Microsoft beating Mozilla...in open-source licensing
Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues to hemorrhage market share to Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser. But Microsoft is set to surpass Mozilla in one area: adoption of its open-source Microsoft Public License (MS-PL), according to research from Black Duck Software.
The MS-PL is now used by 1.02 percent of open-source projects. This is impressive given that it was only approved by the Open Source Initiative some two years ago. The Mozilla Public License (MPL), by contrast, has been around for many more years and is used by 1.25 percent of open-source projects, ranking ninth in terms of popularity. MS-PL is 10th but is gaining fast.
It's a matter of coloring inside the CodePlex lines.
The MPL offers some benefits over its long-serving peers like the GNU General Public License (50.17 percent market share), but often the benefits are outweighed by the sheer momentum of the GPL. Whatever its deficiencies, the GPL is a relatively well-understood license.
For those developers looking to go "off-piste" with a different license, and particularly for those with a Microsoft inclination--as is the case with Microsoft open-source code hosting repository CodePlex--it's far easier to opt to do so with the MS-PL versus the MPL, the Eclipse Public License, or another license.
As CodePlex continues to gain in popularity, I expect we'll see the MS-PL push past MPL and potentially even past the MIT License, which currently ranks seventh at 3.79 percent share. When that happens, it will be a sign that Microsoft has truly arrived as an open-source player.
Of course, I suspect that Microsoft would rather beat Mozilla in browser market share than in license market share. But you can't have everything, now can you?
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I think a first sign that MS is understanding the benefits of open source will be when they make the simple step of having an open bug tracking system (granted, this is openness in general, though it is a characteristic associated with OSS). How odd is it that in 2009, there is still no obvious way to search for bugs in say Microsoft Office, much less log a new bug in a way that other people can comment on?
A further sign will be when instead of just killing products (i think it was Money, this week), they open source them, so that they can live on.
A license itself is neither here nor there. Its more talking the talk than walking the walk - its the organisations choosing to release under the license who are walking the walk!
you might come up with the cliche "it is OSS so other people will find the bug too"....what I alwayssay to this statement is that it is not always true, and by the time a patch is developed thousands or millions of the apps users have already been compromsed and millions of dollars losts. I would say wait many years down the line when you're sure no one is using the app anymore to release the source.
...and you have evidence of this? I'd love to see it.
calm down, its looking at a possible scenario....one I think MSFT would want to stay as far away from as possible because it would be a major disaster for the company PR and credibility wise as they're still responible.
This is speculation without substantiation. It has no basis in fact and no basis in theory. It's an entirely fear based claim with no analysis with a background that there have been no reports of any product suffering from security problems once open sourced.
I think the real problem MS have is even if they open sourced Money, they'd still have to be the maintainers which would mean they were still spending money on it.
A license itself is neither here nor there. Its more talking the talk than walking the walk - its the organisations choosing to release under the license who are walking the walk!
please kick this author out of the media-- he has no touch with reality.
Just because you think that it's trendy-- doesn't mean it's more popular.
90% of our clients use Internet Explorer and not firefox.. so I really don't know what you're talking about.
IE
http://secunia.com/advisories/graph/?type=imp&period=all&prod=12366
Firefox
http://secunia.com/advisories/graph/?type=imp&period=all&prod=19089
The funny thing is, Internet Exploder is closed-source. Isn't that supposed to be more secure and of better quality? I thought commercial software was better because companies only hire the best programmers and have to provide a quality product to compete unlike those hobbyist open-source programmers.
- by queticomn June 29, 2009 4:38 PM PDT
- i was wonder the difference between the GPL license an MS-PL license?
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