Microsoft welcomes OSI open source to Win8 store
GPL blocked at the door
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Most, but not all, open-source apps are being welcomed by Microsoft into the Windows 8 Windows Store.
The Store’s App Developer Agreement (here) allows developers to build their apps for download and installation on Windows 8 machines using any open-source licence as long as it has been approved by the Open-Source Initiative (OSI).
The OSI is the body that monitors all open-source licences.
Microsoft’s agreement says:
“Your license terms must also not conflict with the Standard Application License Terms, in any way, except if you include FOSS, your license terms may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of those Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use. 'FOSS' means any software licensed under an Open Source Initiative Approved License.”
The invitation does not extend to GPL.
Microsoft’s agreement continues:
“If your app includes FOSS, it must not cause any non-FOSS Microsoft software to become subject to the terms of any FOSS license.” Although Microsoft didn't name it, it's talking about GPL.
Microsoft has been warming to open-source apps for years now, as a way to help sell more copies of the underlying Windows client and server operating system.
The company has been working with many different open-source projects to tune them for Windows; Microsoft, though, has assiduously avoided actually shipping open-source software with its own products, in case this left it open up some kind of legal or IP liability.
Now, though, it seems Microsoft is getting over this – at least in regards to the vast majority of open-source licences that are considered “business friendly”. GPL remains out in the cold. ®
COMMENTS
> It's irrelevant whether you think the GPL would or wouldn't cause existing
> Microsoft code to fall under the GPL
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Microsoft aren't saying they won't accept GPL software, they're just saying that they don't want any of *their* code becoming FOSS. Any developer linking their code in any way that creates FOSS code out of it is breaching their licence. That's all they're saying.
What I think about the GPL[1] is neither here nor there.
> GPL is a horribly broken license
No it isn't.
> we'd all be a lot better off if good code wasn't being poisened by it.
GPL doesn't poison anything. It grants you freedoms you otherwise wouldn't have. If you don't want those freedoms - you're not obliged to take advantage of them.
Vic.
[1] I'm sure pretty much everyone here knows I'm a GPL proponent.
"GPL remains out in the cold"
No, Microsoft is left out in the cold, better that way too.
Misleading
According to http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical , OSI-approved FOSS licences include GPL-2.0, GPL-3.0, LGPL-2.1 and LGPL-3.0, so it follows that software under these will NOT be automatically precluded as the article suggests.
“If your app includes FOSS, it must not cause any non-FOSS Microsoft software to become subject to the terms of any FOSS license” ~ is just a disclaimer-form of MS-standard FUD painting GPL as a 'viral licence' which will somehow 'infect' any other software on the same machine and render it free. Mr Clarke does not explain how this voodoo trick could actually work before jumping to the false conclusion he needs to support that clickbait subtitle.
Hence, Adblock ~ pour encourager les autres ...
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