When Microsoft released their “Shared Source” licenses, at least one of them (The Microsoft Community License) looked like it was actually compatible with the Open Source Definition. So John Cowan submitted it for consideration on the OSI’s license-discuss mailing list. However, it wasn’t officially discussed or approved because Russ Nelson (who is on the OSI board) wrote:
Let’s give Microsoft a chance to submit these licenses on its own. I
think that the general principle should be that authors have
preference over third parties when it comes to submitting licenses.
The OSI then contacted Microsoft to ask if they should proceed with the evaluation, and Microsoft basically said they weren’t interested. So Microsoft’s licenses are still not OSI-approved.
Chris Di Bona, a Google employee, has submitted the final versions of GPLv3 and LGPLv3 for consideration, 2 hours after they were published. Will the OSI be contacting the FSF for permission to evaluate their licenses as well? If so, I wonder what the FSF will say…
I’d hope the OSI would consider a license submitted by a software author who wanted to use that license, not only from the copyright holder of the license itself. I guess Microsoft are the ones who might release under their license, but many will release under GNU GPL3.
But if OSI does ask FSF for the go-ahead, I expect at least an entertaining rms mini-essay. ;)
What I’m more interested in is your evaluation, Gerv! Of the problems you identified in Draft 3, please can you post a blog entry stating which are still in the issued licence? Thanks.