Microsoft delays controversial ban on paid-for open source, WebKit in app store

The Microsoft Store, an online source for Windows apps and other apps, was supposed to enact new policies on July 16 that forbid developers from selling open-source apps that are otherwise available for free and from distributing browser apps that use Apple's WebKit engine. But on Friday, Giorgio Sardo, general manager of the …

[mark l 2]

Microsoft rules to only allow Chromium and Gecko, doesn't just affect Webkit based browsers, but any other that uses a different browser engine. So a developer could develop a brand super fast lightweight browser not based on either Chromium or Gecko and can't submit their app to the MS store.

[diodesign]

Alternative engines

Correct.

C.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Alternative engines

Correct but stinks.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Alternative engines

How can they ban web browsers other than specific implementations, and why?

What is their definition of 'web browser'?

Would they ban a lynx or w3m distribution? What about apps that use Web Services? Do they count as "products that browse the web"?

As for "[Do] Not attempt to profit from open-source or other software that is otherwise generally available for free, nor be priced irrationally high relative to the features and functionality provided by your product." I can understand the good intentions behind this (see tp2 below) but perhaps whoever said this doesn't realise the amount of MIT-licensed (and arguably GPL too) code that Microsoft have gobbled up and assimilated into WIndows and other MS products. Does WSL count as "profiting from open source"? Isn't everything that Microsoft has ever sold "priced irrationally high relative to the functionality provided"?

They should never have been allowed to buy GitHub or NPM (or LinkedIn but that's another matter)

If Microsoft actually wanted to help Open Source, they should stop abusing it themselves.

[tp2]

MS Store policies were always discriminating against open source

Microsoft store policies didn't accept software that was built with gnu compilers, given that the only way to sign packages according to store filtering policy was to install microsoft's development tools. Basically it also required compiling the software with visual studio which simply isn't working well with open source development.

the executable packages were easy to create and .msi package nicely implemented the needed stuff for installing the package. But to get access to MS Store, you need additional signing steps which couldnt be done for software built with gnu compilers...

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

When I first read the terms of the actual language may reaction was, well they clearly meant this to clamp down on app cloning an ripoffs, but the way it's written they've blown their foot off again. Then in the article gets a M$ guy on the record saying, oops, not what we meant, we'll try again.

The concern around this issue is real, and it would be good if the source repo's could designate the "blessed" store apps right in the repo, might make it easier to do automated code checks on the submitted Windows store apps. I'm in favor of letting users pay a reasonable rate to support open projects in the app store. I'm against some charging 399$ for a knock off of Inkscape where someone just recompiled the executable and then slapped a huge price tag on it hoping at least one sucker would miss the missing decimal point.

Instead of giving the person who is trying to fix the problem a moments peace, you then have the rest of the article documenting the outrage brigade marching around with their heads on fire. Not exactly how to win hearts and minds. The language made it clear that they were targeting crap apps and knockoffs which were preying on both the app store customers and the open source developers work. Better not to bite the hand holding the olive branch then.

[doublelayer]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

I agree with this, especially because I could see similarly strident complaints if the Microsoft store became well-known for people taking someone else's code, compiling it without modification, and charging money for it. People would be all over it saying "Microsoft's charging a commission and profiting from open source software the authors didn't choose to put in the store". Given that, I can see exactly why they acted to prevent it.

[Richard 12]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

This isn't some one-person shop trying to do the right thing and making a mistake.

This is a massive conglomerate with more lawyers than God and a bigger marketing team than most companies have total employees.

It would have been relatively simple to prohibit such "clones", but that's not what they said.

They carefully chose the words and knew exactly what these new T&Cs meant.

[doublelayer]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

Yes, a big place with a hard problem to solve. How do you put "only charge for your own open source project" into legal language? How do you define who has the right to do that with a project with many authors. How can you even specify that when the code is licensed under a license that says you can copy it, fork it, and sell it if you wish. They have a lot of lawyers, but those lawyers are doing a lot of things. I don't begrudge them trying to do something about this and doing it wrong the first time seems likely. Be honest, if they were charging a commission over someone's unchanged copy, wouldn't you feel similarly unhappy with them.

