4 ms·

This is inaccurate. The CLR has been released under the MIT, a permissive non-copyleft license that has been certified by the OSI. Microsoft has a separate pate

by cwyers 12y ago

This is inaccurate. The CLR has been released under the MIT, a permissive non-copyleft license that has been certified by the OSI. Microsoft has a separate patent grant that the article takes issue with, but the source itself is open.

pron 12y ago
The source itself is not "open" (though it is available for you to read), neither is it under the MIT license. To meet the minimum requirements for open source, the copyright holder must grant you permission to modify the source and create derivative works. Microsoft most certainly does not grant you those permissions. The MIT license implicitly grants you patent-use permissions; MS has taken those permissions away, hence this is not the MIT license, but an MIT licensed that has been ammended (so much so that it is perhaps no longer open source at all). You can read DannyBee's comments here for clarification and a more thorough and precise discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 (he's an open source lawyer).
- wvenable 12y ago
  What you are saying contradicts what is posted here: https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet ".NET open source projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. See specific projects to understand the license used."
  - pron 12y ago
    Well, they "use" the licenses and then amend them considerably (those licenses grant you patent use permissions, while Microsoft doesn't). The licenses are still there, only with a nice juicy amendment on the side, which basically says: "You know all those permissions granted to you by the license? Well, were taking most of them away now, thank you". The legal instrument by which those permissions are taken away is patents, which is actually worse than copyright because patents are sneaky. See those DannyBee comments I linked to for an explanation. In any case, Facebook does something similar with React which also "uses" the BSD license, except not really, which is why Google, for example, have already said they can't use Facebook's open-source projects. Facebook keeps the project open source, except adds an unrelated auto-destruct mechanism; the CLR isn't even really open source (because you don't have permission to freely modify the code or derive from it). I don't know which is worse...
    - cwyers 12y ago
      The DannyBee comments you linked are entirely about Facebook, React and the BSD license. They are not about Microsoft, the CLR and the MIT license. At any rate -- the MIT license for CLR is not amended. The patent grant is separate from, not an amendment to, the MIT license.
      - pron 12y ago
        Amendments are often separate. But call it what you like, the MIT license includes an unconditional (implicit) patent grant, which MS takes away.
        wvenable 12y ago
        Microsoft's patent promise does not override the MIT license. Whether or not the MIT license implies a patent grant is an open question not yet tested in court. If that unconditional (implicit) patent grant succeeds in court then Microsoft's patent promise is unnecessary. If that fails in court, then the patent promise protects compatible implementations (like Mono).
        pron 12y ago
        IANAL, but DannyBee is, and he says (re. Facebook and a BSD license, but it's the same thing): This grants an implied patent license to the patents necessary to actually do this, as long as you meet the restrictions... This is actually well-settled law. You don't get to give people stuff unrestricted, and say "you can use this for free", and then say "just kidding, what i meant was, you can use this for free as long as you pay me for the patents" However, when you do what facebook has done, and give an explicit license, you have overwritten the terms of that implied license, and you get no implied license. So it is not only "not unambiguously safer", you are not "left with the same rights you had under the bsd license if it is revoked". This is because if you revoke the explicit grant, you get nothing in terms of patents. But the implicit grant is not revokable unless you violate the copyright license. most engineers are not familiar with implied patent licenses. BSD normally carries one. So you do in fact, get a implied grant. By doing this [i.e. have an explicit patent grant] you don't, you only get the explicit grant. The implied grant is normally not revocable unless the underlying BSD terms are violated, whereas the explicit grant is revocable for other reasons. To summarize, it is well-settled law that an open source license carries a patent grant, unless that grant is restricted by an explicit one (which supersedes the implicit grant as it amends the license). The restrictive MS patent grant is therefore not in addition to, but instead of the implicit promise. It seems like Google's legal department is also under the impression that this is settled law, as they've said they cannot use React and other open source Facebook projects because they contain a restricted, explicit patent grant, while they do use projects without them.

by cwyers 12y ago

pron 12y ago

The source itself is not "open" (though it is available for you to read), neither is it under the MIT license. To meet the minimum requirements for open source, the copyright holder must grant you permission to modify the source and create derivative works. Microsoft most certainly does not grant you those permissions. The MIT license implicitly grants you patent-use permissions; MS has taken those permissions away, hence this is not the MIT license, but an MIT licensed that has been ammended (so much so that it is perhaps no longer open source at all). You can read DannyBee's comments here for clarification and a more thorough and precise discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 (he's an open source lawyer).

wvenable 12y ago
What you are saying contradicts what is posted here: https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet ".NET open source projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. See specific projects to understand the license used."
- pron 12y ago
  Well, they "use" the licenses and then amend them considerably (those licenses grant you patent use permissions, while Microsoft doesn't). The licenses are still there, only with a nice juicy amendment on the side, which basically says: "You know all those permissions granted to you by the license? Well, were taking most of them away now, thank you". The legal instrument by which those permissions are taken away is patents, which is actually worse than copyright because patents are sneaky. See those DannyBee comments I linked to for an explanation. In any case, Facebook does something similar with React which also "uses" the BSD license, except not really, which is why Google, for example, have already said they can't use Facebook's open-source projects. Facebook keeps the project open source, except adds an unrelated auto-destruct mechanism; the CLR isn't even really open source (because you don't have permission to freely modify the code or derive from it). I don't know which is worse...
  - cwyers 12y ago
    The DannyBee comments you linked are entirely about Facebook, React and the BSD license. They are not about Microsoft, the CLR and the MIT license. At any rate -- the MIT license for CLR is not amended. The patent grant is separate from, not an amendment to, the MIT license.
    - pron 12y ago
      Amendments are often separate. But call it what you like, the MIT license includes an unconditional (implicit) patent grant, which MS takes away.
      - wvenable 12y ago
        Microsoft's patent promise does not override the MIT license. Whether or not the MIT license implies a patent grant is an open question not yet tested in court. If that unconditional (implicit) patent grant succeeds in court then Microsoft's patent promise is unnecessary. If that fails in court, then the patent promise protects compatible implementations (like Mono).
        pron 12y ago
        IANAL, but DannyBee is, and he says (re. Facebook and a BSD license, but it's the same thing): This grants an implied patent license to the patents necessary to actually do this, as long as you meet the restrictions... This is actually well-settled law. You don't get to give people stuff unrestricted, and say "you can use this for free", and then say "just kidding, what i meant was, you can use this for free as long as you pay me for the patents" However, when you do what facebook has done, and give an explicit license, you have overwritten the terms of that implied license, and you get no implied license. So it is not only "not unambiguously safer", you are not "left with the same rights you had under the bsd license if it is revoked". This is because if you revoke the explicit grant, you get nothing in terms of patents. But the implicit grant is not revokable unless you violate the copyright license. most engineers are not familiar with implied patent licenses. BSD normally carries one. So you do in fact, get a implied grant. By doing this [i.e. have an explicit patent grant] you don't, you only get the explicit grant. The implied grant is normally not revocable unless the underlying BSD terms are violated, whereas the explicit grant is revocable for other reasons. To summarize, it is well-settled law that an open source license carries a patent grant, unless that grant is restricted by an explicit one (which supersedes the implicit grant as it amends the license). The restrictive MS patent grant is therefore not in addition to, but instead of the implicit promise. It seems like Google's legal department is also under the impression that this is settled law, as they've said they cannot use React and other open source Facebook projects because they contain a restricted, explicit patent grant, while they do use projects without them.