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:2006-07-04
Microsoft has lots of MS-PL projects.
According to Bill Hilf's post to the cited discussion list http://www.nabble.com/RE%3A-For-Approval%3A-Microsoft-Permi... :
"There are already several hundred community projects that use these licenses, including over 150 Microsoft projects."
A very prominent recent example being the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime), that allowed Moonlight (Mono's implementation of Silverlight) to be created so quickly. Also, IronPython and IronRuby code are released under MS-PL.
Lot's of MS-PL and MS-CL projects from both MS and 3rd parties can be found here:
http://www.codeplex.com/
IronPython is on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython), but IronRuby will be put on RubyForge in the next few weeks.
MS also has some projects on SourceForge.
Edited 2007-08-18 22:04
Member since:2006-08-18
Member since:2005-07-06
I was hoping to find some basis for those numbers on CodePlex, but it’s a little tricky, MS hate citing their sources.
(site:codeplex.com/*/Project/ "Microsoft Permissive License")
Gives 338 hits in Google. Do we subtract the 150 claimed by Microsoft? or do we take that as an additional 150 ontop of our 338 figure?
(site:codeplex.com/*/Project/ProjectPeople.aspx Microsoft)
Gives 1070 hits in Google.
Ah, a problem, site copyright notice. But at least we have a total for projects.
Looking at the Microsoft user profile gives us ~180 projects they coordinate on the site.
So I guess their figures are psuedo-real. Assuming MS pick MS-PL for all their works, 338 - 180 = 158 projects using MS-PL. Maybe that is several hundred to them, but meh.
Member since:2005-06-29
I guarantee that if it passed OSI, maybe even if it doesn't, they will. They're not stupid. They'll at least offer some projects they don't believe will sell. Good ideas might be visual studio (which they only sell now in order to not anger customers who already paid, and to keep Borland fro suing) or MSN messenger.
But I doubt you'll see anything that they're charging for now or believe they could charge for later. Keep in mind, I'm not sore about this, it's just part of reality for Microsoft: They have a business model to follow.
Member since:2005-07-08
Does anyone know if MS offer any actual code under PL?
IronPython is under the Ms-PL:
http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython
Member since:2005-09-10
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Member since:
2005-09-10
Ok, well, that's interesting and all, to the extent which a license can be without being associated with any content.
Does anyone know if MS offer any actual code under PL?