For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Alexander Terekhov]

On 9/26/07, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
> Michael Tiemann wrote:
>
> > Thus, you are interested in having the OSI lead the process by making rulings and letting
> > you craft remedies rather than discussing until a common positive consensus
> > is reached.
>
> I think there already is a positive consensus that at least MS-PL (MS-CL
> has simply been discussed much less) is OSD-compliant.  The remaining
> issues are mostly about the need for and consequences of approving the
> license.  I think the main issues mentioned are:
>
> a. Is MS-PL a permissive license?  If not, should OSI ask/require that
> it be renamed?
>
> I don't think it's permissive in a meaningful sense, because other
> permissive (as the term is generally understood in the FOSS community)

It is permissive in the sense that there is no requirement to provide
source code to recipients of object code to begin with. Same as BSDL.

> licenses allow incorporating into source code works under other
> licenses, provided that the permissive license and copyright notice is
> preserved, and MS-PL does not.

Incorporate all you want, just don't pretend that it somehow changes
the license governing MS-PL code.

>
> Thus, I think Microsoft should rename the license.

How about Microsoft Permissive Source Unrelicensable License (Ms-PSUL)?

regards,
alexander.

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