OSI approves Microsoft open source licences

The Open Source Initiative has approved Microsoft's Public and Reciprocal licences

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has approved the Microsoft Public Licence and Microsoft Reciprocal Licence, officially branding them as open source licences.

The OSI approves licences by validating compliance to 10 rules set in the Open Source Definition.

The decision was reached with an "overwhelming majority" of the votes, but not unanimously, OSI president Michael Tiemann said in a posting on the group's website.

Microsoft welcomed the decision. "This is a significant milestone in the progression of Microsoft's open source strategy and the company's ongoing commitment to participation in the open source community to effectively meet the evolving needs of developers," the company said in an emailed statement.

Microsoft's submission had sparked debate within the open source community over the software firm's intentions.

Critics charged that the addition of the licence was an attempt by Microsoft to undermine open source. The company has repeatedly accused open source vendors of violating its patents.

Chris DiBona, open source programme manager at Google, had argued that Microsoft should be required to meet requirements beyond the 10 listed in the Open Source Definition to gain approval for its licences.

DiBona's plea, however, was turned down. Tiemann said in his posting that the OSI and Microsoft enjoyed a constructive dialogue "in spite of recent negative interactions between Microsoft and the open source community".

However, Matthew Aslett, an analyst with The 451 Group, argued on a company blog that the question should not revolve around the approval, but about what Microsoft intends to do with its new open source status.

"It is all eyes on Microsoft to see what the company will do next, and in many ways this will be more interesting than whether or not the OSI approved the licenses," he said.

"For reasons that were never fully explained, Microsoft wanted open source licences. Now that it has got them, will it use them to release significant code to the community?"

Microsoft has released more than 150 applications under its Shared Source licences which allow developers and users varying degrees of access to source code.

Some of these projects are believed to lack credibility, however, because they are not governed by an official open source licence. Microsoft sought to change that perception by submitting the licences to the OSI.

Microsoft only submitted two of its three Shared Source licences. The third is the Microsoft Reference Licence which lets developers view source code to understand an application's inner workings, but does not allow for distribution of the code.

The Microsoft Public Licence is the least restrictive, allowing developers to view, modify and distribute code as they please.

The Microsoft Reciprocal Licence adds a provision that imposes requirements on users choosing to combine the code with a licensee's original code.