Microsoft partners think it's great that the vendor has been aggressively battling software piracy. But some partners say the task of ensuring that their clients are in compliance with Microsoft's Byzantine software licensing structure is steadily growing more difficult.

The U.S. District Court in Washington will review on Sept. 11 the state of the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program, which is Microsoft’s program for licensing more than 200 proprietary protocols for server, storage and security services.

Microsoft's current FAT file system licensing program could hobble the development and free distribution of GPL-licensed software, says an open-source legal advocate. However, licensing terms that were once published on Microsoft's website, which have since vanished, would have been compatible with the GPL.

Some successful open-source companies are using a dual-licensing scheme. In short, software is released both through an open source version (e.g. licensed under the GNU GPL) and through a proprietary license usually reserved to paying customers.

Bradley M. Kuhn's essay compares complex financial instruments, real estate, poker playing and proprietary licensing and their pros and cons to the society.

Note: Free as in beer! Join MontaVista Software and distinguished open source licensing authority Jason Wacha for a review of issues surrounding open source licensing. Starting from base principles of differences between laws, licenses, and commercial agreements, Mr. Wacha will move on to issues surrounding the use of a General Public License (GPL) and how it affects Linux and other open source software.

"Open source licenses come in all shapes and flavors, none of which are inherently evil or devious. Rightfully so, the licensing varieties are selected by the creators/owners of software code, and reflect their own desires for the projects that are being open sourced."

Business users of open source software should review their open-source licensing agreements, audit their use, and create formal policies for managing source code, especially mixed-source code.

Microsoft's licensing plans are a twisted knot of complexity that the company is trying to untangle.