The OSI License-Discuss mailing list has been ablaze for the past few days since Microsoft submitted its Permissive License to the OSI for official open source license approval. Jon Rosenberg, source program director for Microsoft, posted, "Microsoft believes that this license provides unique value to the open source community by delivering simplicity, brevity, and permissive terms combined with intellectual property protection."
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Member since:2007-02-22
... actually, when we were discussing licensing on our project, my boss really did do that -- according to him, Google told him that the GPL v3 was the 'best' license.
People just choosing whatever license they've heard good things about without taking the time to read and consider the license is probably much more common than should be.
Member since:2006-01-24
Almafeta wrote:
-"... actually, when we were discussing licensing on our project, my boss really did do that -- according to him, Google told him that the GPL v3 was the 'best' license. "
nothing wrong in googling up licences. choosing a licence for your own hard work without reading it is another matter entirely, and I don't think that is common at all.
not that you do either, it's not hard to see where you are trying to go with this.
Member since:2005-11-15
Member since:2005-07-06
the bottom line is that this is 'just another licence'. whatever Microsoft's agenda may be, it's up to the developers to use it or not. as long as the licence follows the criteria's set by the OSI for approval submission then I see no problem.
Well, for a start, the OSI were going to cut down on the shear number of licenses being submitted to the OSI by various companies, not just Microsoft, just to muddy the waters and get code flowing in their direction.
The OSI should be telling Microsoft that there are a great many licenses that already exist that are OSI approved, and they should just use one of them.
Microsoft has done nothing to help the OSI, or be supportive of their efforts in the past, so I fail to see why Microsoft should expect a free ride.
Edited 2007-08-18 23:47
Member since:2005-07-06
Not quite, things are seldom so easy and transparent. The problem - as I see it - is mostly that MS already talks about being open source, and providing open source tools and apps, and whatnot, seemingly being deliberate in not differentiating between what licenses they use and what licenses are generally used in FOSS development. The reason for that is probably a PR and marketing one, that is trying to mix and blur the meaning open source among the MS customer base.
It doesn't seem to be much, but if you take it as a defensive move, it's not such a bad idea really.
Member since:
2006-01-24
the bottom line is that this is 'just another licence'. whatever Microsoft's agenda may be, it's up to the developers to use it or not. as long as the licence follows the criteria's set by the OSI for approval submission then I see no problem.
developers have been perfectly capable to decide between open source licences sofar, I doubt that will suddenly change should Microsoft's licence be approved. some people seem to think that developers just google up 'licence' when they're ready to distribute their code and choose whatever pops up first. you really don't licence your hard work on a whim.