OPEN SOURCE BLOGROLL

Open Source Weblog

Microsoft’s free software license and Bill Gates’ facial hair
August 24, 2007

(or “Why I shouldn’t be allowed to use Photoshop”)

I see the fuss over Microsoft’s attempt to get two licenses approved by the OSI has blown up again while I was away thanks to Google’s Chris Di Bona asking whether Microsoft will also change its business practices.

I won’t go over the arguments again – some of the interesting points are here, here, and here.

What I will say is this: When Microsoft first announced the Ms-PL and Ms-CL licenses in October 2005, Free Software Foundation Europe president, Georg Greve, noted that “of the five licenses published, our cursory first analysis suggests that two of them indeed fulfill the Free Software Definition."

No one suggested that Bill Gates had to grow a Richard Stallman-style beard in order for the licenses to fulfill that definition, so why the insistence that the company has to go out of its way for OSI approval?

Yes, I’m being facetious, but Bill Gates’s facial hair has as much relevance to the Ms-PL and Ms-CL licenses meeting the Free Software Definition as Microsoft’s use of the phrase “shared source” or its business practices have to do with them meeting the demands of the OSD.

They either do, or they don’t. Neither facial hair nor the company’s business strategy will change that.

Photo sources:
“British Bill” by Computerjoe
“RMS and Dim” by dimworld