Microsoft Changes WP7 Marketplace Open-Source Licenses Terms

Many news sources claimed that Microsoft is banning some open-source applications from its Windows Phone Marketplace. According to a RedHat Evangelist, Microsoft is banning apps that are licensed under GNU GPLv 3, GNU Affero General Public License version 3, the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3.

Microsoft’s marketplace terms contains the following text on the licenses,

Excluded License" means any license requiring, as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of the software subject to the license, that the software or other software combined and/or distributed with it be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge. Excluded Licenses include, but are not limited to the GPLv3 Licenses. For the purpose of this definition, "GPLv3 Licenses" means the GNU General Public License version 3, the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, and any equivalents to the foregoing.

Mary Jo Foley from Zdnet got an official reply on this issue from Microsoft,

“The Windows Phone Marketplace supports several open source licenses, including BSD, MIT, Apache Software License 2.0, MS-PL and other similar permissive licenses. We revise our Application Provider Agreement from time to time based on customer and developer feedback, and we are exploring the possibility of modifying it to accommodate additional open source-based applications in upcoming revisions.”

If you are an open source developer, are you OK with the Microsoft’s decision?

Source: Zdnet, PC World