Microsoft Public License

It might be shocking to read about a free and open source licence supported by none other than Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft has two open source licences -- Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) and Microsoft Restrictive License (MsRL). The former is the least restrictive licence proposed by Microsoft. It is approved by both the FSF and OSI, thus making Ms-PL a free and open source software licence. But Ms-PL is not GPL compatible, according to FSF.

There are literally hundreds of free/open source licences for developers to choose from and I have just covered the tip of the iceberg. But interested readers can find the full texts of each and every licence on the Web. Devour them carefully and, who knows, you might even uncover a hitherto unknown loophole in one of the licences. This has happened in the past, leading to revisions in the texts of many licences.