
1. No Intentional Secrets: The standard MUST NOT withhold any detail necessary for interoperable implementation. As flaws are inevitable, the standard MUST define a process for fixing flaws identified during implementation and interoperability testing and to incorporate said changes into a revised version or superseding version of the standard to be released under terms that do not violate the OSR.
2. Availability: The standard MUST be freely and publicly available (e.g., from a stable web site) under royalty-free terms at reasonable and non-discriminatory cost.
3. Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard MUST:
* be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or
* be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software
4. No Agreements: There MUST NOT be any requirement for execution of a license agreement, NDA, grant, click-through, or any other form of paperwork to deploy conforming implementations of the standard.
5. No OSR-Incompatible Dependencies: Implementation of the standard MUST NOT require any other technology that fails to meet the criteria of this Requirement.
Microsoft doesnt need to apply for FSF standards to get OSI licensed.
Member since:2005-07-15
>OSI has 5 freedoms...
You have cited the "OSI Open Standard Definition" and not the "OSI Open Source Definition". The "OSI Open Source Definition" has 10 criteria!
See: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
Edited 2007-07-26 21:05
Member since:2006-01-10
Member since:
2006-01-10
I think this is a great news!
Moonlight, the Silverlight implementation from Mono is for example a MS-library which is a shared source (Ms-PL) license.
The question is, if the shared-source licenses grants the four freedoms (to use it for all things, to spread copies, to modify and spread the modified things).
I thing it would help much, if the OSI looks at the licenses. Either they are OpenSource or they are not. A third thing doesn't exists. And I am one, who wants to know, if Microsfts licenses are OpenSOurce or not.