[cyberdemon]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

I agree that it does sound like someone at MS did want to stop people from abusing its platform to profit from other people's open source work, but the reason for the Drama is because Microsoft already profit from other people's work on a huge scale..

Then again if you look at Google and Apple's app stores, the problem is absolutely rife.

The issue I have with App Stores in general though, is that I cannot easily link the binary distribution back to the source - I can't do `apt-get --build source [packages]` like I can on Debian.

On Google's app store, there are thousands of apps which package open source software, inserting spyware and adverts for someone else. And I can't use my phone to download and build an app from source even if it is available on GitHub, yet my phone is plenty powerful enough to run an SDK. It's as if Google, rather than trying to stop third parties from abusing open source like it does, are actively trying to suppress open source on its platform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

Suppress? No.

Actively fail to check in even a cursory fashion that apps comply with the licenses of the software they incorporate? Big time.

And as far as Google's attitude on licensing issues, see the Oracle VS Google Java spat and the piracy on YouTube that keeps it alive.

[doublelayer]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

I don't much like app stores either for the same reason you specify. When they're optional (Windows and Android), I either don't use them at all or take circuitous measures to get the files I want. If you're going to have one though, I don't expect it to link everyone's source, as they're also expecting to be providing a lot of non-FOSS programs through it. Those that choose to put open source apps in such a store can link to their repository in the description, and many will use alternative distribution methods like FDroid or the various attempts at a Windows package manager which make obtaining source easier.

[pip25]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

We are not talking about Joe the developer making an unfortunate decision, and then retracting it. We're talking about Microsoft, one of the giants of the industry; this decision had to go through several levels and had to be accepted by all of them, which makes it less likely to be an honest mistake.

This is also not the first such controversial decision by Microsoft in the recent past, which again makes it seem more like they are testing what they can get away with, instead of trying to do some good but failing.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

-> to clamp down on app cloning an ripoffs,

Excuse me? Every Linux distro our there is a clone or a copy or a collection of bits from elsewhere. There is not a single distribution where every single part was written in house.

Clones or forks? If you don't like clones, don't like forks either.

[doublelayer]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

There's a difference between "I'm using your code because it's open source", "I forked your code to modify it", and "I'm selling your code without doing anything to add value". All are legal under the license, but one is a lot more likely to anger the original devs. Have you seen all the complaints from developers of things that cloud services are reselling, despite the fact that the cloud providers are actually adding the value of the hardware and contribute code on occasion? It's like that, but even more blatant.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

And that is what the licence permits. If they don't like it, don't release code under that licence. It seems that some people complain when they release code under a free licence, then somebody else makes money out of it. Hello. Wake up and smell the coffee. Nobody forced you to release your code.

It's a bit rich when I read some complaint above about Libre Office. They took the code from OpenOffice, did they not?

[iron]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

Stopping people illegally selling copies of Firefox, Libre Office, etc is a good thing - for Microsoft, the user and OSS.

Similarly why the huge row for preventing apps that use unsupported code that is over 10 years old?!? That is a no brainer. I haven't allowed any Apple code to run on Windows for over 20 years because their Windows apps are always total shite.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

-> Stopping people illegally selling copies of Firefox, Libre Office

Where is the illegality? Kindly explain.

[JohnTill123]

Re: The guy apologises and in marches the drama brigade

Another reason to prevent high-priced ripoffs from being sold on their app store is to combat money laundering. That may be a legal requirement they are trying to address.

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Microsoft..

Literally every time it tries to clone or copy an idea from others it cannot help but botch it badly. Its history of failure when it comes to actually successfully copying money making ideas from others is long, and, by the looks of it, not ending just yet.

Not feeling sorry for them, though, to me it's an ever continuing source of amusement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Poor Microsoft..

You mean copying Apple Store where any browser that is not WebKit is forbidden?

[Joe Drunk]

Windows Store does as good a job of vetting as Chrome Store

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/super-media-and-dvd-player/9P57ZKWLZ6NJ?hl=en-us&gl=US

Take a close look at the GUI - look familiar?

I don't download ANYTHING from there.

