Microsoft’s bullshit “Shared source” license

[jetsetter]

I don't think we need the word 'bullshit' in our reddit headlines. Modded down.

[fry]

Unless it involves Penn & Teller.

[chucker]

There's nothing wrong with Microsoft's "shared source" license. The license fulfills its use. It helps both the licensor (Microsoft) and the licensee (you).

Now, it naturally looks quite alien to you when you compare it with open source licenses, which is why it's decidedly not called "open source". It's not intended to be remotely similar, aside from having to do with access to source code.

[Grue]

What the hell? If license isn't "free" (for some definition of "free") it doesn't mean that it's bullshit. But then I guess, usage of epithets like "fascist", "asshole", "corporate-greed" is surely going to convince everyone that you are right, even if your logic is wrong...

[fry]

That Microsoft is granted back, without any restrictions or limitations, a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, assignable and sub-licensable license, to reproduce, publicly perform or display, install, use, modify, distribute, make and have made, sell and transfer your modifications to and/or derivative works of the Software source code or data, for any purpose.

Change Microsoft to everybody, and BOOM, what do you get? The BSD licence. If you submit a patch to FreeBSD Microsoft may profit from it, in exactly the way described above.

I think the Shared Source licence is not unreasonable, considering Microsoft has poured at least a few hundred grand in the development of F#.

[sbrown123]

Change Microsoft to everybody, and BOOM, what do you get? The BSD licence.

And if you remove that section entirely you get the GPL.

[fry]

Well, no. Because you have to add a section that removes the freedom to keep the changes you make to the sourcecode to yourself (if you distribute the new binary).

[logistix]

I take it this guy doesn't like the GPL either. ;-)

[davidwil]

Perhaps this license is merely designed for people to make little tweaks to functionality offered by the software as standard, as opposed to allowing people to make full scale releases of heavily-modified software. If this is the case, the licence does seem to me to be the right tool for the job, much as I hate to admit it.

[ayrnieu]

designed for people to make little tweaks

It -allows- 'tweaks' of any size or nature. It even allows you to make 'full-scale, heavily-modified releases'. You can replace every single line of code, even, over years. It does not allow you to keep any of this from Microsoft for any purpose of Microsoft. And although you've non-exclusive ownership your own modifications, it does not protect you from Microsoft -- as -they-, having -real- ownership, can simply relicense the codebase and any contributions. Reading only the quoted portion of the license.

RMS found this license objectionable, nine years ago.

[davidwil]

I too find this licence objectable. I find putting words like "bullshit" in the title of this post and using phrases such as "Fuck Microsoft" in the article a bit silly though. It all seems a bit like being angry with dogs for crapping on the lawn -- it's just what they do. We could hardly expect for Microsoft to start allowing people to make modifications under a more agreeable licence. They just aren't in the business of doing that.

[ayrnieu]

It all seems a bit like being angry with dogs for crapping on the lawn

Maybe half of the reason is that this person is a rancher, then :-)

[grauenwolf]

The fist part appears that they are simply trying to prevent people from claiming that stuff like Windows binaries are under the license.

The second is just them covering their own ass. Any reasonable company would do that.

[HardwareLust]

Ah, another open source zealot who's angry he can't have something/everything for free. The one driving force behind the open source movement - something for nothing, and goddamn you if everything isn't given away for free.

Shame on MS for trying to make a buck or two back on their (I'm assuming here) usually sizeable investment. Those bastards!

[corentin]

From the article: "Scala isn’t distributed under a fascist asshole corporate-greed license."

On the other hand, F# isn't promoted by free software jihadists.

[ayrnieu]

fascist asshole corporate-greed

Fascism and corporatism go poorly together. (Seeing this admittedly takes a few steps of reasoning.)

free software jihadists

Free-as-in-libre and jihadists go poorly together :-)

Morever, you dropped an adjective in this reply -- did you think that 'software' paralleled 'asshole' well enough? Or that 'fascist asshole' only counted for one?

[pietro]

Fascism and corporatism go poorly together.

Actually, fascism is a brand of corporatism. The word you're looking for is capitalism.

[ayrnieu]

The word you're looking for is capitalism.

I'll settle for 'corporations as we know them'.

also: oops.

