For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Chris DiBona]

Actually, if you read my original email, you'll see that I don't have
a lot of issues with the licenses themselves, outside of their
redundancy. But I think that Microsoft's behavior deserves discussion,
because the reality is that Bill's employer will use OSI's approval
against it.

OSI should not trade on its reputation lightly. Again, this is not a
discussion about licenses but whether or not it is wise for OSI to
enable its most vicious competitor.

You may want to try to paint this as personal disapproval, but if you
look on any search engine you would be hard pressed to find anything
from me personally about Microsoft outside of windows refund day in
1998. Note that trying to turn this into a discussion about FSF or
Google or me completely dodges the issue, so , you know, nice try and
all. I'm more than happy to discuss Google's frankly incredibly
awesome open source practices (including pr, press quotes, not
creating new licenses, marketing and the rest) in a  different thread,

Chris

On 8/17/07, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at linpro.no> wrote:
> Bill Hilf <billhilf at microsoft.com> writes:
> > I'm unclear how some of your questions are related to our license
> > submissions, which is what I believe this list and the submission
> > process are designed to facilitate.  You're questioning things such
> > as Microsoft's marketing terms, press quotes, where we put licenses
> > on our web site, and how we work with OEMs - none of which I could
> > find at http://opensource.org/docs/osd.
>
> Basically, Chris doesn't want the OSI do approve a license submitted
> by an organization of which he personally disapproves, regardless of
> the merits of the license itself.  Hey, I can sympathize - personally,
> I really don't approve of the FSF, and I'd love to see the OSI turn
> down the GPLv3.
>
> Except I wouldn't, really, because then the OSI would lose every shred
> of credibility and quickly become irrelevant - just like it would if
> it failed to carefully consider the licenses submitted by Microsoft,
> or to approve them if they were found to adhere to the OSD.  I don't
> want the OSI to lose its credibility and become irrelevant, and I
> believe that both licenses submitted by Microsoft are OSD-compliant.
>
> > If you'd like to discuss this, I'd be happy to - and I have a number
> > of questions for you about Google's use of and intentions with open
> > source software as well.
>
> But Google is good!  Google can do no evil!  It says so right there in
> the bylaws!
>
> *smack*
>
> DES
> --
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav
> Senior Software Developer
> Linpro AS - www.linpro.no
>


-- 
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
Google's Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com
Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com