According to an early response from Free Software Foundation Europe, the new Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) and Microsoft Community License appear to satisfy the four freedoms that define Free Software: the freedom to run, study, copy, and modify the program.
Since we so rarely have opportunity to say something positive about Microsoft, let me begin by congratulating them, FSFE Software Foundation Europe president, Georg Greve, said in a statement. Microsoft finally seems to have made a step forward on their long march towards giving their users freedom.
Microsoft’s three new license frameworks will be used for all source code license via the Shared Source Initiative and have varying levels of restrictions. The Ms-PL is the least restrictive and could be thought of as the most like the BSD license. It allows users to view, modify, and redistribute the source code for either commercial or non-commercial purposes.
Microsoft describes the Ms-CL as a license that is best used for collaborative development projects and it is more like the GNU General Public License, prompting the FSFE to note that it appears to implement a variation of the copyleft idea.
The Ms-CL allows users to view, modify, and redistribute the code and ensures that any larger work distributed as a single file also needs to be licensed under the same license. It also enables developers to include their own code in separate files under a separate license, however.
The third license, the Microsoft Reference License, Ms-RL, is more typical of Microsoft’s previous shared source licensing initiatives and is a reference-only license that allows users to view the source code but not modify or redistribute it.
As well as the three main licensing frameworks, Microsoft has also created limited versions of the Permissive and Community Licenses. Known as Ms-LPL and Ms-LCL, the licenses carry the same terms except that the permissions they grant are limited to code that runs on the company’s own Windows operating system.
Microsoft stated that the limited versions had been introduced to enable positive interaction with Windows developers, although it is clearly being selective when it comes to operating systems gives the company the ability to restrict developments with its code on other platforms.
The new licensing template has been positioned as an attempt to reduce the number of licenses available, with Microsoft’s Shared Source manager, Jason Matusow, pointing out that the company now has three shared source licenses, as opposed to more than 10.
But it does not appear that the new licensing framework will be applied to code already licensed via the Shared Source Initiative, meaning that the number of licenses floating around has actually increased, even if only three – or technically five – will be used from now on.
The free and open source community has been encouraging a reduction in the number of open source licenses in recent months, led by the Open Source Initiative, which grants official status to open source licenses that meet its 10-point open source definition.
While members of the OSI have met with Microsoft to discuss its new licensing framework and the company has been encouraged to submit the non-limited licenses to the OSI for approval, some open source advocates are also encouraging the company to go one step further.
Microsoft has walked a mile and is now standing mere inches from the GNU (L) GPL, said FSFE’s Greve, noting that adopting existing licenses for Shared Source would not have increased the number of licenses available. In the course of time we would prefer to see Microsoft join the large global community of commercial GNU (L) GPL vendors, he added.
