[ Thanks to Michael
Tiemann for these links. ]
“Acting on the advice of the License Approval Chair, the OSI
Board today approved the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) and the
Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL). 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.“The formal evaluation of these licenses began in August and the
discussion of these licenses was vigourous and thorough. The
community raised questions that Microsoft (and others) answered;
they raised issues that, when germane to the licenses in question,
Microsoft addressed…”
George Clooney, Princess Diana, and Microsoft
“George Clooney’s quote is reflective of an opinion I expressed
last month, which can be read to say that the only thing worse than
approving licenses submitted by companies who have been abusive
toward open source would be to arbitrarily attempt to restrict them
from competing as open source companies. In the same way that
George Clooney is a First Amendment guy, I am an Open Source
Definition guy, and the fact that Microsoft was willing to draft
new licenses with the goal of OSD compliance, submit to our
process, participate in our discussion, make changes in response to
those discussions, and then ask for an up-or-down vote gives us a
new understanding of the power of Open Source. So now the OSI has
approved two Microsoft licenses. Is this the beginning of the end?
Or is this the end of the beginning? I know that the eyes of the
technology world will be on the OSI and on Microsoft to see what
happens next. If, as some fear, the approval of these licenses ends
up damaging open source, perhaps we will learn of some 11th
condition or some change to the 10 that must be made to better
preserve the integrity of what we call open source…”