Special Treatment [LWN.net]

Special Treatment

Posted Oct 16, 2007 23:37 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: Special Treatment by ncm
Parent article: OSI Approves Microsoft License Submissions

I think we need to distinguish between 'this licence meets the terms of the Open Source
definition and has been certified as such by the OSI' and 'this licence is actively approved
by the OSI and recommended for use in your projects'.  The 'OSI approved' mark is confusingly
named because it suggests the second when it really means the first, and the OSI themselves
have been uncertain what their goal is.

The FSF's list of free licences does a better job; for each one they say whether software
under that licence is free software, and then separately they give the FSF's view on whether
it is a good idea to encourage further use of this licence.

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Special Treatment

Posted Oct 17, 2007 13:53 UTC (Wed) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

Yes, that's why you don't go to the FSF to get an "approved" stamp on your license. Remember, Microsoft doesn't want open source, they just want to embrace and extend it. Wonder why they haven't put in an update clause with "may be replaced by other licenses with similar evil spirit in future", and no option to limit the code to one particular license version.

Special Treatment

Posted Oct 17, 2007 20:33 UTC (Wed) by RussNelson (guest, #27730) [Link]

Microsoft doesn't want open source, they just want to embrace and extend it.

I can't for the life of me think how they would embrace and extend Open Source? What would they do, given us EVEN MORE freedom? "Ha! That will teach those Open Source idiots to fool with Microsoft! Here, take more freedom! See if you can handle it!"

Special Treatment

Posted Oct 17, 2007 21:15 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I can't for the life of me think how they would embrace and extend Open Source?

Why, you just take Free software (or Open Source software, if you prefer) and extend it with your own additions! You don't even need to take the original software proprietary, you just have to keep your additions proprietary. Exactly the kind of thing that the GPL doesn't allow. That is why Microsoft doesn't like the GPL: they cannot embrace and extend GPL'd software. (They are not, after all, as clever as Google ;)