For Approval: Microsoft Community License

[Jon Rosenberg (PBM)]

I think that Matt has the right idea.  Microsoft has a wide range of licensing programs to serve a wide spectrum of customer, partner, and business needs.  This range includes the MS-PL and MS-CL, which we believe are approvable as open source licenses.

Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Flaschen [mailto:matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu]
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 8:23 PM
To: License Discuss
Subject: Re: For Approval: Microsoft Community License

Shahnawaz Khan wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
> Would Microsft now discontinue the 'Shared Source' licenses structures? or
> would they fold into these new MS-PL/MS-CL?

These /are/ part of Microsoft's "Shared Source" program, and aren't
really new.  They have been listed at
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx
for a while (apparently at least since October 18, 2005).  My guess is
Microsoft will not stop using the other Shared Source licenses (e.g.
Microsoft Reference License and Microsoft Limited Community Licenses),
because though those licenses are certainly /not/ Open Source Microsoft
still intends to use them in some contexts.  Essentially, by submitting
these two licenses, they are asking OSI to agree that a *subset* of the
ongoing Microsoft Shared Source program is also Open Source.

Matt Flaschen