Microsoft Community Licence submitted to the OSI

THE OPEN SOURCE licensing approval body, the Open Source Initiative, was asked to decide if Microsoft's Community Licence was worthy of inclusion.

If it was accepted it would have placed Microsoft at the heart of the Open Source community, something which is not the natural habitat of the software Vole.

Unfortunately the OSI refused to look at the licence application because it was not submitted by Microsoft, but a blogger. The OSI rang up Microsoft and asked them if it wanted to proceed with the application and were told "we will think about it."

According to eWeek the licence was submitted by John Cowan, who is a New York programmer and bogger. He works for Chester County InterLink which was founded in 1993 by former OSI president Eric Raymond and Jordan Seidel.

In an email to eWeek, Cowan said that the Microsoft Community Licence should be approved by OSI even though it is basically similar to more widely used weak-reciprocal licences.

He said that it was better to encourage Microsoft to release under an OSI-approved licence than not.

More at Eweek. µ