For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

Sun Sep 30 03:23:47 UTC 2007

Russ Nelson wrote:
> Matthew Flaschen writes:
> > a. Is MS-PL a permissive license? If not, should OSI ask/require that
> > it be renamed?
> > 
> > I don't think it's permissive in a meaningful sense, because other
> > permissive (as the term is generally understood in the FOSS community)
> > licenses allow incorporating into source code works under other
> > licenses, provided that the permissive license and copyright notice is
> > preserved, and MS-PL does not.
> > 
> > Thus, I think Microsoft should rename the license.
>> My opinion is that we should approve it regardless of the name.

I agree with this. However, Microsoft appears willing to rename it (I
think "Microsoft Public License" is a good replacement for "Microsoft
Permissive License"), so that would be a preferred solution.
Matt Flaschen