Groklaw über Microsofts Open Source Lizenzen

Lesenswert: Groklaw hat einen ausführlichen Artikel über die Reaktionen auf Microsofts fünf bei der OSI eingereichte Lizenzen:Uh Oh. Another Smooth Move from Microsoft: Watch out, Ruby. Watch out OSI.

I guess you saw the news about Microsoft submitting some licenses to OSI hoping for approval as „open source“ licenses. You can watch Bill Hilf of Microsoft giving his talk at OSCON, which is where the stories emanated from.

That, to me, wasn’t the news, since a Microsoft license was submitted once before, although I gather not by the company. But what I’m noticing is reactions. ComputerWorld collected some truly astonishing responses, and if you follow their links, it gets worse. First, though, the reaction that matters, from Michael Tiemann:

Michael Tiemann, president of the non-profit Open Source Initiative, said that provisions in three out of five of Microsoft’s shared-source licenses that restrict source code to running only on the Windows operating system would contravene a fundamental tenet of open-source licenses as laid out by the OSI. By those rules, code must be free for anyone to view, use, modify as they see fit.

„I am certain that if they say Windows-only machines, that would not fly because that would restrict the field of use,“ said Tiemann in an interview late Friday.

Why would this need to be said? What nerve Microsoft has to even dream of trying for such a restriction. A license that restricts use to only the Windows operating system. Why would OSI even consider that? Have we lost our minds?

Man muss nicht mit allem so mitgehen, aber das gibts viel Stoff.