If you believe some of the headlines, Microsoft just open sourced a bunch of software related to its .Net libraries. Don't be fooled. The definition of open source is very clear. This is not open source. Not even a little bit. In fact, this may actually be an insidious trap (more on that below).

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?

Microsoft has released part of its .NET Framework - the part for internet-connected smart devices - into the open-source community. The company said on Monday that it's releasing source code for the .NET Micro Framework under an Apache 2.0 license.

One minute ago Microsoft made one of its first "open source" moves under the new Microsoft Reference License: the team in Redmond announced they'll make some .NET libraries available. I say "open source" because to me, open source means you can easily access a .tar or .zip of the code. Microsoft's effort is a bit more cumbersome.

I’m excited today to announce that we are also releasing the ASP.NET MVC source code under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL). MS-PL is an OSI-approved open source license. The MS-PL contains no platform restrictions and provides broad rights to modify and redistribute the source code. You can read the text of the MS-PL at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html

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.

Microsoft has presented version 4.0 of its .NET Micro Framework at the Professional Developer Conference (PDC). The framework is being released as open source software under the Apache 2.0 licence.

t seems we’ve arrived upon Microsoft open source. In the last couple of years, whenever there was discussion of Microsoft’s open source projects and efforts such as CodePlex or Port25, there was typically the standard open source response: it’s not OSI-approved; it’s not real open source.

"Microsoft sought to avoid tangling itself up in the GPL license when it struck a deal with Novell. Rather than pay Novell, it agreed to hand out SUSE Linux coupons to consumers. It stayed at arms length from distributing the code… But did Microsoft circumvent the trap of GPLv2 by stepping into the snare of GPLv3?"