Shared Source

Under the name of the company Microsoft Shared Source software licenses, provide some insight into the source code leads. The Shared Source program, was launched in response to the success of free open-source projects, especially under the GNU General Public License (GPL ) 2001.

Concept

Microsoft gives its licensees the right to acquaint themselves with the copyrighted source code of their software. With the " Government Security Program" ( GSP) - a part of the "Shared Source Initiative " - aims to improve the tarnished confidence of governments in their proprietary products Microsoft. According to Microsoft, open source is a threat to the entire software industry, while the company's own " shared source " license constitutes a balance between users and software vendors.

After a reorganization of the Shared Source licenses, some of these licenses now award significantly more freedom.

Licenses

• Microsoft Reference License
• Microsoft Reciprocal License Limited ( Ms- LRL)
• Microsoft Public License (Ms -PL)
• Microsoft Reciprocal License ( Ms- RL)

Shared Source Open Source

Criticism

The first shared-source licenses have been heavily criticized by the free software community, since these insights into the source code, although granted, but all rights of any changes to Microsoft remains.

Eric S. Raymond of the Open Source Initiative summarizes Microsoft's philosophy of " shared source" composed as follows: " You have to pay for the privilege to see the source code of the software. Who brings improvements, it is neither paid nor receive any rights to its improvements. And if someone tries to use what he has learned during Fixen Microsoft shear Bugs, for violating Microsoft's intellectual property rights on its " short ". What is ours is ours. And if you cooperate with Shared Source, your contribution will be ours. "

OSI certification

This criticism was later only some of these licenses such as the Microsoft Reference License, which have not been at the Open Source Initiative. The Free Software Foundation Europe commented to the effect that the Microsoft Permissive License Microsoft and Community Licences could possibly qualify for free software after a cursory analysis. And indeed they were also certified to be revised and renamed Microsoft Public License and Microsoft Reciprocal License from the OSI. Also, Debian, which with its Debian Free Software Guidelines evaluated the licenses even stricter, takes programs that are under the Ms- PL. The Limited versions of the licenses ( for example, Microsoft Limited Permissive License ) restrict the use on the Windows platform, so that they are not accepted as a FLOSS license.

Examples

The computer game Allegiance is an example of software that has been successfully released under a shared source. At the end of life of the product in 2004, it was the fan base enables future support even afford to by the source code under the Microsoft Research Shared Source License has been released non- commercially. In order for the player community took over the support and development of the game in the context of FreeAllegiance project, which continues today.

Another example is the strategy Games MechCommander 2 to which in 2006 the source code was released as shared source.