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:
2005-07-15
>Incidently, does anyone know if the FSF has commented on this license?
FSFE has commented it back in 2005: http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2005q4/000120....
(It looks like a quite positive statement)
>If Microsofts license preserves the 4 freedoms, then I doubt you would see the FSF falling over itself to NOT approve it as a free software license.
I agree. But FSF doesn't care that much about "approving" licenses. They look at license only if it is necessary for themself or if someone especially ask them. So if you want to know more just write a mail at licensing(at)fsf(dot)org and i'm sure you will get an answer and they will list it at their list[1] as Free Software license or non-Free Software license after they have made a decision.
The FSF always said that it is not about "anti-MS"[2]. Also the FSFE stated[3] that it is not against MS and that they would even help them if they make a step toward Free Software!
[1] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft.html
[3] http://www.wsa-conference.org/video/greve.mov
Edited 2007-09-23 09:41