3 ms·

Is cross licensing really a big issue with closed source software? At least where I work, my software is basically 100% backed by open-source software. If the

Is cross licensing really a big issue with closed source software? At least where I work, my software is basically 100% backed by open-source software. If the company wanted to, some of our larger and more complex systems would be trivial to open source as the only proprietary software they use is our own. For an OS, I could see there being issues around drivers. However, it seems like the actual core of the OS would be pretty trivial to open source.

tomcam 3y ago
> Is cross licensing really a big issue with closed source software? Sure is. Microsoft works with thousands of vendors every year. There are lots of different terms under which they license software. It would not be that unusual for a game or utility or promotional item to be licensed for a version or so, and nothing after that. Very often these vendors vanish into the ether, and cannot be tracked down for any purpose at all, much less asking them to open source their software. Then, if you tried to ask them to open source, they might mistakenly see dollar signs and try to get money out of Microsoft when none is forthcoming.
- cogman10 3y ago
  > Microsoft works with thousands of vendors every year. There are lots of different terms under which they license software. This is a cart before the horse thing. How MS licenses software in the past has no bearing on adding a new open source license. The only time this would be a problem is distributing 3rd party source code. Which, AFAIK (and this is windows we are talking about) pretty much only happens in the drivers. Windows CE didn't come bundled with steam or really hardly anything. That was sort of the point of CE is it had almost nothing on it.
toast0 3y ago
My experience has been mostly with software that's either open source, or wholly in-house developed. But I've gathered from open sourcing discussions, that it's pretty common for closed source software to license libraries and other bits and bobs from other closed source vendors. Especially closed source software from long ago, when there was less to take from open source.

tomcam 3y ago

> Is cross licensing really a big issue with closed source software? Sure is. Microsoft works with thousands of vendors every year. There are lots of different terms under which they license software. It would not be that unusual for a game or utility or promotional item to be licensed for a version or so, and nothing after that. Very often these vendors vanish into the ether, and cannot be tracked down for any purpose at all, much less asking them to open source their software. Then, if you tried to ask them to open source, they might mistakenly see dollar signs and try to get money out of Microsoft when none is forthcoming.

cogman10 3y ago
> Microsoft works with thousands of vendors every year. There are lots of different terms under which they license software. This is a cart before the horse thing. How MS licenses software in the past has no bearing on adding a new open source license. The only time this would be a problem is distributing 3rd party source code. Which, AFAIK (and this is windows we are talking about) pretty much only happens in the drivers. Windows CE didn't come bundled with steam or really hardly anything. That was sort of the point of CE is it had almost nothing on it.

toast0 3y ago

My experience has been mostly with software that's either open source, or wholly in-house developed. But I've gathered from open sourcing discussions, that it's pretty common for closed source software to license libraries and other bits and bobs from other closed source vendors. Especially closed source software from long ago, when there was less to take from open source.