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Comment by Rovanion | Hacker News Reader

Got a 503 on that link sadly.

It's the Microsoft Research License Agreement (MSR-LA). MSR-LA text from another project: https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/msr-la.txt

Alright, so reading it closely, it's kind of like the GPL in that any derivative work is licensed under the same license, but unlike the GPL, Microsoft get full rights to any modifications you make and any comments you make, including if you send them mail marked "confidential", plus you cannot sue anybody using this software for patent infringement if you discovered it via reading the source code.

Basically, if you touch this with a ten-foot-pole, the pole now belongs to Microsoft, along with your arm and anybody standing too close to you. You also lose the right to use your arm to sell things.

So, answering the question opened in another thread, if FreeDOS developers read the code, they risk making Microsoft the owner of their future contributions.

> You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, distributing the Software for use with commercial products, using the Software in the creation or use of commercial products or any other activity which purpose is to procure a commercial gain to you or others.

If you're in academia and getting a stipend and you look at it as part of your research, Microsoft could argue that that is a commercial gain to you. If FreeDOS has ever been used to make a commercial product (this is very different from the GPL which explicitly delineates derivative works from works produced by the software!), then its developers risk breaking the terms of the license agreement if they taint their thought processes with Microsoft's code. So yes, I'd probably say you're right.

> So, answering the question opened in another thread, if FreeDOS developers read the code, they risk making Microsoft the owner of their future contributions.

This is a really serious issue, because we can be reasonably certain that Microsoft wants to release a new version of DOS in the reasonably near future and so this is a sinister plot to get a nonexclusive license to FreeDOS so they can charge licensing fees. Quite ingenious.....

[/sarcasm]

I would think Microsoft takes the FAT module of the Linux kernel very seriously. The way to store long file names as multiple directory entries is one of the patents Microsoft uses as its main mobile revenue driver (they get more money out of Android licenses than they get from Windows Phone sales).

I don't think long file names were supported in DOS 2.0

It's actually very different. I don't know why they are called the same, but yours allow distribution

    You may use, copy, reproduce, and distribute this Software for any non-commercial purpose
    you may create derivative works of such portions of the Software and distribute the modified Software for non-commercial purposes

While the one used here explicitly deny it:

    You may not distribute or publish the software or Derivative Works.

Here's a mirror of the original MS-DOS version of the license: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TTs0lxz...

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