14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft continues to develop its affair with open source. The Redmond company announced that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has awarded official approval for two of its Shared Source licenses; in this context, Microsoft Permissive License grown into the Microsoft Public License, and Microsoft Community License which ended up as the Microsoft Reciprocal License have been approved by the OSI Board. According to Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative, both licenses satisfied the list of 10 criteria of the Open Source definition. Microsoft initially announced its decision to seek OSI approval for the two licenses in July 2007, and the items were submitted in August.
"During the discussion period, we were pleased to respond to the communities requests for additional clarity in the licenses by renaming them to the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License. In the process of the license discussion, we also heard additional calls for more clarity in our communication regarding the wide range of Shared Source licensing options available from Microsoft. Some Shared Source licenses clearly meet the open source definition and others do not. In the future, we will continue to solicit feedback from the community to ensure crisp delineation of these different license types on our website", stated Jon Rosenberg Director, Source Program Microsoft.
Tiemann underlined that the approval process was by no means expeditious, revealing that Microsoft was bombarded with questions and issues that were answered accordingly. The Redmond company's submission of its Shared Source licenses followed the same path as all other parties that sought OSI approval in the past. "Microsoft didn't ask for special treatment, and didn't receive any. In spite of recent negative interactions between Microsoft and the open source community, the spirit of the dialog was constructive and we hope that carries forward to a constructive outcome as well", Tiemann added.