For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jon Rosenberg (PBM) (jonr at microsoft.com):

> I would like to get all of your feedback on the following name revisions:
> *       Microsoft Community License becomes Microsoft Reciprocal License
> *       Microsoft Permissive License becomes Microsoft Open License
> I look forward to your feedback.  Thanks.

At the risk of sounding like a Microsoft Corporation booster:
Outstanding, Jon -- and I think that naming does better serve potential 
users of those licences.

Just as a reminder, in the long term _who_ drafts a licence doesn't much
matter, because it can and may be, over time, applied to arbitrary works
by anyone anywhere, and the licence may be in wide use after the drafter
either ceases to exist or loses his/her/its importance.  This is one
reason why it's really better, as a fine point, for the licence not to
have its drafter's name in the title.  E.g., IBM created IBM Public
License as a modern reciprocal licence with a patent defence clause, and
later upon reflection renamed it to "Common Public License", which is
its name today.

(I seem to have ended up in a polite but lengthy standoff on that matter
with Pamela Jones on Groklaw, a couple of weeks ago, centred around
MS-PL / MS-CL:  I kept saying that the drafter's identity is irrelevant
to a licence's separate merits, that one might consider a drafter to be
an utter asshat and approve his/her licence irrespectively -- a bit like
the way Russ likes ezmlm.  ;->  )

But the temptation to put a firm's name into the licence title is
understandable, and, if that were OSI's only problem concerning new
licence submissions, that would be a happy day indeed.