Not really. I'm a big fan of MIT style licenses, but it also means that Microsoft could at anytime start making proprietary updates.
It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that this is the direction Microsoft is taking. I am just still very skeptical.
> It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates.
They could do that if it was GPL, too.
With MIT or GPL or any other FOSS license, if there is a sufficiently interested party, they can, however, maintain their own version starting with any Microsoft FOSS release; Free software doesn't mean that the original owner can't release proprietary derivatives in the future, it means that what has been released Free can always be used -- and maintained -- as Free software by anyone who wants.
Of course, there is a cost to that maintenance role, and you have no guarantee that someone will take it up if the original maintainer drops it or decides to release proprietary software instead. Free software gives you the right to spend your own resources to maintain it, not the entitlement for someone else to maintain it for you indefinitely.
No. Having used the MIT license means that Company X can take .NET, make its own modifications, distribute them in binary form and don't share them back as source code with MS or anybody else. Apparently MS isn't afraid about it.
MS is the copyright holder so they could make proprietary updates whatever FOSS license they used, GPL v3 included.
The MIT License arguably protects against patent litigation (in contrast to BSD).
People who have an issue with the MIT License (on the patent issue) fall into one of two categories:
a) People who've put it in the same category with BSD in their heads at some point, associating with it the same shared caveat about patents, and
b) People who understand the distinction between the two but are unsatisfied with how terse it is (especially in contrast to e.g., Apache 2.0). This isn't helped by the fact that the MIT License doesn't actually use the word "patent", and the closest it gets to saying "irrevocable" is "without restriction"/"without limitation".
In any case, Microsoft also included a custom patent grant at the time they announced the CLR's availability on GitHub and its new, more agreeable license terms. (Unfortunately it doesn't include the word "irrevocable", either.)
Pardon my ignorance, but I've never adventured too much into licensing stuff myself, and always had this kind of silly question roaming in my mind: what would happen if someone - after releasing some code open-source with the most permissive license, say on Github - immediately after changed their mind and changed the license back to a very restrictive one and someone had forked the project in that short range of time? Would their forked repository with the permissive license version be a totally legit code repository ?
I know this is sounds silly, but I wonder if it's a thing or not that when a software company publicly releases some valuable code open-source, then there is always someone thinking: "better fork this as quick as possible! you never know!" :)
They can close-source it again, they can't stop you using the open source version they did release. If you have the licence, you have the licence, and it is perpetual. You can't unscramble the egg.
There are quite a few products around which fit that type of scenario - where an older, free version is still circulating while the company now distributes a close source paid version.
Checkmate Stallman.
Not really. I'm a big fan of MIT style licenses, but it also means that Microsoft could at anytime start making proprietary updates.
It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that this is the direction Microsoft is taking. I am just still very skeptical.
> It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates.
They could do that if it was GPL, too.
With MIT or GPL or any other FOSS license, if there is a sufficiently interested party, they can, however, maintain their own version starting with any Microsoft FOSS release; Free software doesn't mean that the original owner can't release proprietary derivatives in the future, it means that what has been released Free can always be used -- and maintained -- as Free software by anyone who wants.
Of course, there is a cost to that maintenance role, and you have no guarantee that someone will take it up if the original maintainer drops it or decides to release proprietary software instead. Free software gives you the right to spend your own resources to maintain it, not the entitlement for someone else to maintain it for you indefinitely.
MIT vs. GPL is pretty much irrelevant here.
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The GPL doesn't protect against that either. They still own the code, either way, and can make new development closed whenever they want.
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In fairness, as long as they have copyright assignment from contributors, they could just as well do that with a GPL software.
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No. Having used the MIT license means that Company X can take .NET, make its own modifications, distribute them in binary form and don't share them back as source code with MS or anybody else. Apparently MS isn't afraid about it.
MS is the copyright holder so they could make proprietary updates whatever FOSS license they used, GPL v3 included.
How about patent use grants, hmm?
If I remember correctly, Microsoft is making a lot of money off of Android by licensing patents.
The MIT License arguably protects against patent litigation (in contrast to BSD).
People who have an issue with the MIT License (on the patent issue) fall into one of two categories:
a) People who've put it in the same category with BSD in their heads at some point, associating with it the same shared caveat about patents, and
b) People who understand the distinction between the two but are unsatisfied with how terse it is (especially in contrast to e.g., Apache 2.0). This isn't helped by the fact that the MIT License doesn't actually use the word "patent", and the closest it gets to saying "irrevocable" is "without restriction"/"without limitation".
In any case, Microsoft also included a custom patent grant at the time they announced the CLR's availability on GitHub and its new, more agreeable license terms. (Unfortunately it doesn't include the word "irrevocable", either.)
https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/PATENTS.TXT
Pardon my ignorance, but I've never adventured too much into licensing stuff myself, and always had this kind of silly question roaming in my mind: what would happen if someone - after releasing some code open-source with the most permissive license, say on Github - immediately after changed their mind and changed the license back to a very restrictive one and someone had forked the project in that short range of time? Would their forked repository with the permissive license version be a totally legit code repository ?
I know this is sounds silly, but I wonder if it's a thing or not that when a software company publicly releases some valuable code open-source, then there is always someone thinking: "better fork this as quick as possible! you never know!" :)
They can close-source it again, they can't stop you using the open source version they did release. If you have the licence, you have the licence, and it is perpetual. You can't unscramble the egg.
There are quite a few products around which fit that type of scenario - where an older, free version is still circulating while the company now distributes a close source paid version.