On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Tim Churches wrote: ... > OK, I see what you are referring to now - the licenses for BSD material > from the Regents of the Uni of California etc at the end of the > document. But surely that is an example of Microsoft making use of other > party's open source code,
Tim, What Microsoft has done with open-source software goes far beyond just "use". They are actually re-distributing it. > and incorporating (as permitted by the BSD licenses) into their own > closed source code. That's exactly what the authors of code allowed. Microsoft has done a good job finding the software, incorporating them into Windows, and properly (as far as I can tell) giving credit. > I don't see any evidence of Microsoft distributing their **own** code > under an open source license, As I mentioned, there are different ways to contribute to open-source projects. Re-distribution of open-source software is one of many useful and important tasks. As a comparison, how many subscribers of OpenHealth list actually distributed our **own** code under an open source license? In fact, how many of us played a part in re-distributing other people's open source code like Microsoft? > or even their modifications to other people's code in source code form. > Or have I missed something? Only that Microsoft is quietly being a real open-source software provider while some others make lots of noise about the merits of open-source but do the opposite. :-) Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
