OSI’s Tiemann on Microsoft Announcement

Microsoft and standards–deja vu all over again? | Open Source Initiative

Let’s be clear: Microsoft’s lawyers have a deep understanding of open source software. They submitted two licenses to the OSI earlier this year after many years of internal discussion, deliberation, and refinement. They went through one of the most difficult gauntlets of reviews I have seen on license-discuss. They succeeded in having those licenses approved because they met all the criteria spelled out in the OSD, and because the answer to every question posed to them (within the scope of the license approval process) was answered well and to the satisfaction of all who reviewed objectively. (You can see for yourself that some people did not want to approve the licenses on the principle that Microsoft is evil, and rightly or wrongly we chose to not consider that question in the review process.) So given that Microsoft does understand the rules and requirements of open source, why would they make a major announcement about open source interoperability that so clearly violates the principles of our community?

We have shown tolerance for Microsoft as a company by reviewing and approving their licenses. Soon, I would like to see Microsoft show respect for our community by actually issuing a patent covenant that we can all embrace and applaud. Any steps that fall short of universal safe harbour look like strategic behavior against the community, and we will continue to reject that in the strongest possible terms.

This entry was posted by T. Colin Dodd on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Truth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.