"Acting on the advice of the License Approval Chair, the OSI Board today approved the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License. The decision to approve was informed by the overwhelming (though not unanimous) consensus from the open source community that these licenses satisfied the 10 criteria of the Open Source definition, and should therefore be approved."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
The VC1 codec is supported already via ffmpeg project - given Novells licencing with Microsoft, it should mean that Moonlight will support VC1 (along with Theora/ogg) out of the box.
I do not see the need at all to 'license' something from someone to read a particular format. Yes that means some reverse engineering, but that has never been explicitly illegal and has never required any sort of deal in the past.
But of course, Moonlight's existence, should Silverlight gain some critical mass, is entirely in the hands of these closed additional formats.
Member since:2005-09-27
Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2005-07-06
This is a good decision for OSI, the license text, not the author should be evaluated.
Alas, Microsoft has not given the same consideration in return to things like ODF, where arguments against it have boiled down to personal attacks and IBM conspiracies.
Give that the OSI is a loosely knit body of interested parties, I fail to see why anyone would think that someone could just wander in and get a license approved regardless of their track record.
Member since:
2006-11-19
They've already licensed core parts of Silverlight and many other projects with their (now) open source licenses.
This was not just for show. For example mono project was able to make a port (Moonlight) in a short time, and now it will be supported by Microsoft when mature enough (some parts like VC1 codec are problem).
This is a good decision for OSI, the license text, not the author should be evaluated.
Edited 2007-10-16 21:08