Linux

Sure. Let’s make sure that people know what this really means though.

Microsoft cannot “undo” the current license. If such a “rug pull” happens in the future, we all retain access to the code that exists at that time including all contributions from Microsoft. We can also all continue to not only use it but contribute to it under an Open Source license and keep it a vibrant, useful project if we want. Microsoft is powerless to stop us. We could fork it then or even now without the copyright assignment requirement. We have that freedom.

What the “rug pull” allows Microsoft to do is to decide, in the future, to change their policy and to make further changes themselves and not give us access to those future changes. They have that freedom.

Again, even if Microsoft did this, we could fork and carry-on. Look at Valkey and Reddis as an example.

So, the situation is that Microsoft is Open Sourcing a bunch of work that they did. The maximum possible downside is that they could stop giving us even more in the future. Our reaction is “meh”.

What concerns us is not that Microsoft can take away our freedom. They cannot. What upsets us is that they may retain or receive freedom we do not want them to have.

That is all fine. We are all allowed to think about it as we like and I guess we al value “freedom” in different ways. Sometimes though I think people misunderstand and think somehow that all the code could be “taken back”’. It cannot. Similarly, we might worry that our freedom (even the 4 freedoms) could be lost. For this code, that is not the case.