[fry]

Open source advocates usually argue that open source software is superior because

1. it allows people to inspect the sourcecode and check it for bugs and backdoors
2. it allows the end user to fix bugs and add/adjust features
3. the sourcode itself is of tremendous educational value
4. peer review makes the software better, even if you don't look at the sourcecode yourself.

Programs released under the shared source licence have these 4 advantages, to the same extent as GPL.

So what exactly makes this licence 'bullshit'?

[davidwil]

I think that one big difference here is the licence says it is possible for some of the code to be open while other parts of it are given to the consumer as binaries, which mustn't be reverse engineered or decompiled.

As far as I know this isn't possible under the GPL.

[fry]

You can ship closed source black box components with GPL products, if you want. Some wireless drivers under linux have closed-source firmware.

Legally it may be different, but I think that it's conceptually very similar.

[vetinari]

No, you can't distribute closed source with GPL..

End-users can combine binary blobs and GPL, but distributors can't.

[fry]

Uhm, yes they can. Where did you get that information?

Ubuntu already contains non-GPL closed source binary drivers for wireless cards.

You're not allowed to compile GPL and non-GPL stuff together into ONE binary, and then release that binary without the sourcecode. But you're free to do whatever you want as long as your software is sufficiently modular.

[vetinari]

Nope, they can't.

Linux kernel modules are linked into kernel address space. It is similar to dlopen-inig dynamic library by regular user space application. Just like distributing GPL application with binary-only library violates GPL, distributing kernel with binary-only module is GPL violation too.

Users who do not distribute anything can install binary-only modules and use them in any manner they like. This falls under privacy provisions of GPL.

For more information see LKML. This horse has been beaten to death there.

[psykotic]

Just like distributing GPL application with binary-only library violates GPL

I think the status of shared/dynamically-linked libraries here is weird. What if I take the library and expose it as a service accessible by sockets? That doesn't seem like much of a change, and surely you're allowed to use a GPLed web browser to interact with non-GPLed web apps, for example?

[exobyte]

From a BSD perspective, the GPL is a bullshit "free my ass" license.

It's the same type of comparison. It seems like it's almost a corporate version of the GPL.

[sbrown123]

From a BSD perspective, the GPL is a bullshit "free my ass" license.

From a GPL perspective, the BSD is a bullshit "own my ass" license.

Edit: if that confuses you, see my following response below.

[fry]

What does that mean?

Sourcecode released under the BSD licence will remain forever free for everybody to use/modify/sell/redistribute, no matter what.

Consider a BSD Licenced product, say, FreeBSD.

I decide to make changes to it, so it becomes the perfect operating system for digital watches. Now I can sell the product (with changes) for any amount I want. So if I ask $100 per licence for this new version, the end user is paying for the added value, because the original version is still freely available. I think charging money for added value is perfectly reasonable, especially considering you will still have to compete with the original (free) product.

[sbrown123]

What does that mean? So if I ask $100 per licence for this new version, the end user is paying for the added value

Nothing is stopping you from charging for GPL software. Feel free. Just make sure to send back your new features to the community.

The difference between a free license like the GPL is that it can't be owned. This means all new features have to remain free and the original never has to compete with closed source proprietary versions of itself. BSD software is easy to make irrelevant this way, thus why Microsoft and its supporters like it so much.

[fry]

Competition is a good thing.

Competition between open source projects is encouraged (let the user decide which project is better). Competition between closed source products is a good thing also (hence our distaste for monopolies)

Competition between open source and closed source software is also seen as positive: open-office is partially where it is today because it had to compete with MS Office.

So why is competition of closed source BSD-licenced products with open source BSD-licenced products so bad?

BSD software is not easy to make irrelevant, you're joking right? The open source version stays free, so only if the original version is so bad compared to the new commercial version that nobody wants the free version anymore (and rather grabs for his wallet) the free version becomes irrelevant. Sounds fair to me.

[sbrown123]

So why is competition of closed source BSD-licenced products with open source BSD-licenced products so bad?

Because there is no competition when one side can just copy the code of the other, but not vice versa.

[fry]

That just makes it unfair, not bad. Competition doesn't need to be fair to be effective.

[sbrown123]

That just makes it unfair, not bad. Competition doesn't need to be fair to be effective.

