saw this on joi ito's blog - and as Danese is on silk anyway, as are
quite a few other people who might find this interesting ..
srs
http://danesecooper.blogs.com/divablog/2005/10/simon_phipps_eu.html
Have We Won Yet?
The big news today at EuroOSCON is the fact that Microsoft has posted
new source licenses, and a couple of them might actually be
OSD-compliant!! You can see the licenses here [1]. They'll also be
releasing some source today under these licenses.
Jason Matusow [2] announced the news in Amsterdam, and Steve Ballmer
will also be talking today about them.
The licenses have not yet been submitted to License-Discuss for review
and possible OSI approval. Apparently Larry Lessig has reviewed them and
says they're good.
So, have we won yet? Well, let's review. The FOSS movement is supposed
to be about establishing a level playing field. The OSD is supposed to
set standards for characteristics of licenses that allow that level
playing field to be set up. So "getting" FOSS licensing is an important
first step. It's certainly a far day from 2002, when this [3] article
said Microsoft was going to start up an open source practice real soon now.
But its something. Undeniably something.
These are interesting times, no doubt about that...time will tell.
[1]
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx
[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/
[3] http://news.com.com/2009-1001-961354.html
