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:
2005-10-02
MS-PL is a very permissive license, to some extent more permissive than MIT/BSD (in the sense it grants more than they do) but also less permissive, because of the "you-lose-the-rights-if-you-sue" clause. Compared with GPL I don't think compatibility can be an issue.
It grants more explicit rights than MIT/BSD, and is almost equally permissive and it is GPL3-compatible, without being "viral".
The only thing I can see going against it is the fact Microsoft is behind the license. And considering MS-statements about Open Source being a cancer, and Open Source developers being communists, I can accept such an argument. But on technical merits solely, the license is one of the best I've seen so far.