Microsoft has lifted the ban for third-party developers on the commercial use of Open Source solutions in the Microsoft Store. According to the updated terms of use of the app store, all free applications based on open source software were removed from the restrictions with the possibility of voluntary donations to developers to continue their development.
“Last month, the company updated its Microsoft Store policy to protect customers from misleading free and paid products. Then the company heard negative feedback from the Open Source community about this situation and removed these policy changes. To confirm intent, the company removed the previous mention of open source pricing. Microsoft is committed to building an open Microsoft Store and giving developers choice and flexibility. If there are intellectual property concerns about the app, please report it. The Microsoft Store has a lot of great free and paid open source apps, and we look forward to seeing new projects there,” said Giorgio Sardo, head of the Microsoft Store.
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Previously, Microsoft introduced such a ban for the sake of users, in order to limit the irrationally high prices of actually free solutions or programs that are available elsewhere for free. At the time, a Microsoft spokesperson explained that it had become difficult for them to identify real developers of open source applications from scammers who sell clones of such projects to users, and these official products can be downloaded for free.
The open source community complained to Microsoft that this was wrong, as it would be the actual project teams that would suffer. Sardo took into account the position of the community, promised to revise the rules and add a clause to them allowing commercial support for developers of open source projects under certain conditions.
On July 8, Sardo announced that Microsoft was suspending new rules on open source apps in the Microsoft Store. The company has taken a pause on the decision, during which the Microsoft Store team will offer new options to combat "the fraudulent sale of natively free apps and the illegal placement of free software there."
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit organization that provides support and legal services for open source software projects, believes that such a ban on the sale of open source software in the Microsoft Store by the company is unacceptable. According to the SFC, "any truly open or free system is always available for free use: developers work in public and do not interfere with the creation of modifications and builds for any platform."
On July 11, the SFC clarified that open source developers have a working tool to combat scammers who post clones of popular applications. They can register trademarks on them and make a clause in the rules for their use that prohibits the resale of the application under the original name. At the same time, other developers retain the ability to distribute their builds for a fee, but should not distribute them on behalf of the original version of the project.
Starting June 21, the GitHub Copilot AI tool, trained on public source code in the GitHub repositories, is available after a trial period to all developers with a subscription for $10 or $100 per year. Only students and developers of popular open source projects can use the service for free. Microsoft is the owner of GitHub.
Michael Zippo
2022/07/23
https://linkedin.com/in/michael-zippo-9136441b1
[email protected]
Sources: Python.Engineering
