Microsoft joins open source

Today is a historic day.

Microsoft has decided to submit its permissive and shared source licenses to the OSI for approval.

A bit of history

The OSI, the Open Source Initiative, is an organization born in 1997, after the publication of Eric Raymond’s famous essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and Netscape’s decision to publish its source code.

Back then a group of influential figures from the open software developer communities decided it was time to leave behind the confrontational, moralizing attitude associated with free software, as put forward by the groups around the FSF. So they decided to promote a more pragmatic, business-oriented view, in line with what had moved Netscape to release its code. From this group came the label Open Source, to mark their position and set it apart from Free Software, the term used by the Free Software Foundation.

Over time, the OSI’s main job has been maintaining the body of definitions known as the OSD, or Open Source Definition, and the process of reviewing and approving software licenses compatible with the OSD.

A historic event

For several years the developer community has been waiting for Microsoft to submit its shared source licenses for OSI approval. The OSI even said at one point that it expected Microsoft to start the formal approval process.

The news was broken by Tim O’Reilly on his blog.

In his keynote at OSCON, Microsoft General Manager of Platform Strategy Bill Hilf announced that Microsoft is submitting its shared source licenses to the Open Source Initiative. This is a huge, long-awaited move. It will be earthshaking for both Microsoft and for the open source community if the licenses are in fact certified as open source licenses. Microsoft has been releasing a lot of software as shared source (nearly 650 projects, according to Bill). If this is suddenly certified as true open source software, it will be a lot harder to draw a bright line between Microsoft and the open source community.

Bill also announced that Microsoft has created a new top level link at microsoft.com, microsoft.com/opensource to bring together in one place all Microsoft’s open source efforts. Bill sees this as the culmination of a long process of making open source a legitimate part of Microsoft’s strategy. Open source has survived Microsoft’s process of “software darwinism” and is becoming an ever more important part of its thinking.