Microsoft Apparently Asks for OSI Board Ruling on MS-PL, MS-CL OSS Licenses - Open Source Software Up the Stack

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October 10, 2007
Microsoft Apparently Asks for OSI Board Ruling on MS-PL, MS-CL OSS Licenses

Update: Russ Nelson (see below) has forwarded the Microsoft licenses to the OSI board for approval with the recommnedation that the board approve them. Approval is almost certain.

More important Update: The Red Sox (see below) cannot lose to the Yankees because the Yankees were eliminated by the Cleveland Indians and a swarming infestation of Lake Erie "Canadian gnats" released onto Jacobs Field by the Free Software Foundation (see below), which is based in Boston.

Originally posted 9/10: Microsoft moved closer to getting two of its “shared-source” licenses declared open source software (OSS) licenses by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) this week. The OSI president seems to have interpreted a Microsoft posting to the “license-discuss” list as asking the OSI board for a vote. And Microsoft also said it would make name changes to satisfy OSI “license-discuss” list concerns.

The OSI is the acknowledged guardian of the OSS license review process. It functions to review and rate licenses from many sources including Apache, Berkeley, other non-profit OSS communities, and individual companies such as Sun and IBM, as well as the much better known Free Software Foundation (FSF). The OSI promotes “10 characteristics of OSS” while FSF claims there are only four characteristics (numbered 0-3). The FSF has a strident, but intellectually honest, all-or-nothing approach to OSS. The FSF is stricter about its OSS interpretation methodology, and supports basically only one OSS license, the GNU General Public License (GPL), with some minor derivations. It uses the GPL for software developed by its companion GNU project community and urges other communities to adopt it.

As an aside, the FSF is also opposed to open choice between OSS and non-OSS products by users, digital rights, various international intellectual property protections, the use of the term “open source,” the use of the term Linux without the word GNU in front of it, and—most likely—global warming. I mention the latter only because, sitting here in New England on what is sure to be the last real day of summer (in the 80s, the leaves about to turn, the Red Sox closing in on a divisional title but still likely to lose to the Yankees in the cold winds of October play-off season), I am becoming partial to global warming.

The OSI process of approving a license is less formal than the lengthy process used during 2006 and 2007 by the FSF in crafting the GPL’s latest version. The OSI does not write licenses but simply affirms that one meets its criteria if the author asks. If approved, the author can use the OSI logo as a sort of Good Housekeeping seal of approval. That is about to happen with the Microsoft Permissive License (MS-PL) and Microsoft Community License (MS-CL) if the OSI does not change the rules during the second half of the game, which some Microbashers are suggesting.

Michael Tiemann, the OSI President, former Red Hat CTO and founder of Cygnus, has written approvingly of the fact that Microsoft asked and of its willingness to cooperate. Russell Nelson, former OSI president and License Approval chairman (at least until March of 2008) has prepared a preliminary report to the license-review committee and the OSI board that indicates that most of the group is supportive of Microsoft’s request. Microsoft has agreed to change the names to the Microsoft Open License (nee MS-PL) and Microsoft Reciprocal License (nee MS-CL). Presumably Nelson will prepare a final summary of the committee’s opinion for the board shortly.

Typically the board votes yeah or nay as soon as practical after the submitter asks for the vote, which Microsoft sort of did this week (it appears from a Tiemann email that Microsoft did not quite understand the process). As I said, the OSI is fairly informal; apparently the OSI even approved the GPL’s latest version although the FSF, not surprisingly, did not ask.