Staffan Malmgrens blogg

A while ago, Microsoft released a small webserver called Cassini, aimed at only hosting ASP.NET, for the developer who didn’t want to/could install IIS, under their “Shared source” license. Michael J. Carter took the code and added a bunch of features that makes it a realistic alternative to IIS in some scenarios. In particular, it supports multiple virtual hosts, something that I’ve had problems with, using IIS 5.0 under W2K, so I’m going to take a look at it and see if it works as a replacement.

It’s interesting to note that good things do come out of the shared source releases that Microsoft has done so far, even though the license has been throughly blasted in the more zealous parts of the open-source world. In particular, this document states ” All versions of `shared source’ deny you the right to redistribute the code or share it with third parties”. However, Michael is redistributing the source for CassiniEx, so either he’s in trouble or OSI is wrong.

Update: Now I’ve downloaded the original Cassini source code and viewed the license, and I cannot find anything that denies anyone from redistributing the source or derivatives of it. In fact, point 3 states:

[We simply require that you agree]: That if you distribute the Software in source code form you do so only under this license (i.e. you must include a complete copy of this license with your distribution), and if you distribute the Software solely in object form you only do so under a license that complies with this license.

Doesn’t seem more restrictive than the GPL to me. Could someone fill me in with what I’m missing?