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Actually, both you and Thom are wrong.

the MS-RL is not their open source license, the MS-PL is. The MS-PL has no restrictions on it, and is OSI certified as open source (which is the only real, legal way to say something is open source)

The whole "black helicopters" reasoning you are giving is wrong too. MS-RL are for things specifically getting released for academic purposes. Before the MS-RL, MS would share source code with universities around projects like this, just with all sorts of NDAs.

Same deal with project ROTOR, they put a lot of time and money into an internal research project which was intended to explore ideas that may give their own products a competitive advantage in the future. They don't mind sharing their toys, but at the same time don't want other companies to benefit from their beefy R&D budget.

So we've established that Singularity is not available under an open source license, and not available under terms that we would all recognise as open source? We're not interested in the MS-PL here because it has no relevance whatsoever.

Academics are best off using code they can do something with and make something out of, and the current crop of MS-PL projects are somewhat less than stellar so I fail to see what relevance either license has.


When something is just a bit too close to reality, mention 'black helicopters' ;-).


Do you think Singularity is merely going to be an academic exercise for Microsoft? :-)


I don't believe .Net was an academic exercise either.


How did that work out, considering that Rotor was just a very cut down CLR that no one did anything with?


Hmmmmm. What was that about black helicopters again, because I believe that's pretty much the point? Regardless of whether Microsoft use an open source license or not, don't expect to be able to do much with the code. Inevitably, Microsoft will see you as competition, as a lot of software vendors have found out.

The MS-PL is generally used for code you will have great difficulty getting off Microsoft platforms like Windows and .Net, and the academic license is where the latter is possibly feasible or where they see it as a real risk.

Edited 2008-11-18 18:34 UTC

The bastards!! How dare they?



Well, they're compatable in the sense that they're both pretty much non-commercial, which was his point. One license forbids you from selling it commercially. The other one allows it, though nobody in their right mind is going to purchase it if they can just get it elsewhere for $0.

"comercially" is not the same as "selling licenses", there are a lot of business models around software that has no dependencies on exclusive control of the software distribution.

Yeah, only within the walls of Microsoft is the thought of *gasp!* competition such a horrible crime. Honestly, their (illegal and monopolistic) behavior towards their competition and their loony beliefs that competition is somehow as bad a piracy or something are downright disgusting.

Makes me wonder... could this somehow be challenged in court for Microsoft allowing the viewing and manipulation of source code, yet doing everything in its power to prevent and possible competitors from coming out of it (ie. abuse of monopoly)? It's clearly anti-competitive.

Correction: Whatever you do with your code must remain available to everyone, not just us. You would have thought people would have grokked this by now. Apparently not.
"
correction: you can do whatever you want with the code as long as you use it in your private space(fair use) but if you are to redistribute ..then you must do so under the term of the license(and a license like GPL will force the distributed code to be available to everyone) ..the recipients of the code can do with it as they please as long as they,too, dont distribute it ..and the license again will come into effect the second the redistribute it ..

again free licenses takes effect at the point of redistribution ..not usage ..any license that tells you what to do at the point of usage is not free

example, google can do whatever they want with their custome linux kernel and they can make as much money as they can with is as long as it remains inhouse ..GPL will come into effect the minute they redistribute their code to anybody and they will be forced to give it out to anybody who cares to want it

You would have thought people would have grokked this by now. Apparently not.

Edited 2008-11-18 18:40 UTC