Microsoft vs License Proliferation

Back in early August at OSCON, I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down for lunch with Jason Matusow, better known to some as the point man for Microsoft on all things open (and shared) source. One of the initiatives that he and I discussed at that time was the drive to stall internal license proliferation at Microsoft by restricting the options to a few basic choices. As is probably common knowledge at this point, Jason got his wish this week with the announcement of three new template Shared Source licenses. While I’ve been too busy here at the Zend Conference to gauge general public reaction to the announcement (Mike’s got a great read on the topic here), I personally think it’s a very welcome development, both for Microsoft and for the various communities that may interact with its code.

While Jason and I differ on many points, and I thought the announcement was more aggressive than it perhaps needed to be in terms of asserting the ownership and control of the code, I respect both the intentions here as well as the likely impact. While I expect the focus to be on the anti-license proliferation aspects to the announcement – the “3 is better than more than 10” aspect to Jason’s announcement – I’m less concerned with that than what this may portend for open source licensing in general. I’m not contending that the proliferation of licenses is a non-issue – it certainly is not for Microsoft, in this case – but as previously discussed I’m less alarmed by that trend than some others.

What I instead am interested to see is whether or not this trend of distilling licensing down to a couple of simple choices: reciprocal or not? distribute or not? etc. spreads to organizations with more involvement in open source than Microsoft. Many, if not most of the vendors with open source interests that I speak with are well versed enough in the intricasies of open source licensing to a.) understand this basic stratification and b.) have pushed for (and in some cases achieved) similar results on an informal basis. But few if any vendors have been this clear in terms of producing a list that states simply: these are the acceptable licenses, pick one. The obvious retort to that statement is that it’s far easier for Microsoft to achieve this because of their lack of history with open source – it’s in many ways a greenfield licensing situation. And that’s a fair point. But the fact is that this is still a welcome development.

If I was a lawyer and these licenses were on trial, these are the questions I might ask potential jurors (my comments on each are italized):

1. Do you believe that Microsoft’s efforts with respect to open source are genuine? [To me, treating Microsoft as a single entity here is the wrong approach. I try rather to view Microsoft as a superset of multiple different businesses, some of which believe strongly in open source, some of which are the opposite.]
2. Do you, or do you not believe that all open source projects should use a single license? [I do not, and I support the right of vendors to choose an appropriate license. So does Jeff, apparently – but many see no reason to use anything but the GPL, and non-GPL licenses as nothing but enemies of progress.]
3. Do you, or do you not believe that Microsoft should be able to use the term “Open” to describe its licenses? [I’m on record as believing that Shared Source does bring with it certain baggage, and is at times a liability. That hasn’t changed; I still believe it to be the case, although Microsoft might dispute that given some of its focus group studies. Either way, however, I think the continued bifurcation between ‘shared’ and ‘open’ within Microsoft customers is unhelpful. But there are significant political boundaries to cross here; as it stands now, the OSI is the de facto arbiter of what can and cannot be called ‘open source.’ And given that the Microsoft and the OSI are not the best of friends, the issue is not as simple as it might appear to be. From where I sit, any license that is functionally equivalent at even detailed levels to current OSI approved licenses should be termed open. But unfortunately, I don’t currently possess the power to make these organizations kiss and make up. Until that happens, this will continue to be an issue.]

So there you have my answers, but obviously opinions will differ. Either way, those are the questions that I think everyone will need to ask themselves to decide where they stand.