Microsoft dumps Sandcastle, does right by open source

When I texted Sam Ramji to let him know about Sandcastle, and he quickly texted back that he would look into it, I figured that a) it hadn't yet hit anyone's radar at Microsoft and b) that he'd fix it.

Fix it, he did. As Mary Jo Foley notes, it was "doubtful [that] Microsoft was willing to risk the wrath of the OSI over a documentation compiler." I'd go one step further. Once alerted to Sandcastle's violation and to the importance thereof, it was doubtful that Microsoft's Sam Ramji and Co. would be interested in the code, however important/non-important it might be.

Sam gets open source. He's not always supported in this understanding by the larger Microsoft entity, but Sam gets it. His apology to the OSI is direct, concise, and appropriate:

This is unacceptable and represents a violation of Microsoft's Open Source policy. I take it extremely seriously.

I have directed the project to be unpublished from Codeplex immediately, including removal of the project's use of the Ms-PL. If the team chooses to publish the source code and follow Microsoft policy, then the project may be re-published in the future. If not, we will remove all references to Sandcastle from Codeplex.

I apologize to the OSI on behalf of Microsoft for this mistake.

In Sam's defense, this sort of thing is not uncommon in open source, including on Sourceforge. Open source is a (mostly) self-policing community, and Microsoft, to the extent that it continues to participate, has become a member of that community, with all the benefits and bile that come with it (mostly benefits :-).

ExtJS is a recent example of a project that went through some gyrations on licensing, took some heat for it, and ultimately settled on a coherent, open-source friendly result. I doubt Jack Slocum, its founder, liked the process, but I think he managed it exceptionally well. ExtJS, like Microsoft and all of those (including myself) who have undergone processes like this will be the better for it.

So, well done to Sam and team. I appreciate your integrity and your respect for the OSI and open-source principles. Now please share that with the rest of your company. :-)

[jimmyed2000]

I am not familiar with the Sandcastle case so I'm not going to comment on it.

After reading the requirements for projects on CodePlex my opinion is that they are too vague and simplified.

For the licenses they should specifically list on the requirements page which licenses are ok. At the moment they point to a wikipedia page on open source license but don't allow GPL V3 (if my reading of the situation is correct).

They should explain what they mean by an 'ongoing' project their wording is very vague.

Their rule on source code needs to encompass projects that are in the design/specification phase.

My post on this: http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/microsofts-codeplex-requirements/

[JCPayne]

I wouldn't "Open Source" under Microsoft.... They act too unilaterally.

One day they could just up and tell you that firstly your code belongs to them and then that they are shutting down the "project" which you were working on- infavour of one that doesn't follow standards and then just import all of your code to their proprietary offerings... Meaning they benefit from the sweat off your back and make billions... No thanks. I'll still to the usual Open Source backers.

[JCPayne]

Better headline.... Big wave knocks down Microsoft's Sandcastle project.