Microsoft and the Future Imprecise

[Update: 8/11/07]
Well it turns out to be not so indefinite as I thought.

Yesterday while I was in New York these emails arrived at license-discuss - submitting the Ms-PL and the Ms-CL:

Subject: For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License
From: “Jon Rosenberg (PBM)”
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:16:05 -0700
Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:16:05 -0700

Microsoft is pleased to submit the Microsoft Permissive License to the OSI for consideration as an OSI approved license. Microsoft believes that this license provides unique value to the open source community by delivering simplicity, brevity, and permissive terms combined with intellectual property protection.

The three sections below provide the information required for the discussion portion of the approval process. We look forward to working with the OSI on this submission process and discussing this submission with the open source community.

Jon Rosenberg
Director, Source Program
Microsoft Corporation

[Full text]

and

Subject: For Approval: Microsoft Community License
From: “Jon Rosenberg (PBM)”
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:16:42 -0700
Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:16:42 -0700

Microsoft is pleased to submit the Microsoft Community License to the OSI for consideration as an OSI approved license. Microsoft believes that this license provides unique value to the open source community by delivering simplicity, brevity, and clearly delineated reciprocal terms.

The three sections below provide the information required for the discussion portion of the approval process. We look forward to working with the OSI on this submission process and discussing this submission with the open source community.

Jon Rosenberg
Director, Source Program
Microsoft Corporation

[Full text]

This means it was really only about two weeks delay - not at all unusual in a company Microsoft’s size.

I assume the Ms-RL will not be submitted as it would clearly fail - it basically enables viewing of source code only.

As much as everyone is wary of Microsoft’s entry here, I think it is great to see these licenses submitted and reviewed.
[/Update]

[Original: 8/8/07]

One of the announcements at OSCON was from Microsoft, who announced that they would be submitting some licenses to the OSI for approval. (See the story on EWeek, InfoWorld, and InternetNews).

This has lead to some spirited debates and questions about just what it would mean for any Microsoft license (I have yet to see confirmation from Microsoft on which licenses will be submitted) to be OSI approved, including:

• Tim O’Reilly at O’Reilly Radar: Microsoft to Submit Shared Source Licenses to OSI (also with a good vibrant comment thread
• Glyn Moody at Linux Journal: Why Microsoft is Going Open Source
• Matt Asay at C-Net: Microsoft’s motives in seeking open-source blessing

My questions are much more basic:

1. When, exactly, will Microsoft submit licenses to the OSI for approval?
2. Which licenses will they submit? (Ms-PL, Ms-CL, and/or Ms-RL)

I went back and listed to Bill Hilf’s keynote again - he refers to the over 500 projects released under shared source licenses, and the question he has long gotten about why those projects weren’t released under OSI approved licenses.

He then announces that:

today we are, today we - we are submitting them right now -we’re working with the OSI right now to get them into the approval process, it’s an important step for us

What does that mean? Getting “them into the approval process” would seem to involve following the approval process as clearly spelled out on the OSI site - but I haven’t seen anything on license-discuss yet . . .