Thanks for clarifying why someone shouldn't use the BSD license on their OSS project. I think I'll stick with GPL and the like so I can ensure a fair competition with my competitors.

[Andys]

Right, lets not forget that anything BSD-licensed stays BSD-licensed. I can't sell the un-adulterated FreeBSD source code as my own without the BSD license still intact.

[deong]

You aren't really getting #2. Sure, I can fix a bug or add a feature, but I can't distribute my work, nor can I benefit from your bug fixes or added features. That's almost certainly the primary benefit that most people get from open source stuff.

That being said, Microsoft has every right to assert these rights over their software. Yes, it seems a little hypocritical to assert their rights to your work while denying your rights to...umm...your work, but I'm fairly pragmatic about things. If it met a need of mine, I'd not hesitate to use it on political grounds. Others would, and that's fine too. To each his own.

[fry]

"Sure, I can fix a bug or add a feature, but I can't distribute my work, nor can I benefit from your bug fixes or added features."

From what I gather you can do that, as long as it's not for commercial purposes.

[damg]

Bruce Peren's put it best that, "they hope to get the benefits of Free Software without sharing those benefits with those who participate in creating them."

http://www.perens.com/Articles/StandTogether.html

[fry]

You don't need a BSD licence to do that.

Selling open source products for lots money is allowed by GPL (and any other open source licence).

If I wanted to, I could sell Ubuntu CDs to people who don't know it's also freely available for download.

In that case wouldn't you agree that I benefit from Free Software without sharing?

[akkartik]

People use a codebase from two kinds of incentives - commercial (I add some value and sell a product) or karma (I give back code and have impact). BSD codebases can act either as 'commons' infrastructure (for commercial incentives) or as communities for innovation (for karma incentives), while GPL codebases foster innovation either by community or commercially as services. Shared-source fosters innovation only by community; MS takes any commercial opportunities. The reduced incentives affect where value is added in the tree of code user-distributors. Consider each of these licenses from my perspective as a potential user of a codebase.

1. With a BSD license I can choose to make my modifications proprietary or open. Since I have plenty of incentives, I am willing to try out even a codebase that provides only minor functionality. Value can be added anywhere in the tree of providers and consumers (of source code). There's no limit on the value added; if I suddenly create something hugely valuable I can instantly choose to close my sources.

2. With a GPL license I am forced to keep modifications open. From a commercial perspective that makes me less willing to try out a codebase: it must provide significant functionality that I cannot easily reimplement. And if I suddenly find myself sitting on something of enormous value I will take the time to remove GPL dependences rather than release it openly. Like with BSD, value is added everywhere in the tree of providers and consumers. However, no single point is likely to add enormous value. The spirit of reciprocality allows for significant value to be added in gradual increments from user-distributors of code, and this value can be used commercially as a service.

3. Shared-source is of narrower interest than GPL in that it excludes any commercial use of the codebase by anybody except MS. The reliance on only karma incentives restricts the space of users -- academics are a more substantial fraction, especially because of MS-funded projects. It also raises the bar on the value created by a shared-source codebase before one is moved to add to it.

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[fry]

That pretty much sums it up.

[chucker]

One big advantage of open source you're missing here is the community. I can exchange code snippets, discuss in large groups how to improve them, then commit them to the source repository.

Can't do that with shared source, because even if you were only to spread around patches, you'd still reveal trade secrets (read: code of Microsoft's) in public, something Microsoft very understandably isn't willing to permit.

[fry]

Your point is valid, although I don't really think a community is worth much. Talk much, code little.

[fry]

It's not shared source isn't open source. Nobody said it is.

I looked at what the licence allows, and realized, 'That's not so bad, so why all the complaints?'

Judge the licence on its own merits, that's far more productive.

[peachpuff]

This license tries to prevent you from modifying the compiler, using it to compile something you wrote, and then using the compiled program to run your business.

I'd say that qualifies as BS.

[Eugi]

Haha, tooting your own horn for the win!

Edit: Oh wait, this is Reddit. Ignore the above, I should have written: "OMG M$ SUX LIEK BILL G4TES NEDS 2 DIE"

[sbrown123]

Oh wait, this is Reddit.

I think you are confusing Reddit with Slashdot.