[Fsf-friends] Microsoft's shared source... a query

[Gopal V]

If memory serves me right, Frederick Noronha wrote:
> Interestingly, Microsoft's Tarun Anand also speaks on 'Shared
> Source: Implementation of .NET'. 
>
> Just a query, how does this concept of 'shared source' compare with
> GNU/Free Software or Open Source licences? 

Some of the entries of the license like , derievative works should be only
under a license including all this provisions of this License , remind me
of the GPL's restrictions ....

But this is a sort of license to keep software on the wrong side of freedom...

|| You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after
|| accessing the Software. 

Which means I can quote what happens inside .... but if I attempt to repeat
it somewhere else (even from memory) in working form it is considered tangible
and therefore a license violation ...

Sort of like "flashing proprietary code before a hacker and saying 'all your
future code belongs to us !'" ... Which is my interpretation of this license.

IANAL, and so you should hear what a real lawyer says about this ...
( an FS lawyer too, someone who enforces GPL for the sake of all)

> From: Eben Moglen <moglen@columbia.edu>
> Subject: [CoreTeam]Re: Microsoft Shared Source License and Portable.NET
>
> Hi Rhys,
> 
> The key provision in the license is:
> 
>    You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after
>    accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a
>    license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you
>    might create using such information.
> 
> This is pretty clear (they're becoming rather good at drafting "shared
> source" licenses; I'm beginning to feel stylistically challenged).  It
> means that they don't claim any right to control knowledge you may
> gain from reading their code, but you can't copy their code or
> practice any of their patent claims.  The patent issue is unaffected
> by the reading of their code, from our point of view.  On the
> copyright side, our responsibility is the same as it would be under
> any other circumstances: we must write all our code from scratch,
> copying nothing contained in their Rotor code.  If there is no copying
> there is no infringement under their license.
> 
> My advice is to tell people to code where possible from the ECMA
> standard.  Where (which is likely to be everywhere), ECMA is
> insufficiently descriptive to create interoperable code, it is
> acceptable to read the source of the Rotor implementation.  Notes
> taken in the course of reading that source should be made in
> pseudocode, so that programmers do not copy snippets of the Rotor
> source as aides to their memory.  We want every line of code in our
> projects to have come out of the original invention of one of our
> coders, having been expressed in his or her own way.  Ideas abstracted
> from the Rotor implementation should always have been put in our
> programmer's own "words," because copyright protects expressions, not
> ideas. 

This is somewhere in 2002 March in DotGNU mailing lists ... (hmmm... 
[coreteam] archives are private for obvious reasons, which i why 
quoted the entire mail...)

Some later discussions have happened this month about Rotor (Shared source
CLI for *BSD) ... Read it here at 
http://dotgnu.org/pipermail/developers/2002-November/008669.html and 
follow the thread ...

Rotor is a perpetual license trap for somebody looking to contribute 
to Free Software communities ... But MS seems terribly fond of people
using X11 licenses ... (there are free software giants who switched 
their entire libraries to X11 from LGPL to avoid MS hot-footing...)

If someone is thinking of doing some .NET development , please do try
DotGNU Portable.Net ... It's part of the GNU project and IIRC is bundled
in Mandrake CD 3 (the bundled version will prolly be outdated) ... Lend
a hand ... 

Gopal
-- 
The difference between insanity and genius is measured by success