Will Microsoft ever live up to their MOF promise?

[Updated 18th July - I got it wrong]

The IT Skeptic got all excited about Microsoft's announcement in September last year that they were releasing MOF under a Creative Commons license.

I thought they hadn't delivered. I can't find mention of it on any MOF webpage except the one above, all the webpages still have (c), and downloading MOF 4.0 recently (Published: April 2008) it still has copyright statements.

Looking at the first document in MOF, 1.0 MOF Overview, there is no Creative Commons logo that you might expect to look for, and the copyright statement starts out:

Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Complying with the applicable copyright laws is your responsibility. By using or providing feedback on this documentation, you agree to the license agreement below.

Which is where I stopped and thought "This isn't Creative Commons". That is what I went on when I first posted this.

Ah but with Microsoft it is all about the fine print. Ric's comment below alerted me, so I dug back in. Reading on in 8pt type we find that

If you are using this documentation solely for non-commercial purposes internally within YOUR company or organization, then this documentation is licensed to you under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License

It might seem moot to you but "Creative Commons Attribution" as originally promised is a world away from the finally coughed up "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial" as far as our ability to use MOF within any other ITSM work. We can't. So I thought we were still stumped.
Ah but of course I should have read the fine print in ALL the MOF documents

The second document, 2.0 Plan Overview, and all the remaining docs have

Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. This documentation is licensed to you under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

So don't be fooled like I was: you can't use the Introduction but you can use the rest of MOF for extending it or developing other bodies of knowledge.

yes Microsoft have delivered. OGC don't. ISACA don't. But Microsoft have. Very quietly, but they have. Thanks guys. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

Comments

Creative Commons & MOF

I'm not sure I understand your point. The MOF core materials contain the following statement:

Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation. This documentation is licensed to you under the Creative Commons Attribution License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. When using this documentation, provide the following attribution: The Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0 is provided with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

Isn't this what you're looking for?

Ric

Correction

Thanks Ric - I have corrected my post

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