Apparently having an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license does matter.

Companies that had once shunned the official open source label while still operating as open source entities are starting to adopt a new OSI license, the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL).

If you ever plan on writing an open source program, then you must make an important decision, selecting a program license. Generally for open source programs, there are two main licenses that most developers take into consideration. These licenses are the Gnu General Public License, and the BSD license.

Setting the legal nuances of the chosen open source license aside, wouldn't two products under any open source license have the same claim to the open source moniker?

When I started using Linux I was totally sold to the concept of Open Source. I still am, but my view changed. The first code I released under an Open Source license was GPL licensed and I continued to do so for some time. The last code under the GPL license I actively developed was Zine until a few days before the release when I relicensed it under the modified BSD license.

Director of Source Program at Microsoft Corporation Jon Rosenberg submitted its Shared Source License called "Microsoft Community License" to Open Source Initiative for considering it as an OSI approved Open Source License.

The OSI License-Discuss mailing list has been ablaze for the past few days since Microsoft submitted its Permissive License (MS-PL) to the OSI [Open Source Initiative] for official open source license approval.

Since early this decade, Microsoft has been promoting their software framework, the .NET platform and its associated libraries. Now up to incarnation v3.5, Windows developers worldwide have rejoiced at the framework source code finally being made available. Yet, does this reflect any trend towards open source by the Redmond giant? How generous is the license and what does it mean?

The rumors are true. Microsoft (news, site) has an official open source license that was approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) — the Ms-PL, or Microsoft Public License. Since they have licensed their latest offering ASP.NET MVC 1.0 under the Ms-PL, we thought we would take a look at the license terms. Is there an evil catch somewhere in the terms and conditions?

While "open source" refers to software's underlying license and its adherence to the Open Source Definition, there are numerous examples of open-source projects that offer an open license but a relatively closed development process. But is it open enough? It's been called "fauxpen source" and worse, but we may have to get used to it.