General Business

Microsoft Wants to Go Open Source

With its Shared Source licenses

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

31st of July 2007, 14:58 GMT

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Microsoft announced that not only is it embracing open source, but that, furthermore, it is now seeking the approval of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). This is truly a new milestone for the Redmond company and Jon Rosenberg, Director of Source Programs at Microsoft did not hesitate to qualify it as just that. OSI is the organization that manages official open source status, and Microsoft is looking for its blessing. However, of course that the company will not give up its traditional business model based on proprietary software. As a matter

of fact, the company is just aiming to bridge the gap between its shared source and open source.

"We reached another milestone with the decision to submit our open licenses to the OSI approval process, which, if the licenses are approved, should give the community additional confidence that the code we're sharing is truly Open Source. I believe that the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry," Rosenberg commented. "I look forward to the submission process and welcome feedback from the community as we continue to grow together."

The Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL); Microsoft Community License (Ms-CL) and the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) are the licenses covered by the more general Shared Source license umbrella. The Redmond company failed to divulge either whether it will transition all three agreements to open source. However, Rosenberg did talk about growth and maturity.

"Today, Microsoft has published 175 projects on CodePlex, we have written a pair of open licenses that are under a page in length and over the 500-project mark in adoption as others in the community have decided to use them. I also run a training class that teaches people around the company how to engage in open source projects and make them successful. The volume of projects over the past year has forced us to develop processes for approving and publishing projects that are easy to understand and administer," Rosenberg said.

Microsoft offered only one motivation for seeking OSI approval: customers. It is for its customers that Microsoft even considered interoperability with open source solutions, but also a licensing bridge, along with an infrastructure and process marriage. "Although open source at Microsoft and the OSI are two different animals, I would submit to you that both are at a point in their maturity where their constituencies need to become more involved to maintain growth," Rosenberg added.

TAGS:

Microsoft | open source | Shared Source | OSI

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