[ale] pigs do fly

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009, Tim Watts wrote:

> OSI doesn't own a trademark on open source so they have no standing to sue
> Microsoft.

Oh.  They have a trademark these days on "OSI Approved License".  Did they 
lose the trademark on the phrase "Open Source," or do I misrecall?

> Look, I understand that there isn't a universal, rigorous definition of open
> source. Like "all natural", it can be employed as a marketing gimmick. The
> fact that it can doesn't make that a Good Thing. But within IT there is
> currently something close to a common understanding of it -- and none of
> Microsoft's product codebase falls under it. I guess I'm in the camp that
> prefers to reinforce (and perhaps refine) this understanding rather rely on
> someone's notion of a "natural" definition.

Perfectly fine.  That said, both MS-PL and MS-RL licenses are OSI 
approved[0][1], and both licenses are free software licenses recognized 
by the Free Software Foundation as "GPL-Incompatible Free Software 
Licenses".[2]

> And maybe this is where my apprehension with MS's participation in OSS starts:
> Do they intend to exploit the softness of the definition, co-opt it to their
> own and then pressure corporate players to sign on? GPL today, MS-GPL
> tomorrow...

MS-PL, which isn't a bad license.  They have already released software under 
this license.  Whether they will continue this trend remains to be seen, 
though I have the feeling that they will begin to see the benefits of 
licensing software under such terms as they evaluate what happens with their 
products which have already been.

> Regarding open standards: oh, the perils of the English language. This sense
> of "open" is not in the same cirus tent as that used for open source.
>
> We do agree on one thing: This thread just isn't worth anyone's time...

Eh.  The analogy is more sound than not; we have (societally) strange views of 
what is "open".

 	--- Mike

[0] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html
[1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-rl.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html