[Falmari]

Re: Windows Store does as good a job of vetting as Chrome Store

It looks like VLC but it would because it is based on VLC.

From the description on the store.

Super Media and DVD Player is a free DVD, Blu-ray, CD, SVCD, video and multi-media player based on VLC.

I am assuming that Easthills Media Inc are in compliance with VLC's opensource license and can place it on the MS store.

[Falmari]

Re: Windows Store does as good a job of vetting as Chrome Store

Looks like they probably are in compliance.

From their website https://www.easthillsmedia.com/products/supermediaplayer/.

Super Media and DVD Player is a free and open source software licensed under GPL v2.

Third party software: VLC

Source code can be downloaded here.

[Henry Wertz 1]

Free as in freedom

Whether well-intentioned or not, Microsoft is forgetting (or intentionally overlooking) that the "Free" in FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is "libre", that you have various rights, not free as in free of cost.

Should some company be charging like $50 or whatever for a program you could get for free? Possibly not. Should they be prohibited from doing so? Nope, open source licenses fully allow this, and if whoever pays for it thinks they are being ripped off they should vote the app down, people will think twice if the app has like 1 star rating on it.

In some cases it may be a matter of someone putting an app up for $5 or $0.99 or whatever when the same app is already available for free -- I'd rather not spend the $5 personally, but if they do a better job of marketing theirs than the free one and get people to buy it, more power to them. In other cases, it may be some app is open source and "could" be ported to the Microsoft store but nobody else has done it -- I really don't see a problem with them getting a few bucks for their trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Free as in freedom

If Microsoft or Google prevent you from installing that software on other machines after you pay for it, they are in violation of the GPL (although that may only apply to Apple as the zealots seem to apply completely different standards to Apple for some reason)

[doublelayer]

Re: Free as in freedom

They aren't using this policy to enforce terms of the original license. What they've prohibited is allowed under the license and entirely doable elsewhere, and they just don't accept it in their store. Their goal appears to be to prevent users from receiving code that misleads about its origins and open source developers from having their code used for profit by others, neither of which is a crime but both of which are unpopular.

I see those goals as reasonable. Perhaps others would prefer having no restrictions other than those that are required by law, but the range of opinions is so large that they're going to get negative feedback no matter where they strike a balance.

[ExampleOne]

Re: Free as in freedom

receiving code that misleads about its origins

Actually, doing that for financial gain may be sufficient to count as criminal fraud in some jurisdictions.

[Falmari]

Re: Free as in freedom

@Henry Wertz 1 “Whether well-intentioned or not, Microsoft is forgetting (or intentionally overlooking) that the "Free" in FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is "libre", that you have various rights, not free as in free of cost.”

None of those rights is the right to have the software hosted on MS Store or any other store.

“Should some company be charging like $50 or whatever for a program you could get for free? Possibly not. Should they be prohibited from doing so? Nope, open source licenses fully allow this”

They would not be prohibited from doing so, just prohibited from doing it through the MS Store, because MS Store is not required to install software on Windows*. MS has the right to prohibit software that rips off customers from its store**.

*Not yet anyway, I am sure they wish they could.

**As long as it is not MS software. ;)

[Roland6]

Re: Free as in freedom

Section 10.8.7 of the MS agreement is actually much broader than everyone so far have noticed...

"Not attempt to profit from open-source or other software that is otherwise generally available for free, nor be priced irrationally high relative to the features and functionality provided by your product."

Without clarification, any priced product (or service) in the Store that includes functionality derived from open-source, would seem to fall foul of this stipulation...

[myhandler]

What relevance does an MS App store have ???

They don't do phones anymore. Just download it anywhere else.

Am I missing something?

[Roland6]

>Am I missing something?

MS are having some success in getting vendors to only provide their Windows 10/11 application via the MS Store - no Installer or MSI on the vendor's website only a link to a MS Store entry that requires manual click through with no support for scripting (like you can with MSI's)...

[myhandler]

thanks - that figures.

[Chris 239]

"nor be priced irrationally high relative to the features and functionality provided by your product" - doesn't that cover most Microsoft software then?