For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Chris Travers]

On 9/24/07, Wilson, Andrew <andrew.wilson at intel.com> wrote:
>
> Chris Travers wrote:
>
> If your goal is to advocate approval of MS-PL as-is, you have painted
> yourself
> into a logical corner.  If OSI accepts your highly idiosycratic reading
> of BSD,
> MIT, and other permissive licenses and concurs
> that they do not permit sublicensing and that MS-PL is
> not innovative in this regard among permissive licenses, then
> MS-PL is duplicative and should be rejected.



Not quite duplicative.  The major issue is that some countries may not have
legal definitions of derivative works,  The MS-PL is tied to US legal
definitions in ways which other permissive licenses are not.  This may be
good for clarity so you don't have 218 mini-licenses depending on legal
definitions of each possible jurisdiction.

Also it is not as far-fetched as you think.  First, we all know what Theo de
Raadt thinks of the sublicensing question ;-).  However, my discussions with
other BSD-licensed projects (including PostgreSQL) confirms that they see
the BSD-license as following the code, but what makes it permissive is that
it does not prevent one from enforcing one's own copyrights independantly.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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