For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Russ Nelson]

This email is my summary of all the issues that people have raised
with the Ms-PL:

Zac Bowling would like the Ms-PL to be compatible with the Ms-CL.

A number of people (Tobia Conforto, Rishab Ayer Ghosh, Matthew
Flaschen, Andrew Wilson, Donovan Hawkins, Michael R. Bernstein and Jon
Rosenberg--the submittor) have pointed out that the Ms-PL does not
allow a redistributor to add restrictions to source distribution,
compared to the BSDL which does.  A concern is that the name
"Permissive" is misleading.

Chris Travers says that while the original code remains under the
Ms-PL, a combined work could be created which was only distributable
under the terms of the GPLv3.  Later, he agreed that he was wrong.

Chris Fagan interprets the Ms-PL, saying "A design goal of the MS-PL
is to allow developers to choose to ensure that the specific rights in
Section (2) continue to be available to downstream developers and
users through generations of adoption and adaptation."

Philip Hunt would like Microsoft to explicitly call out the answers to
these questions:
Is the MS-PL intended to be compatible with the MIT license?
Is the MS-PL intended to be compatible with the GPLv2?
Is the MS-PL intended to be compatible with the GPLv3?
Jim Thatcher declined to explicitly say that.

Personally, John Cowan speaks to my condition in this posting:
   http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:13402:mkohfpmjekmjelobgffa

Chris DiBona and Eric Raymond raise the issue of Microsoft
simultaneously seeking Open Source approval, and attacking Open
Source.  Bill Hilf says "that's not part of the approval process."

Ross Mayfield suggests that the name implies that it's a vanity
license -- but the OSI board does not give that argument much weight
as long as the license is reusable.  We allow people to give and take
credit in the name of the software, so applying the same principle to
licenses seems appropriate.

Be sure to read this thread since it contains authoriative
replies by Jim Thatcher:
http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:13725:200708:gphahghcdmjlcjmkjhec

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